adamblast

Really? The wonders of modern tech!

(I wasn't going by memory. Tho I taped *all* of ST-TNG I just figured 160x2=320 minutes or 5 hours & 20 change...)

mickey65

I think this special actually "compliments" the VH-1 show. It makes it all more "complete". You can relive the whole 10 years of the 80's watching all of each!

I'm now 4 shows in on this special - and I really love it. Can't wait to see the last two! I DVR'd it.

windom

I'm guessing you meant "complements"? I would hope they don't spend a lot of time talking about how good the VH-1 show was.

d2cheer

Well it is a show about the 80's...

RichC2

I watched 4 episodes of this last night, good stuff. Weird seeing all of it presented in a documentary format.

Love it or hate it, the 80s had a shitload of personality.

Jimmy James

Do they spend much time on how terrorism in the US back in those days was mostly people taking over jets so they could land them somewhere safely?

I miss those days.

mostaccioli

i liked that they didn't have d-list celebs acting like a-list celebs making fun of '80s events.

Philly30

Times are pretty bad when you miss the days of plane hijackings

Jimmy James

Have you looked around the last week? Ricin and ball bearings/nails being shot out of pressure cookers has been a bit much for me.

Red Dog

We were an ABC news house, so I remember Frank Reynolds quite well. More because of the local affiliate (the lead anchor was much more respected than the anchors on the other affiliates in Baltimore). I don't think my father nor grandfather trusted Cronkite (and nobody watched NBC News then).

Watched the first 2 so far. They certainly gave a lot of time to Tony Hawk and skateboarding. I was a teenager in the 80s and I don't think I had ever heard of Tony Hawk until about a decade ago (my nephew is obsessed with skateboarding). I didn't know anybody who skateboarded then (maybe it was a west coast thing)....only skateboard I ever saw in the 80s was in Back to the Future.

DJariya

I got bored during the skate boarding segment. Never cared for that scene in the 80's.

I did get a kick out of seeing the old video cameras. Amazing how they have progressed.

I was only a boy during the 80's, but I also remember Frank Reynolds.

I liked his reaction in the Reagan segment...."My God!!"

adamblast

I was already out of high school in the '80s, and was finding my own favorite things rather than eating up mass culture. I remember *hating* Alex Keaton as everything wrong with America.

Hokeyboy

I thought the narrator was the VH1 Behind The Music guy, until my wife pointed out he was in fact Rob Lowe. Good gravy! Same EXACT tone and inflection.

windom

Watching it now...some of the segments go on way too long. Olympic hockey game, Jane Fonda workout and Tony Hawk/skateboarding don't really need 10 minutes each. Maybe that's just my disinterest in them though.

Also, I wish they showed all of the old video footage in its original 4:3 aspect ratio. It looks like crap made to fit 16:9.

Red Dog

That's why I recorded it on my SD TIVO.

I do think some of the segments run long. I actually liked I Love the 80s more with the no-name celebs commenting. Although Larry Hagman's comments are gold.

cleaver

This made the Jane Fonda workout videos interesting and that is literally the most boring thing I can think of.

Shannon Nutt

Frank Reynolds was hardly an amateur, he was one of the best news anchors of the day. There was a lot of bad reporting going on that day (sound familiar?) and he lost it on the air when they reported James Brady had died, only to find out shortly thereafter that he was still alive, yelling "let's get it right!" (or something to that effect).

bunkaroo

It's sobering for me at my age (38) ago watch this and realize I have never really known a time without credit cards and debt. My dad was using them a lot by the late 80's when I was a teenager. The concept of saving 10-12% of your money seems completely foreign to me.

Jonno2006

I was watching a little of it tonight and it got me thinking. What makes a person from a special 'generation'?

For example, i was born in 1981 and while yes i was around the 80's i was way too young to be really considered part of the 'US' in the title of the show. So what makes a person part of it? When they're in late teens and early twenties when they have a buying power as a consumer and can impact trends, or as someone on the job market in their 30's etc? Do i make sense? lol

I'd love to see the same show but with the 90's!

TheKing

It's kind of funny to look back now, but the 90s almost feels like a complete placeholder of a decade. You have the berlin wall falling right at the end of the 80s, signaling the end of the Soviet Union, while you have 9/11 right around the start of the 00, which signaled the start of the war on terror.

What did the 90s have? The Gulf War, OJ Simpson, Oklahoma City and Columbine. I guess you could throw in grunge and gangster rap.

TerryW

I thought this was a really good doc. I was 13 in 1980 so this brought back a crap ton of memories. I was bugged that Rob mispronounced Matt Groening's name. He kept saying, 'Grow-ning' and not the correct 'Gray-ning.'

Also, in this pic, it says this is Phil Collins. That looks like Mike Love from the Beach Boys to me.

bootsy

Me and you both because I don't recall skateboarding being that popular in the 80s. It may have been a Cali thing I don't know. I remember it becoming more popular in the 90s but I don't and associate skateboarding's popularity with the 80s.

bootsy

You are forgetting a lot: Jon Benet Ramsey, JFK Jr plane crash, Dr. Kervorkian, Matthew Shepard, the septuplets, Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas, Dolly The Sheep, Monica Lewinsky

Well if you want to go with Sports they had the Michael Jordan and the Bulls, the Dream Team, Atlanta Olympic bombing, Magic Johnson - HIV virus. TV shows Friends, 90210, ER, South Park, Melrose Place, Seinfeld. Movies: Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Titanic, The Matrix. Electronics - portable CDs, pagers, Microsoft Windows, mobile phones

wishbone

I had a skateboard in the early '80 but our sidewalk was not very smooth so I hardly used it. The late '80s had a surfer resurgence, a Cali thing too, so skateboarding seemed to go hand-in-hand with it. I probably learned about Tony Hawk from an '80s People article, a guy only a few years older than me, skating professionally and able to buy a house -- with a guitar in the corner of his front room no less.

bootsy

OK I can see this. I mean there are some things like this that I may have missed growing up in the 80s and this is obviously one of them.