I was so busy rearing two kids as a single mom while working, volunteering, and taking college courses that I totally missed the original run of the series. I'm playing catch up now, watching the re-runs on Sci-Fi. I happened to run into it just a few months ago -- and only b/c I stayed up too late one night. At first, I thought it was just *too cute,* but now I'm hooked. If I can't stay up till 2AM, I have to record it to find out how the next episode goes. It's fabulous!
I especially like how the show leads me to examine the history of the years between the 1950's through the 1980's -- the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly (e.g., the segregated South). Sure, it's encapsulated into a 60 minute segment, but the writers managed to hit enough of the key points to make it worth the air space. And sure, it's P.C. -- sometimes simplistically so -- but that only goes with the territory of the show's premise, which is the hope that we can make this world a better place for everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin, mental abilities, or socio-economic class. That's not a bad philosophy. In fact, it's the same hope that led me to bear children, and then rear them to have hope for their own futures.
