TV Show Furniture

When Jack moved into Will and Grace's building, he had some nice mid-century stuff, and a shade of green wall-to-wall I liked a lot.

There was an exclamation point seemingly carved into the front door of the Golden Girls' living room (interior side). I always looked for it.

I never liked Lucy's dreary Early American crap when she had the country house

The furniture in Fraser is so funny and great. It’s all such an extension of their characters.

R1 - I always liked Will & Grace's apartment and how it was styled.

On Friends, I also thought that Monica's apartment was ridiculously nicer than Chandler and Joey's, and yet they were both 2 bed/1 bath and right across from each other. The girls' furniture and style was also quite a bit better, of course.

Love that MTM had a sofa bed in her studio apartment and had to make it up, close it and move furniture every day.

Such a perfect silent commentary on her character.

Ann Romano's furniture was gross and looked second hand, but appropriate for a divorcee starting out again from scratch. Thing is through all the years of the show as she became a business mogul she never left that grotty little apartment behind, though I think the action shifted to the house Julie and Barbara shared with the husbands (who does THAT - in a cheap city like Indianapolis?). I also hated those brown day bed things in the Brady's family room.

[quote] Love that MTM had a sofa bed in her studio apartment and had to make it up, close it and move furniture every day.

Too bad she didn't have a bathroom! Or maybe there was supposed to be a bathroom inside that closet?

I want Frasier's interior doors. Also, his Chihuly sculpture.

I want the beach house used in Gracie and Frankie

Ugh, the Golden Girls did have awful furniture. Blanche's bedroom was hideous.

Here's Blanche's bed.

I liked the Hot in Cleveland house.

R11 it was so perfectly late ‘70s/early ‘80s though.

"Furniture to Go" - 1993 to 1997 (TLC)

Best cable show/home improvement show EVER!

These guys were the best. They'd start/end their episodes with their own 'Home Movies,' whether it be a '40s noir-film parody '70s movie parody, or a bad public-outreach infomercial parody. My favorite of the latter was Ed's parody of Sally Struthers and her "Save the Children Fund."

Ed, with his spotty beard, bad teeth, unruly eyebrows, and fat-ass-self, sporting a platinum blonde wig:

"Hello I'm 'Sally Struthers'." You probably remember me from the TV show, "All in the Family." That was before I looked like a Manatee . . . Order now. I'M HUNGRY!"

The Honeymooners

That carved wood wall on the Bob Newhart show. It always confused me.

Nothing beats Carolyn Appleby's Chinese Modern.

I said it looks like a dream, didn't I, r18?

I loved the apartment on "Family Affair" .

Loved the beach house and furnishings on Two and a Half Men. Also completely different, I really liked all the antiques used on on the old Dark Shadows TV series.

The Jetson's mid-century aesthetic was the MOST!

I really liked the Family Ties kitchen.

No the furniture, but the house on the later seasons of “Webster” with the secret passageways was the coolest thing I had ever seen as a nine year-old.

I loved a lot of the furniture in old shows like Perry Mason and, now, Peter Gunn. I'm watching the latter on Amazon Prime Video.

Don and Megan's apartment on Mad Men was pretty freaking awesome. (As is the linked 3D app for checking it out)

R11 if you look around these days you’ll see that the plants pattern on the wall paper in Blanches room is now everywhere. There are bed spreads and even women’s clothing with that exact design. When it first started happening a few years ago I wondered if I was the only one who realised people were walking around in Blanches wallpaper.

Not really furniture per se , but I recall the Morgensterns on the MTM Show have a painting on their wall which I'm pretty sure is this Zubaran still life and, ironically, full of Catholic symbolism. I really wanted a repro of this on my wall but never managed to find one.

However the Costanza's kitchen table and chairs on Seinfeld is exactly like mine.

R27, that banana leaf pattern was famous at some restaurant and we've been ripping it off since 1989 ish.

Yes r29, and it’s back with a vengeance now.

The couch on Mama's Family looked very uncomfortable, at least Bubba's butt sat on it.

Alexis' desk on Dynasty was a sight to behold.

R11, That room saw action, you can only Dream of.

I think the banana leaf wallpaper on "The Golden Girls" was originally designed for the Beverly Hills Hotel.

J loved Julia Sugarbaker's living room on DW, but then she was supposed to be an interior designer, so of course it would have to be a showplace. I loved both of Rhoda's apartments (the first one, while she was married to Joe, as well as the smaller one she moved to after they split up). They seemed so '70s boho-chic. The set designers did a good job too with Ida and Martin's apartment in the Bronx. It totally looked like what it was supposed to be: a prewar relic (probably rent controlled), where the Morgenstern family had lived for 35 years.

I agree r35. I always thought the set design for the Morgenstern family was exactly what a Jewish mother would be living in on Grand Concourse in the 1970s.

The apartment that Ralph and Alice Cramban lived in resembles my current apartment. Very primitive.

I liked the cliched decor in Desperate Maids.

Devious Maids. Whatever. Also Susan Lucci was an engineering miracle.

I loved Rosemary and Guy's flat in "Rosemary's Baby", which was based on the famous Dakota on Central Park, West. (The Dakota was actually used for exterior shots.) I don't know how an unknown, sporadically employed actor and his stay-at-home wife could have afforded such a place, even in the age of rent control, but it was a GREAT apartment...well, except for the elderly warlock and his nosy wife down the hall.

R34 yes, or it’s a close copy. They still make that Martinique wallpaper originally designed for the BHH.

I liked the bono chic of Rhoda.s apartment on MTM, and I liked Mary's apartment, too. I liked the set of friends as welll.

[quote]I liked the bono chic of Rhoda.s apartment

Sonny and Cher

Could have lived there

But there wasn't enough room

For her to swing her hair.

I always wanted my room to be like the inside of Jeannie’s bottle.

I always thought vaginas must be like the inside of Jeannie’s bottle.

Soft and pretty?

[quote]I don't know how an unknown, sporadically employed actor and his stay-at-home wife could have afforded such a place, even in the age of rent control

Ro's Baby was 1968. It was a different time and place. The Upper West Side was not a desirable neighborhood. The Ansonia was considered a shithole (a gay bathhouse in the basement!) Central Park was a wreck, full of drug addicts and Puerto Rican gangs. It was not well maintained. The woman who was the murder victim in Looking For Mr. Goodbar lived on West 72nd Street on a starting teacher's salary.

So it's not inconceivable that they lived in the Dakota. I don't remember the exact details of their apartment, but there were cheap apartments in that building. Competition to live in NYC wasn't that stiff until the mid to late 70s coupled with an undesirable neighbhorhood. In the Dakota, the most expensive rent would have been overlooking Central Park West. Then the next lowest tier would have been the inside apartments overlooking the courtyard. The cheapest would have been on the other side facing the brick wall of the building next to it and then the cheapest would have been the au pair apartments. This was at the time of white flight from the city, so all those old ladies who had been renting there from the 1940s and 50s were packing up and moving out of that area. And many times in those big buildings, people would pay key money to the Superintendent and the Super would, after collecting all the applications, put his preference (the one who paid the most $$$) to the top of the pile.

R47, you typed all that but couldn’t spell out “Rosemary’s”?

Sorry, r48. I had a lot of thoughts coming at me quickly and I wanted to get them all down. I typed Ro as just a shorthand and intended to go back and fill in the rest of the name, but didn't take time to proofread and hit the post button before I realized I had left it unfinished.

R47, we’ll let it slide this time, but next time you’re getting a spanking, mister.

I liked Mary's (MTM Show) couch from her first apartment.

Everything on the show Alice was hideous.

The front door on Family Affair with that great doorknob right in the middle. I thought that was the height of class when I was a kid.

Mama’s Family

[quote]I want the beach house used in Gracie and Frankie

The exterior of the house is an existing house in Malibu. At the end of Zuma beach.

R54 Agreed the kitchen in particular was ghastly.

Ever notice how floorplans are similar on different shows? As I remember the Mama's Family floorplan is pretty much identical to Archie and Edith's.

Here's the pink fridge in the Mama's Family kitchen.

What about Mary Hartman! Mary Hartman!

R57 I noticed that, too. Mary's (MTM) 2nd apartment floor plan was just like Bob Newhart's floor plan.

R58 yellow is just ugly for a kitchen

R57, I think that Bob and Emily either moved or remodeled their apartment a few seasons in. Since both were MTM shows, I wonder if the set designers recycled the Hartleys' original apartment set, and gave it to Mary.

Pushing Daisies had some of the most inventive production and set design of any television show of any kind, ever.

I want the tapestry material couch in Six Degrees of Separation.

I like Maude’s kitchen because of the brown appliances.

R53 me too!

Some channel (Me TV?) Reran a few old "Mayberry RFD" shows, and I noticed that the house they used was the same house that The Waltons later had, with the porch and the three dormers.

R48 is why I love DL.

Also, R47.

There were a number of suburban living room scenes in LOST featuring particularly well chosen early to mid 20th century regionalist American painting.

I love Little House On The Prairie’s living room!

I would like to have just one room with the wallpaper seen in Sherlock.

Agree with R52, almost everything on "Alice" God-ugly. The set for Mel's Diner wasn't even cool in a kitschy retro diner sort of way, Alice's apartment looked like a fire sale, and they showed Flo's house trailer a few times, and it looked like a brothel on wheels.

R15 thank you for that memory! Horse-hahrrrr!

I blame hours and hours of Bugs Bunny on Saturday mornings for starting my fascination with modern furniture. Giovanni Jones' house in particular. Of course, this may have been my contrariness, sitting in a house that more resembled the Tom & Jerry interiors.

I didn't like the first house in Leave It To Beaver, but Ward must have gotten a raise because the second house was bigger with better furnishings. I especially liked the huge wing arm chair with the patterned upholstery. It looked so comfortable to sit in.

Also - Dr. Bellows house on I Dream Of Jeannie was the exact same layout as the Stephens' house on Bewitched. They must have used the same set for both shows but I thought they were on 2 different networks.

What would it be like having interior design that looks like a set design for a zany 1980s music video television show? Anyone?

One thing I didn't understand about MTM. When the first show aired, Rhoda was supposed to be moving into the apartment that Mary moved into. It was a spacious-looking studio. But when you see Rhoda's apartment, she's living in the same house but the apartment looks like a quarter of the size of Mary's place. Why would she settle for that instead of getting a bigger place?

I remember loving Rita and Ed Bauer's house on "The Guiding Light" during the '70s. (I think they kept the set well into the '90s, with subsequent Bauer generations living there.) It was sort of a Spanish hacienda style, with lush beautiful furnishings.

I liked Susan's kitchen in Desperate Housewives.

I liked watching House, M.D. for the characters and the interesting cases but I was always distracted/annoyed by the very expensive MCM furniture lining every hallway, meeting room and office, though. Every piece took me out of the story for a bit while I scoffed and yelled out the approximate prices of each piece.

R77, I could be wrong, but I think that Rhoda was already living in the teeny-tiny attic apartment with the purple walls, but when the bigger, nicer flat opened up, she wanted to move into that one, but because Phyllis had already signed Mary's name to the lease (which seems like it would be illegal, but, hey, it's just a sitcom), she had to stay in her original apartment.

I loved the classic 60's Euro-Asian chic of the Tracy house from the original Thunderbirds. Sylvia Anderson and her team really knew what they were doing.

R82- I was more of a Stingray fan than a Thunderbirds fan, but all of the furnishings they created for both shows looked so stylish. Maybe too stylish to be wasted on a bunch of puppets.

Charlie's Angels - the Townsend Agency itself. Great office!

R26 thanks for that link. In return, one picture from the Jet Set episode.

As a kid I loved Karen’s bathroom with that nice view and the fancy bathtub with the orchids in the corner.

I was horrified by “The Honeymooners”. They had NOTHING. We were poor and most of the people we knew were poor, but everyone had better apartments than those people. I could not understand why Alice wasn’t allowed to get a job, especially since they didn’t have any kids. And that fat fuck would always be threatening to punch her. She wasn’t especially ugly, she could have done a lot better.

And I never understood why any of the TV wives weren’t allowed to work or use their magic to make their lives better. Carol Brady seemed to have the best life of all the TV wives. Mike was pretty chill, and she had a housekeeper.

Though I was raised by a feminist, I remember feeling the injustice of this as a very young child.

[quote]Carol Brady seemed to have the best life of all the TV wives. Mike was pretty chill, and she had a housekeeper.

Carol: Mike, if you expect me to perform in the bedroom at night, then I'm going to need a housekeeper to do the cooking and the cleaning! It's either housework or sex. You can't have both.

R87 I thought Mike had Alice the housekeeper before he met and married Carol? I figured they just kept Alice ,cause 6 brats!!

R87, they kept Alice/Ann B. Davis because without her sarcastic wisecracks, the show would have dissolved into little more that a half-hour of icky-sweet Karo syrup.

[quote]I thought Mike had Alice the housekeeper before he met and married Carol?

Alice was originally Mike's brother Alec. When Mike met Carol, he knew he couldn't keep Alec around so Alec had to get a sex change. That's why Alice always gave off such a masculine vibe. She used to be a he.

R91 Is that why Sam the butcher only hit it from the back and did not want to marry her?

Hart to Hart had BEAUTIFUL furniture

[quote]The apartment that Ralph and Alice Cramban lived in...

Who are they?

R94, the godamned honeymooners! Google their apartment and you’ll see what my place looks like.

The apartment in Good Times is my style decor.

Mine is the home in Sanford & Son.

I don't know how *comfortable* it all would have been, but the selection of italian furniture to be used in conjunction with Keith Youngs interiors on Space:1999 resulted in one of the believable visions of Futurism ever presented.

r95=Trump voter

R99 is pressed.

I loved Evelyn Harper’s house and everything in it, on Two and a half men. I know it reflects her cold and controlled character, but it is oxygen.

The apartment set used for the show “vicious” is dark, but so fucking gorgeous.

Hey, R23, my problem with the kitchen on "Family Ties" is they had a bulletin board on the front of their kitchen island and it was maybe three feet above the floor. Who but a small child could have found that practical?

Mention of The Honeymooners reminds me that the Nortons and the Kramdens live in the same building, but the Nortons have attractive furnishings and more space while the Kramdens have a tiny kitchen (with an ice box) which serves as their main living area - borderline impoverished. A door leads to what must be a bedroom. Ed is a sewer worker and Ralph a bus driver.