Now listen up, my Gen Y-ers, before you come into this thread to protest the fact that The Nanny has been categorized in the wretched Xiing Dump, please hear me out. I know you may have watched The Nanny when you were younger and you found it amusing. Sure, annoying voices were funny back in the day (I loved the kid in my 3rd grade class who could do the Donald Duck voice as much as the next person, and Ace Ventura’s vocals still crack me up). But try to pretend you don’t have any nostalgia associated with the show for just a minute. And now try to rationally assess the show from the perspective of an adult, with even slightly mature tastes. That’s right. It sucks.

I, for one, don’t have to perform this exercise to know The Nanny is one of the worst, multi-season sitcoms of the 90s. I never watched it growing up and have no nostalgia associated with it. You want to know my memory of the show?

Some time ago I was a mere college freshman living with a randomly assigned roommate in a too-small dorm room. Every week night, said-roommate turned on the TV at around 10 o’clock, changed the channel to Lifetime, and insisted on falling asleep to the sounds of Fran Drescher, a tacky nanny to a a stuffy, upper-crust family with a laugh I can still hear now when I try to fall asleep. I listened to these sounds as I, being something of a night owl,  attempted to continue studying by lamplight. Every few minutes I had to quietly repeat my roommate’s name to see if she was sleeping yet. Sometimes it could take her two full episodes to fall asleep, before I could sneak up to the television and change it to something less cringe worthy, which included pretty much everything on every other channel.

Don’t get me wrong. Generally I’m a huge fan of TV as background noise, even when I myself am trying to fall asleep. But this show was unbearable. The plots were ridiculous, the writing completely outlandish, and not in a way that suggested the writers were in on the jokes. It was low, low art. And it had Fran Drescher. Nobody is actually as stupid as Fran Fine. And nobody as intelligent and cultured as Mr. Sheffield would ever fall for her. Ever.

Now, as you may have seen advertised, The Nanny is coming to Nick At Nite, one more step toward completely tarnishing the good reputation this network once had as a chooser of sitcoms. Between Family Matters, The Nanny, George Lopez, and way too much Fresh Prince and Home Improvement, it’s turning into kind of a cesspool of the cheesy 90’s (Roseanne being the diamond in the 90’s rough here).

In the words of the great Cher Horowitz, I don’t mean to be a traitor to my generation or anything, but all these shows in a row, and no respite from another style of sitcom can sometimes be too much. I’m not saying I don’t want any 90’s in my evening syndicated sitcom routine, but why do we have to be so tied to that decade, on a network that has shown so many classics up until the last decade. I do worry that our kids will never know the 80’s or 70’s or 60’s sitcoms we grew up with. And if Nick really insists on going all-90’s for the sake of the ratings, or whatever it is, do you really want her representing our generation of television?

*Special Note* I do know Drescher is a cancer survivor, and I totally admire that. But her voice is still the most obnoxious sound on earth and her sitcom completely unfunny. I wish her better luck in her political career.