TGIF: Forgotten ‘90s TV shows resurrected for Friday the 13th — July 13, 2018

From 1989 to 2000, ABC’s TGIF block of programming dominated Friday night television. “Full House” and “Family Matters” were among the most popular family sitcoms in any time slot. The lineup’s hits — “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”! “ Boy Meets World”! — are still synonymous with the era. But not every show was a smashing success.

For Friday the 13th, PhilaMOCA director Eric Bresler curated some of TGIF’s less acclaimed offerings, the ones “forgotten to time, like most disposable entertainment.”

Those shows include “Baby Talk,” a “Look Who’s Talking” spinoff with a baby voiced by Tony Danza and a cast that also included George Clooney and Scott Baio. “Odd Man Out,” a late-era show about a teenage boy living in a house with three sisters, an aunt and a widowed mom, also is on tap. Bresler says that show featured “a memorably strange opening credit sequence and a heavily charming late ’90s vibe.”

The other two shows will be surprises, and everything will be screened with period-appropriate commercials and bumpers.

It’s the second screening like this that Bresler has curated — the first was in January 2017 — and it will feature a completely different lineup.

“I think it’s obvious that I do these things for the fun of it,” he said. “I enjoy the curation and assembly of it all.”

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