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The Cosby Show aired from September 1984 until September 1992 on NBC.

Considered to be the most popular series of the 1980's , The Cosby Show was the principal cause of NBC's rise to prime-time supremacy. Introduced in 1984, at a time when some anaylists predicted that the age of the sitcom had passed, the program finished third in the ratings in 1984-1985, and topped the charts ( sometimes by huge margins) for the next four seasons. Its phenominal success ushered in a new era of sitcoms, many of them based on the traditional family; by the end of the decade there were more sitcoms on the network prime-time schedules than at any other time in television history.

Most of the action in this sitcom took place at the Huxtable residence, a New York City brownstone where Cliff ( short for Heathcliff and played by comedian Bill Cosby), an obstetrician , also maintained his office. He and his wife Clair( played by Phylica Ayers-Allen. She was later known as Phylicia Rashad after her marriage to NBC sportscaster Ahmad Rashad, who proposed to her on the air during NFL Live in 1985), a legal aid attorney, tried to bring up the kids with a cobination of love and parental firmness, while leading their own active professional lives. Sondra ( Sabrina LeBeauf), the oldest daughter, was a senior at Princeton University during the first season, graduating early in the second (although in the pilot episode Clair asked Cliff, " Why do we have four children?" The character of Sondra didn't appear until the September 24, 1984 episode.); Denise ( Lisa Bonet) and Theo ( Malcolm -Jamal Warner)were the know-it-all teenagers; Vanessa ( Tempestt Bledsoe), the rambunctious 8-year old; and Rudy ( Keshia Knight Pulliam) the adorable, if mischievous little girl. " I just hope they get out of the house before we die," murmured an exhausted Cliff at the end of the premiere episode.

He would not be so lucky. As seasons went by and the children grew up, they brought home friends, then surprise spouses and eventually babies. The first to wed was Sondra, who met Elvin ( Geoffrey Owens) at Princeton. They married during the 1986-1987 season and had twins, Winnie and Nelson, in November 1988. She was calm during the delivery, but Elvin almost passed out; he then decided to enroll in medical school. Independent-minded Denise was next, departing for Hillman College ( and her own series, A Different World) in 1987, dropping out a year later and going to Africa to work as a photographer's assistant. She returned home unexpectedly in 1989 complete with a husband, Navy Lieutenant Martin Kendall( played by Joseph C. Phillips , who had previously appeared on the show as a suitor of Sondra's), and his four-year old daughter Olivia ( Raven- Samone). The tyke won everybody's heart, especially Cliff's, as he now had a new cute child in the house to mug with.

Theo , the underachiever, enrolled at nearby New York University during the fifth season, while Vanessa later chose Lincoln University. She shocked everyone at the start of the eighth season by announcing that she had been engaged for the past six months to a maintenance man at her college, Dabnis ( William Thomas, Jr.), who was twelve years older than she was. They later broke up.

Although the main focus was on the immediate family, a number of other characters were seen occasionally. Cliff's parents, Anna and Russell ( Clarice Taylor, Earle Hyman), and Clair's folks Carrie and Al Hanks turned up once in awhile, as did Rudy's little friends Peter (played by Peter Costa, one of the few whites in the cast) and Kenny ( Deon Richmond), whom Rudy liked to call Bud. Theo's buddies Cockroach ( Carl Anthony Payne II) , Denny ( Troy Winbush), and girlfriend Justine( Michelle Thomas), also appeared from time to time.Clair's cousin Pam ( Erika Alexander), an underprivileged youth from the Bedford-Stuyvesant slums, came to live with the family in 1990, giving them all a taste of the " other half."

About the only celebrities to appear on the show were some very famous musicians who reflected Cosby's wide-ranging tastes in black music. Among them were Sammy Davis, Jr., Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Nancy Wilson, Joe Williams ( who played the occasional role of Clair's dad, Al), and the entire Count Basie Band.

The Cosby Show had an interesting history. Originally proposed as a comedy about a blue-collar worker, it was turned down by ABC and NBC. Bill Cosby's wife, reportedly urged the comedian to change the lead characters to upscale professionals, whereupon the show was again rejected by ABC but was picked up by NBC, which agreed to Cosby's condition that, unlike most network series, it would be taped in New York( he disliked working in Hollywood).Cosby also insisted on total creative control, which he used to shape the series into a showcase for the educational and child-rearing theories he had developed while pursuing his doctorate in education at the University of Massachusetts in the 1970's( the actor proudly included the redundant line " Dr. William H. Cosby, Jr. in the credits for early episodes). Not everyone agreed with his approach: The Cosby Show was criticized for its unrealistic portrayal of blacks as wealthy, well-educated professionals, and for its lack of attention to black-white relations. Others defended it as providing role models for what blacks could achieve, and lessons for all races in how to raise a family in a calm and loving manner.

A Review from The New York Times

TV REVIEW; COSBY IN NBC SERIES ON A NEW YORK FAMILY

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: September 20, 1984

ABOUT 10 years ago, John Chancellor, then anchoring the ''NBC Nightly News,'' maintained in an interview that the nation's most effective communicator was Bill Cosby. Since then, Mr. Cosby has been displaying some of his communicating skills in television commercials, those vignettes in which he is usually surrounded by delighted children. But he has had a problem, since completing the series ''I, Spy,'' finding a vehicle for his broader performing talents. That may now be solved with ''The Cosby Show,'' which makes its debut on NBC tonight at 8.

In unadorned outline, this is just another family sitcom with lovable Mom and Pop struggling to raise their frisky but lovable children. Cliff is an obstetrician living above his office in a New York City brownstone. Clair (Phylicia Ayers-Allen) is a bilingual Legal Aid lawyer in addition to being a nifty housewife. The kids, three girls and one boy, range in age from 5 to 16. This particular family happens to be black but its lifestyle and problems are universal middle- class.

The difference is simply that Mr. Cosby, here at his very best, can take the ordinary and make it seem delightfully fresh. He is not just another harassed father. He is the ultimate father dealing with problems that are terribly and hilariously real. Walking into his 13-year-old son's mess of a bedroom, he casually observes that ''it's hard to get good help, isn't it.'' Noticing that his oldest daughter is going out with elaborate makeup on only one cheek, he wonders if ''you're planning on walking sideways all night.''

Mr. Cosby does comic routines, ranging from electronic boogie to using Monopoly game money to teach his son a lesson in economics. He does slow takes and delivers fast joke lines. He is on a roll and making the delightful most of it. And the supporting cast is just about perfect. Everyone seems to be having a good time and, more important, they make us believe. ''I was a beautiful woman once, before the children came,'' an exhausted Clair moans as she gets ready to go to sleep. Cliff tries to cheer her up by responding, ''I just hope they get out of the house before we die.''

With only the premiere to go on, ''The Cosby Show'' is by far the classiest and most entertaining new situation comedy of the season. Let's hope the production staff can keep it that way. Earl Pomerantz is the head writer and one of the executive producers, along with Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner. Jay Sandrich directed the first episode.

The situation, not to mention the comedy, is considerably more contrived in ''Who's the Boss?'' beginning a weekly run on ABC this evening at 8:30. Tony Danza, formerly of ''Taxi,'' plays a former baseball player who was injured, married and left a widower with a young child. Wanting to leave New York in order to raise his daughter in ''safe'' Connecticut country, he takes a job as live-in housekeeper. His boss is Angela Bower (Judith Light), a corporate executive with a young son and a swinging mother (Katherine Helmond). Mom is the one who convinces a reluctant Angela to hire the street-smart jock.

Mr. Danza, a former boxer, spends a good deal of time with his shirt off and his thick weight-lifted physique makes him look as if he should be someone's bodyguard. His ''dese'' and ''dose'' cuteness falls somewhere between Leo Gorcey of the Dead End Kids and Scott Baio on ''Happy Days.'' Miss Light manages to put an interesting hard edge on her sense of humor. And Miss Helmond gets all the sure-fire jokes. She's the one who warns her daughter not to be sexist about hunky Tony. After all, Mom say, ''a man can do meaningless, unproductive work just as well as a woman.'' Will Mr. Danza's pectorals be enough to keep this sitcom in ratings shape? It probably doesn't matter one way or the other.

Blake Hunter and Martin Cohan are the co-executive producers and the writers. The show was directed by Bill Persky.

Here's an article that appeared in my local newspaper in September 1984.

Hey, hey, hey, Cosby is back

Bill Cosby has the ability to touch people's lives. Whether it be in television, films, commercials or the field of education. The hallmarks of his insights into the roles of parents and children are believability and humor. In The Cosby Show, which airs at 8 p.m. Thursday on NBC he plays an obstetrition living with his wife and four children above his offices in the New York brownstone.

Cosby made the transition from stand-up comic to actor in the NBC-TV series I Spy ( 1965-68), and earned three Emmy Awards for his performance. He starred in a sitcom called The Bill Cosby Show( 1969-1971) , a weekly comedy-variety series on CBS called The New Bill Cosby Show (1972-1973)and an ABC Comedy-Variety show aimed at children Cos ( 1976).

He made his motion picture debut in the film Man and Boy, and teamed with I Spy partner Robert Culp for Hickey and Boggs. His film credits include, Uptown Saturday Night and the sequel Let's Do It Again, Mother, Jugs, And Speed, A Piece Of The Action, California Suite, the animated film Aesop's Fables, and the Disney movie The Devil and Max Devlin. The best-selling comedian of all time on records, Cosby has had 20 albums on the national pop charts as well as six singles. He won Grammy Awards for " Best Comedy Album" five times.

" This show is unlike anything I've ever done, and so much what I've always wanted to do," says Phylicia Ayers-Allen of her first prime-time series role as Clair, a graduate of Howard University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Ayers-Allen got her start in off-Broadway theater with roles in Sons and Fathers of Sons, Weep Not For Me, In An Upstate Motel, Zooman and the Sign, and Zorro before landing the role of Courtney Wright in the daytime tv serial One Life To Live.

Born in Jersey City, N.J., 13-year old Malcolm-Jamal Warner currently lives in Los Angeles, where he attends Paul Revere Junior High School in Pacific Palisades.

On stage he appeared in In Command of the Children, which starred Kim Fields of NBC-TV's Facts of Life. At the Inglewood Playhouse in Los Angeles, he starred in Little People, Babes, and Alice Is That You?

Lisa Bonet was born in San Francisco, Calif., on Nov. 16, 1967, and is an only child. Now 16 years old, she has landed her first regular television series role.

Bonet has been featured on NBC-TV's St. Elsewhere and had a recurring role in the tv series The Two Of Us. A junior at Birmington High School in Van Nuys, Calif., Lisa has studdied acting for three years at the Celluloid Actor's Studio in North Hollywood. She lives with her mother, Arlene, in Reseda, Calif.

Tempestt Bledsoe was born in Chicago, Ill., on August 1, 1973.

She is in the fifth grade in an access-to-excellence school for exceptional children.Since beginning her career at the age of 5, she has appeared in numerous commercials, and has modeled for various department stores. She has appeared in an educational movie for the Encyclopedia Brittanica. In addition, she is an accomplished jingle singer and her voice is heard frequently in commercials.

Keshia Knight Pulliam was born in Newark, N.J., on April 9, 1979, Now 5-years old Keshia has been in show business almost all her life. At the age of 8 months she appeared in her first diaper commercial and has appeared in numerous commercials since.

Here's an article that appeared in USA TODAY in November 1984 talking about the state of the sitcom.

Can 'Character comedy' rescue sitcom?"

Here's the situation with sitcoms: " They've kind of gotten a bad name," says Madelyn Davis, producer of CBS' Alice. And the sentilment is echoed by Saul Turtletaub, whose E/R moves to Wednesday this week for a last-ditched effort at attracting an audience: " The name has taken on a negative value."

One reason for the bad rap is declining ratings. Last year, for the first time in tv comedy history, no sitcoms made the season's top-10 programs.

To protect their half-hour shows from " the sitcom stigma," producers and stars have embraced a new terminology. On Late Night With David Letterman earlier this year, Bill Cosby insisted NBC's The Cosby Show was no sitcom, evoking instead the new term " character comedy."

Just what is a character comedy, anyway? More industry mumbo jumbo, or have sitcom scripts evolved to become something really different from their predecessors?

" It's just a buzzword," says Turtletaub. " There does seem to be less importance placed on a driving story and more on the fun of the people dealing with each other." But this, he says, has been going on for years. " Do you remember any of the plots from Taxi?"

Others think character comedy is really just another way of saying " star vehicle." Put a big name in a series, and viewers don't care much about the situation.

" I doubt very seriously that a situation of a gynecologist and a lawyer living in a house is very attractive," says Richard Heller, Columbia Pictures Television's executive, of the Cosby premise. " But the minute Bill Cosby comes in, it becomes his character we want to see."

Still, defenders of the term say the character comedy really does signal the advent of something new. " In other shows," says NBC's Cheers producer Ken Estin, " relationships are static and what changes is the predictament. Cheers has an element of suspense that other sitcoms don't. People tune in wondering where will these characters be this week?"

" We push ourselves forward," says Bob Randall of CBS' Kate & Allie, summarizing why he thinks his show has a character-comedy feel. Events and lessons depicted in one episode affect the scripting of the next, almost the way serial dramas are written.

" Take Allie's terror of going out with a man-that has to be over now," he says. " She 's still nervous but it has to be in a different way. We can't do three ( episodes) of Allie's first date. It would be foolish if we went backward."

Such growth makes for more realistic comedy, but certain tv realities dictate against it. Reruns of the episodes, often out of order from the original broadcasts, destroy the continuity of the character development.

And even during first runs, the ever-changing relationships of so-called character comedies can confuse viewers. Says Alice's Davis: " I don't watch Cheers every week, and when I do, I often find myself saying, " What's that?"

Kate & Allie's Randall insists that even though personalities are ever-evolving on the series, character comedy can still offer viewers a very definate sense of resolution in each episode.

" You can't wrap up a personality on one half-hour. You can't take a woman who's unsure of herself and make her sure of herself.

" But I personally love the afterglow of watching a sitcom where the people end up better than when they started."

An Article From Time Magazine

Prime Time's New First Family
Monday, May. 06, 1985

By RICHARD ZOGLIN

BREAKTHROUGH HIT: A television series, usually in prime time, that achieves huge popularity. Its success typically has wide-ranging impact on the medium, inspiring imitators and sparking new interest in the genre. See also: All in the Family, Happy Days, Charlie's Angels, Dallas.

Network programmers hardly need a TV encyclopedia to recognize that another show has joined that select category. NBC's The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby as an obstetrician coping with the small trials of family life, was the highest-rated network series to debut last fall, and its following has grown to blockbuster proportions. The sitcom now lands regularly in the No. 1 slot in the weekly ratings; a month ago it even beat the Academy Awards by more than two ratings points. Its success has boosted the ratings of NBC's entire Thursday night lineup and has helped the network to its best prime-time performance in ten years.

The series' long-term impact, judging from the networks' preliminary plans for fall, may be substantial. This week's episode, with Tony Orlando playing a counselor for troubled teens, is the pilot for a potential spin-off. Next week's season finale, with Lena Horne as guest star, may also be the springboard for a new series. Both CBS and ABC are developing their own comedies about black families, obviously inspired by Cosby's success, and the show is being credited with reviving network interest in the sitcom form in general.

The Cosby Show is the sort of hit that warms the hearts of even the coldest TV critics. Unlike other prime-time successes of recent years, such as Dallas and The A-Team, the series does not trade in illicit sex, cliff-hanger endings or car chases. It is a wholesome and rather sweet portrayal of a relatively realistic household. Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable and his family happen to be black, but no special point is made of that fact--a refreshingly mature treatment of the matter of race.

Yet The Cosby Show's achievements have been rather wildly overstated. To be sure, at a time when most TV families inhabit a farcical never-never land, the series has much to recommend it. Its structure is unusually loose and laid- back for a sitcom, avoiding gimmicky plots and rapid-fire gag lines. Its subject matter is the recognizable trivia of family life: a son who won't clean up his room, a child who is afraid to sleep alone after seeing a scary movie, a visit from Grandpa.

Though Phylicia Ayers-Allen, as Dr. Huxtable's wife, is too young by a decade, the youngsters who play their rambunctious brood (Lisa Bonet, Malcolm- Jamal Warner, Tempestt Bledsoe and Keshia Knight-Pulliam) are charming. So is Cosby, most of the time. The veteran stand-up comic, commercial pitchman and star of three former TV series has found an ideal format for his gently satiric humor. In the face of life's little annoyances, Cosby's demeanor is a sardonic slow burn; his response, exasperated hyperbole. "I had a rough day yesterday," he complains. "Every child born on the face of this earth, I delivered."

But the show's problems start with Cosby himself. He is, quite simply, everywhere. His name is listed five times in the credits: as star, co- producer, executive consultant, co-author of the theme music and, as William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D., one of the show's three creators. On a typical episode, he appears in virtually every scene.

Children run in and out of the frame at a sprightly clip, but the center of attention is always Dad: no bit of action goes by without a quip, double take or comic harangue. It upsets the show's balance and throws off its rhythm. Significantly, Cosby's jokes are often followed by a reaction shot of a family member laughing. Smart comic that he is, Cosby has brought his audience onstage.

Compared with such classic TV family comedies as Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, The Cosby Show has amazingly little feel for--or even much interest in--the concerns of children. In the rare instances when the series deals with a serious issue facing youngsters, it falls back on sentimental contrivances that betray a tin ear for the way real children talk and act. On one episode, the Huxtables find a marijuana cigarette in their son Theo's school book. He claims the joint is not his; his parents believe him and consider the case closed. But Theo is not satisfied at this magnanimous vote of confidence. He finds the fellow who planted the joint (a hulking bully nicknamed "the Enforcer") and brings him home to confess to his parents. The tough guy inexplicably complies. Indeed, he is so impressed with the trusting Huxtable clan that he winds up playing football with Theo's pals. On The Cosby Show, it is not merely unthinkable that a "good" boy might smoke marijuana; delinquents who do are redeemed by a single visit to the Happy House of Cosby.

A breakthrough series? Perhaps. But The Cosby Show pales beside such landmark sitcoms of the 1970s as All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Those programs forged new territory for TV comedy, in both style and subject matter. The Cosby Show, with its genial wholesomeness, harks back to old times. If any ground is being broken, it may just be TV comedy putting its head back into the sand.

An Article from The New York Times

TV REVIEWS;
BILL COSBY'S TRIUMPH

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: May 9, 1985

''The Cosby Show'' is that rare commodity - a truly nice development in a medium that seems increasingly preoccupied with trash. You look at the cheap manipulations of a ''Hollywood Wives'' or a ''Lace II'' and you begin wondering about, just for starters, the decline and fall of the West. You look at ''The Cosby Show'' and you feel, most of the time, just plain good. Television life on Thursdays at 8 P.M. on NBC suddenly displays signs of intelligence, insight and a clever sense of humor. For a pleasant, though not entirely representative example there is this evening's episode, which manages to incorporate Lena Horne into the plot.

Bill Cosby is, of course, the centerpiece. He may be playing a character named Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable, but there is no doubt that this show captures the essence of Mr. Cosby, who is not only the star but also the executive producer and, according to most reports from the Brooklyn studio where the show is taped, the man totally in control. Tonight, Bill/Cliff is having a birthday, his 48th. Firmly convinced that he is the brightest person in the Huxtable household, he is determined to find out what his family is preparing for him. ''The joy of a birthday,'' he explains slyly, ''is finding out what the present is before you get it.''

The very first scene discloses that his wife Clair (Phylicia Ayers-Allen) will be taking him to a club to hear Miss Horne. However, she has devised various ploys to keep Cliff from finding out. That gives him the initial segment of the half hour to prowl about the house and, wheedling up a storm, try to get his children to tell all. Kissing his wife's hand with a smug flourish, he announces, ''Let the games begin.'' When the family finally gets him to the nightclub, Miss Horne takes one glance at his goofily delighted smile and says, in the inimitable sassy Horne manner, ''Well, look at you.'' She dedicates her version of ''I'm Glad There Is You'' to Cliff, and everything is dandy with his world, and ours.

The show works so smoothly that it would be easy to underestimate the talent and sheer hard work involved. Not a moment is wasted. The script by Elliot Schoenman and John Markus is constantly devising precise little personality-building bits for each of the five Huxtable children. One daughter, for instance, asks Cliff to listen to a song she has just written. The lyric declares ''I'm an orphan of the darkness, prisoner of my tears.'' Dad is understandably concerned, but Miss Horne is the one who triggers a kind of reasonable resolution. And all of this is directed with split-second precision by Jay Sandrich, a television veteran who has had a firm hand in the success of such outstanding weekly efforts as ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show.''

''The Cosby Show'' is not without some emerging danger signals, most notably among the actors playing the children. Unnecessary cuteness is occasionally rearing its slick head. But Mr. Cosby may be able to ward off the more familiar slings and arrows of success. He has spent too much time carefully developing his own public persona to tolerate careless or destructive interference. The earlier Cosby can still be seen on sit-com reruns currently being carried late at night on cable's CBN network. He wasn't very different then, only less polished. And he can be seen in solo performance on some pay-cable channels. Those hilarious comedy routines have been merely expanded and dramatized for ''The Cosby Show.''

Bill Cosby has had a most impressive year. At a time when the situation comedy was supposed to be moribund on television, ''The Cosby Show'' has leapt to No. 1 in a single season. At a time when blacks were once again being considered ratings liabilities by benighted television executives, the middle-class Huxtables have become the most popular family in the United States. And at a time when so many comedians are toppling into a kind of smutty permissiveness, Mr. Cosby is making the nation laugh by paring ordinary life to its extraordinary essentials. It is indeed a truly nice development.

An Article From Time Magazine

He has a hot TV series, a new book -- and a booming comedy empire
Monday, Sep. 28, 1987

By RICHARD ZOGLIN

The bedroom is pitch dark. Two young brothers who share a crowded bed are busily not going to sleep. As one of them, Bill Cosby, describes it years later in a classic monologue, the night is an extended comedy-drama of horseplay, taunting and hand-to-hand combat: "I'm tellin' Dad, I'm tellin' Dad . . ." "I never hit you, I never hit you . . ." Each outburst is followed by a visit from their father, who thunders like Zeus, "If I hear any more laughing . . . I'm going to KILL YOU!"

Flash forward. Cosby is the father now, presiding over a brood of five children on TV's top-rated series. When he arrives home in one episode, three of his daughters begin fawning over him. "What's blown up or on fire?" asks Dad skeptically. The youngest, it turns out, has cut photographs out of some of his favorite books to make a report for school. But Dad neither explodes nor affixes blame, just leafs resignedly through her handiwork. "Very good report," he comments. "Very expensive."

Slow dissolve. Cosby has just celebrated a notable birthday, prompting new thoughts -- and a new medium -- for America's most famous father. "I recently turned fifty," he writes at the outset of his book Time Flies, "which is young for a tree, mid-life for an elephant, and ancient for a quarter-miler, whose son now says, 'Dad I just can't run the quarter with you anymore unless I bring something to read.' "

Perhaps no performer in history has chronicled his life cycle so thoroughly, or so publicly, as Bill Cosby. Certainly no one has been so successful at it. Even Cosby, a man fond of outsize cigars and outlandish hyperbole, would have trouble overstating the scope of his popularity. As main attraction and chief architect of The Cosby Show, television's No. 1-rated program for three straight seasons, he dominates the medium as no star has since the days of Lucille Ball and Milton Berle. And he has parlayed his TV success into a multimedia empire that seems to grow like the tall tales the young stand-up comic once spun out of his Philadelphia childhood.

The Cosby Show, whose fourth season begins on NBC this week, has already earned a chapter in the TV history books. Its overall rating last season -- 34.9, representing 63 million viewers -- was not just its best in three seasons but the best for any TV series since Bonanza in 1964-65. The show's success has created its own bonanza on the syndication market: Cosby Show reruns, currently being sold to local stations, have earned a record-smashing $600 million, and the total could eventually top $1 billion; a third of that will go to Cosby himself. Meanwhile a Cosby Show spinoff, A Different World (starring Lisa Bonet as Cosby's TV daughter Denise, now off at college), debuts this week on NBC. With the coveted time slot following Cosby on Thursday nights, it could easily be another huge hit.

Everything Cosby touches these days seems to turn to gold, if not platinum. Enjoying the highest Q rating in history (the definitive show-biz gauge of audience appeal), Cosby has long been one of TV's most sought-after commercial pitchmen; he currently does ads for Jell-O, Kodak and E.F. Hutton. His stand- up performances draw packed crowds everywhere, from the showrooms of Las Vegas to Radio City Music Hall. (His going rate for one-nighters: $250,000.) A videocassette, Bill Cosby: 49, sponsored by Kodak and produced by Cosby's wife Camille, has sold 200,000 copies so far, more than any other concert video yet released. His first feature film in six years, a James Bond-esque spy caper called Leonard Part 6, will appear in theaters around Christmas, and he plans to start shooting another movie in the spring.

And now comes Cosby the publishing phenom. Three years ago Paul Bresnick, a senior editor at Doubleday and newly expectant father, came up with the idea for a book about being a dad. After his first two choices to write it were "thankfully not available," Bresnick approached Cosby, whose NBC series was just starting to take off. The result was Fatherhood, a collection of humorous anecdotes and observations, which spent more than a year on the best- seller list and sold 2.6 million hard-cover copies, edging past Iacocca to set a modern-day record. Naturally, that called for a sequel. Time Flies, a lighthearted look at the woes of growing older, has just arrived in stores with a huge first printing of 1.75 million copies -- yes, another record.

Clearly, Bill Cosby is more than a show-biz success story; he is a force in the national culture. Like Ronald Reagan, another entertainer with a warm, fatherly image who peaked relatively late in life, Cosby purveys a message of optimism and traditional family values. At a time when real-life families are weathering problems of drugs and divorce, the Huxtable clan on The Cosby Show is the very model of a strong, close-knit, parent-dominated unit. The fact that the family is black, without making a particular point of it, is an encouraging sign of maturity in matters of race. For whites as well as blacks, The Cosby Show is a weekly source of comfort and wisdom. "I hear white working-class families quoting The Cosby Show as though it were the last church sermon they heard," says Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles. "It's a pastoral quality."

This pastor, however, is a man of sometimes jarring contradictions. Onstage he comes across as an average guy commiserating about the little trials that face us all; yet, with earnings estimated at $57 million this year, he makes more money than any other entertainer on the globe. He is TV's best-loved family man, yet he firmly shields his own wife and five children from publicity. He shies away from the praise of peers by refusing to accept Emmy nominations; yet he flaunts his doctor's degree in education, earned at age 39. As a performer, he radiates childlike charm and clownish exuberance; with co-workers, he can be demanding and difficult (see following story).

Perhaps the most puzzling question surrounding Cosby is why, after a long career that seemed to have plateaued somewhere short of superstardom, he suddenly found himself the proprietor of TV's biggest hit of the decade. By most objective standards, The Cosby Show is an unlikely candidate for through- the-roof success. In contrast, say, to the Norman Lear comedies of the early '70s, it breaks little new ground in style or subject matter. It has none of the gag-writing brio of The Mary Tyler Moore Show or a half a dozen comedies that followed it. Indeed, The Cosby Show might be a classic illustration of ex-Network Programmer Paul Klein's theory of Least Objectionable Programming. With its gentle humor, upbeat message and crosscultural appeal, The Cosby Show has nothing to offend anybody.

But the series stands well apart from most other current family shows, with their contrived plots and wisecracking tots. Parents on The Cosby Show are figures of calm authority, not boobs, and episodes revolve around the realistic trivia of everyday family life: Dad goes out to buy a new car, or a daughter tries to explain her bad grades. Such plots, of course, are simply a throwback to slice-of-family-life shows of the '50s and '60s like Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, and Cosby's success may partly reflect nostalgia for those simpler old times.

But The Cosby Show outdoes even those ancestors in presenting an antiseptic portrait of family life, a comforting parable for parents. This "realistic" family has petty squabbles and conflicts, but they are resolved easily, without pain or embarrassment for anyone. Dad may look beleaguered at times, but in a pinch he always reacts with just the right mix of firmness and compassion -- and never a hint of self-doubt. (Even Jim Anderson agonized in the kitchen over his fatherly duties.) Children may misbehave, but their disobedience only provides an opportunity for the parents to demonstrate how to deal with such matters -- or better yet, for the kids to show how they have internalized their parents' values. When a friend of 13-year-old Vanessa lights up a cigarette in the house, the Huxtable children take turns berating the girl; even little Rudy comes on like an ad for the American Cancer Society.

Whatever the explanation for Cosby's magic touch, it seems to work just as well in print as on TV. In Fatherhood, Cosby sympathized with every dad who has ever been pestered by a child for money or got Soap on a Rope as a Father's Day present. Time Flies has the same broad appeal, with wry, wistful comments on every middle-aged trauma from the onset of love handles around the midsection to the embarrassment of searching for glasses that are sitting on top of one's head.

Most of these bite-size chunks of Cosbyana are little more than stand-up material set down on paper, without the flair that Cosby brings to them in live performance. (His unbilled collaborator on both books was Humor Writer Ralph Schoenstein.) But the quips are frequently funny, and pure Cosby. Noting that underwear keeps getting tighter as one grows older, he observes, "It is a point of pride for the American male to keep the same size Jockey shorts for his entire life."

Unlike Fatherhood, which felt obliged to interrupt the jokes for a few passages of banal "advice" to parents, Time Flies makes no claim to great significance. That job, as in the earlier book, is left to a plodding introduction by Alvin Poussaint, a Harvard psychiatry professor who is a consultant on Cosby's TV show. And if the kvetching starts to grow wearisome, Cosby manages to end on a note of uplift: " 'Dee-fense!' I am crying to joints that need 3-in-One Oil, to intestines that are begging for custard, and to eyes that are proud of their ability to distinguish day from night. However, I am also counting my blessings and not my time with a pointless pining for yesterday because I keep telling myself, 'The older I get, the luckier I am.' "

Cosby has a lot to feel lucky about, starting with the amazing resiliency of his career. While still a student at Temple University, he got his first taste of performing by doing jokes and impressions at parties. Soon he was picking up nightclub gigs in Philadelphia and New York. Juggling comedy stints with school and sports grew more difficult, and the inevitable clash came during his junior year. The football team (for which Cosby played second- string fullback) had to travel out of town for a Saturday game; Cosby had booked himself into a $225 club engagement on Friday night. He sought permission to join the team late, but the school's athletic director refused. Forced to choose between comedy and college, Cosby opted for laughs and dropped out of school. Within a year he had landed a guest spot on the Tonight show, and by early 1964 he had recorded the first of what would eventually be more than 20 comedy albums.

Cosby emerged at the peak of the 1960s civil rights ferment, and he was unique among black comedians of the time (such as Dick Gregory and Godfrey Cambridge) in not using race as a subject. That was not always the case, however. "Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started," recalls Cosby. "But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge." Ever since, a color-blind approach has been a basic tenet of Cosby's comedy philosophy: "I don't think you can bring the races together by joking about the differences between them. I'd rather talk about the similarities, about what's universal in their experiences."

Cosby developed his style by studying such comics as Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, whose 2,000-Year-Old Man routine "taught me that if the audience knows you can be funny when you want to be, they will be willing to wait for that payoff." Among his early routines was a famous bit in which God tries to convince a skeptical Noah that he should build an ark. But Cosby soon gravitated toward a more fertile subject: his childhood. In vivid, richly textured narratives, he told of cutting up with neighborhood characters like Old Weird Harold and Fat Albert, sharing a bed with his younger brother Russell, going to the hospital to get his tonsils out. No comic has ever entered a child's mind with so much empathy and gusto.

Though Cosby's comedy was color-blind, the comedian was not. In 1964, when Producer Sheldon Leonard invited him to audition for a role in a new TV series called I Spy, Cosby struck Co-Star Robert Culp as the "angriest young man I'd ever met." Cosby does not dispute the characterization. "You have to remember the times. It wasn't so much because of any racism directed against me. It was because of the March on Washington and how the press tried to ignore it, and the Red-baiting going on. I felt that my country had betrayed its black citizens." He got the role nonetheless -- the first black actor to co-star in a network dramatic series. The event was a Jackie Robinson-like breakthrough. "I remember being totally overjoyed about it," recalls Actor Robert Guillaume. "When Cosby hit, it was like a Second Coming." Cosby went on to win three Emmys for his performances; he and Culp have remained friends ever since.

I Spy was canceled in 1968 after three seasons, and Cosby's TV career took a long time to recover. He starred as a high school gym teacher in The Bill Cosby Show, an engaging series that was nevertheless canceled after two seasons. A comedy-variety series called The New Bill Cosby Show lasted only one; another effort, Cos, failed in less than two months. Cosby landed a few movie roles in such films as Uptown Saturday Night, California Suite and Hickey and Boggs (a rare and surprisingly effective dramatic performance). But his film career failed to ignite. Cosby refuses to characterize the time as a career slump but admits it was a "period when I was being ignored by some people."

Two groups of people, however, were not ignoring him at all. Children, for one, seemed to love him. While struggling in prime time, Cosby became a frequent guest on The Electric Company and Sesame Street, and created the critically acclaimed Saturday-morning cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. His other major fans were advertising executives. Attracted by his rapport with children, Jell-O hired Cosby in 1974 for a series of commercials in which he talked and mugged with youngsters eating Jell-O pudding. He was soon in demand for other TV spots, hawking products for Ford, Texas Instruments and Coca-Cola, among others. His latest client, E.F. Hutton, reportedly paid him more than $5 million for a long-term deal. "The advertising business was looking for universality that shatters the color image," says Fred Danzig, editor of Advertising Age. "Cosby does that."

In the meantime, Cosby, who had once vowed to quit show business at 34 and become a teacher, sought to finish his education. The bachelor's degree that he did not complete at Temple was belatedly awarded to him on the basis of "life experience." Then he enrolled in a part-time doctoral program in education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was awarded an Ed.D. degree in 1977, a credential that Cosby proudly displays every week in the credits for his TV series ("William Cosby Jr., Ed.D." is listed as one of the show's three creators). His degree, however, has been attacked by a former professor who was on Cosby's dissertation committee, Reginald Damerell. In a 1985 book critical of the nation's education schools, Damerell noted that Cosby took virtually no classes, got course credit for appearing on Sesame Street and The Electric Company and wrote a dissertation that analyzed the impact of his own show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. Degrees like Cosby's, Damerell charged, "do not attest to genuine academic achievement. They are empty credentials."

Cosby bristles at the accusation. "All I can tell you is that I completed every requirement that I was asked to complete," he says. Though later students at the school admit that Cosby's program was "not the most rigorous in the world," university officials insist he was given no special treatment. Cosby's dissertation, says Professor Louis Fischer, who was acting dean at the time, "was a very, very thorough, defensible study of the impact on children's values of the systematic watching of the Fat Albert program."

Cosby's now fabled return to prime time was still years away. Tom Werner and Marcy Carsey, two ABC program executives, had approached Cosby's agent, Norman Brokaw, several times about creating a sitcom for the comic but had generated no interest. Early in 1984 that changed. Cosby says he had spent some time watching TV and was appalled at the "lack of anything you could feel good about watching with your family. It was all car chases and breasts and characters yelling at each other and saying Yowie!" Carsey and Werner (who had since left ABC and formed their own production company) revived their idea and took it to NBC, where Entertainment President Brandon Tartikoff had been thinking of putting Cosby in a family series after seeing one of his monologues on the Tonight show.

"You have to remember how different a show we were proposing," says Werner. "Instead of getting laughs from arguments and conflicts between the husband and wife, we were going for subtler humor." NBC decided to take a chance on it, with no expectations of a blockbuster hit. But the show's debut episode hit the Nielsen top ten, and by midseason had taken firm hold of the No. 1 spot. The Cosby Show's huge success boosted NBC's entire Thursday-night schedule, helped lift the network from last place to first in the ratings and has given nightmares to opposing-network executives ever since.

In an industry where faceless collaborations are the rule, Cosby is an auteur involved in nearly every aspect of his series, from editing scripts to selecting theme music. The Huxtable family is modeled closely on Cosby's own, and many of the episodes are drawn from ideas he suggests. While filming his movie, for example, Cosby heard Ray Charles' recording of It's Not Easy Being Green. He asked the show's writers to build an episode around the song. Result: in one of this fall's segments, a sulking Rudy goes into her room for a wordless sequence set to Charles' music. Many of Cosby's ideas are the merest kernels of plots, which a staff of six writers must work to flesh out into 30-minute episodes. "We're concerned about structure," says one writer, Gary Kott. "But if Bill has an idea for a scene, he doesn't care how we get there as long as it is logical and fun."

Cosby's influence is also seen in the show's frequent, but uninsistent, references to black culture. When Son Theo has to read a book for school, chances are it will be Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man; when Denise is considering colleges, all-black schools are the topic of discussion. Each script is reviewed by Poussaint to ensure psychological credibility and avoid negative stereotyping. His sanitizing hand can be as heavy as a network censor's. In the original script for one Halloween episode, Vanessa and a friend were to dress up as a witch and Captain Hook. Poussaint vetoed both, arguing that witches perpetuate an offensive image of women and that the captain's hooked hand reinforces the idea of handicaps being evil. The youngsters wore more innocuous costumes instead, with Vanessa dressing up as an African princess.

The upbeat, sometimes preachy tone of the series has annoyed some. "Bill seemed to want the family to be good, and to me, good isn't funny," says Earl Pomerantz, head writer for the show's first eight episodes. Others complain that the series slipped a bit last season, with some segments being especially flimsy and plotless. A few critics have raised more substantive issues. One charge is that the well-to-do Huxtables are hardly representative of the vast majority of black families in this country. (Or many white ones, for that matter; no problem with child care in this two-income family.) Critic Mark Crispin Miller has claimed that the show provides the white audience with false reassurance that racial troubles have vanished. "On The Cosby Show, it appears as if blacks in general can have, or do have, what many whites enjoy," he writes. "And there are no hard feelings, none at all, now that the old injustice has been so easily rectified."

Cosby heatedly defends the Huxtable clan against these attacks. "To say that they are not black enough is a denial of the American dream and the American way of life," he says. "My point is that this is an American family -- an American family -- and if you want to live like they do, and you're willing to work, the opportunity is there." Others rush to the show's support. "One of the unfortunate things about television is that the black middle class is never seen," says Sidney Poitier. "We see an awful lot of guys pushing dope on street corners." For Anne Roiphe, co-author of Your Child's Mind, the show's idealized picture of family life is healthy for both blacks and whites. "The show demonstrates what Americans wish the world was like," she says. "This is what is missing in our lives -- the strong support of a family."

Wish fulfillment or role model, Cosby's TV family shows no sign of losing its appeal. The star himself may be the one who finally calls a halt to the program's fabulous run. He says he will wrap up the series after just two more seasons, in order to spend more time on other projects. Plans for a third book, on love and marriage, are in the works; so are more feature films. And, of course, the seemingly endless commercials, concerts and other public appearances.

Indeed, if anything threatens the fortunes of Cosby, Inc., it is overexposure. Cosby is not worried. "The measure of overexposure is not how many times people see you on TV or in the bookstores," he says. "It's whether you can maintain the quality of your entertainment. If you can, people will always be glad to see you." Such pronouncements may seem risky in the fickle world of show business. But Cosby hasn't been wrong yet.

With reporting by Scott Brown/Los Angeles, Dan Goodgame/Las Vegas and Jeannie Ralston/New York

An Article from The New York Times

TV REVIEWS; AN UPDATE ON 'THE COSBY SHOW'

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: January 21, 1988

IS he running out of steam? Has he peaked? How far can a megastar slip before he becomes an ordinary superstar again? The subject is, of course, William H. Cosby Jr., comedian, actor, writer, producer and, according to some estimates, the top money-earning performer in these United States. But suddenly the Bill Cosby media machine is showing signs of strain. His new movie, ''Leonard Part 6,'' over which the star exercised considerable control, is a box-office disaster. His books have recently slipped from No. 1 positions on the best-seller lists, hard cover and paperback. Most significantly, ''The Cosby Show'' on NBC has so far this season taken a ratings nosedive of about 18 percent from a year earlier.

But hold on. Mr. Cosby is not the only television star to stumble in attempting a crossover to the movies. The film careers of both Tom Selleck (''Magnum, P.I.'') and Ted Danson (''Cheers'') were strewn with duds before they both finally connected in the current hit ''Three Men and a Baby.'' No book heads the best-seller lists forever. Mr. Cosby's efforts, at best pieces of pleasant fluff, had an impressive run for the money.

And even with this season's ratings drop - part of which might be attributed to the new ''people meter'' system, which is indicating a substantial drop in viewers for all of network television - ''The Cosby Show'' is still television's most popular entertainment, followed closely by ''A Different World,'' a spinoff and another Cosby Production. In fact, a bigger ratings drop has been registered this year for ''Family Ties,'' which no longer has the luxury of a Cosby lead-in and is competing on Sunday evenings with the sturdy ''Murder, She Wrote.'' Yet there is little public musing on whether Michael J. Fox's career is tottering.

Still, having watched ''The Cosby Show'' for the past several weeks, it is clear that the series is sagging noticeably. The show was never a trailblazer in the mode of, say, ''All in the Family'' or ''Hill Street Blues.'' Actually, it is rather surprising how far it has gone on the strength of low-keyed charm and an attractive cast. From the beginning, the source of its appeal has been rooted in the personality of Mr. Cosby himself. Many of the scripts were simply expansions of autobiographical stories from his comedy act. These days, though, there are signs that Mr. Cosby may indeed be spreading himself too thin. The scripts are increasingly reverting to little more than insubstantial anecdotes and overly cute character turns.

One week, Mr. Cosby's character, Dr. Huxtable, took a group of youngsters to an old-fashioned vaudeville show, where Bill Irwin, the guest star, saved the day. Another episode had the younger Huxtable children visiting their married sister's new tenement apartment for a taste of what life is like outside comfortable middle-class boundaries (a rare venture into broader sociological climes). Then, the parents had to deal with their youngest daughter's problems at school, which had something to do with her not wanting to play the violin. And tonight, the Huxtable son is reluctant to deal with the reality of his friend having cancer. A visit to the hospital serves as an excuse to bring on Dr. Armand Hammer, the industrialist, as the young patient's grandfather. Mr. Hammer makes a plea for more government research in fighting cancer. In sum, ''The Cosby Show'' is not eager to tinker with its reputation as this decade's ''Father Knows Best.''

Clearly, Mr. Cosby is a unique phenomenon. Wearing several creativity hats, he has achieved successes of staggering dimensions. Furthermore, he has done it as a black man venturing into precincts traditionally dominated and controlled by whites. He has played the prime-time program game of trying to appeal to the widest possible audience, which means offending as few people and groups as possible. He has created an upper-middle-class black family called the Huxtables and made them America's favorites. Last Thursday, they were invited into some 28 million homes. He has brought black upscale role models to a medium that too often tended to use blacks, when they were employed at all, as diverting clowns. Mr. Cosby has beat the television establishment at its own game.

The Cosby public style is neither militant nor confrontational. He is insistent on being optimistic and upbeat. Racial tensions may be prominent in current headlines but there is hardly a hint of their existence on ''The Cosby Show'' or ''A Different World.'' CBS's ''Frank's Place,'' a show that probably owes its existence to the success of ''The Cosby Show,'' is considerably more pointed as it encompasses a broad range of characters from diverse backgrounds and social levels. As a result, and understandably, Mr. Cosby must cope with critics, many of them black, who insist that his shows should have a harder edge.

But Mr. Cosby's conciliatory manner can be underestimated. While seeming on the surface to be only exploiting the white road to success, he is consistently expanding opportunities for blacks to play key roles on that road. From the beginning, ''The Cosby Show'' has featured in passing many of the country's leading black actors and, reflecting one of Mr. Cosby's personal passions, jazz musicians. Next week, Mary Alice, who won a Tony Award this year for her performance in ''Fences,'' joins the regular cast of ''A Different World.'' A recent episode of ''The Cosby Show'' marked the directorial debut of Chuck Vinson, a black man and the program's stage manager. In another area, Mr. Cosby's enthusiasm and support was instrumental in getting Dance Theater of Harlem's ''Creole Giselle'' broadcast on NBC.

Back in 1965, in the show ''I Spy,'' Bill Cosby became one of the first black performers to have a lead role in a weekly network television series. His efforts and expanding success since then have been key factors in not only his own shows being at the top of the ratings, but also in more black actors getting steady employment and exposure on a slew of other series, from ''Magnum, P.I.'' and ''Cagney and Lacey'' to ''Dynasty'' and ''Head of the Class.'' Sooner or later, obviously, ''The Cosby Show'' will be canceled. That's show business. But television's racial attitudes will be profoundly altered. That's bottom-line reality, and that's Mr. Cosby's lasting achievement.

An Article from The New York Times

Review/Television; Last 'Cosby' Episode Brings the Huxtables A Happy Ending

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR
Published: April 30, 1992

Dancing to a Miles Davis rendition of Frank Loesser's "If I Were a Bell," Cliff and Clair Huxtable glide right out into the studio audience and past the other cast members, all of whom are standing and cheering. Without looking back or hesitating for an instant, the couple head straight for a stage exit door and simply disappear. Shared beautifully by Phylicia Rashad, it's a vintage Bill Cosby moment: no fuss, unassuming and brilliantly calculated.

That's the way "The Cosby Show" ends in an hourlong special tonight at 8 on NBC. The family, including Cliff's and Clair's parents, gathers for the graduation of Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) from New York University. Bursting with pride, Cliff is determined to have everyone attend, no matter the scarcity of tickets.

Bringing matters full circle, a flashback to the show's first episode finds Dad using fake Monopoly money to impress on Theo the folly of wanting to drop out of school. "You're going to try as hard as you can," Dad says. And of course, Theo, now in cap and gown, has done just that, overcoming even the obstacle of dyslexia. The Cosby message about education's importance rings loud and clear. As usual.

But the time had come for the show to go. Ratings have been sagging, especially after Fox Broadcasting, in its myopic competitiveness, decided to counterprogram with "The Simpsons," doing neither show much good and leaving younger viewers confronted with a pointlessly difficult choice. Mr. Cosby, in turn, responded by becoming noticeably more preachy and falling back on the routines of excessively cute tots, those most tired sitcom cliches.

But so what? At its best, and that covers the bulk of the eight-year run, "The Cosby Show" soared, demolishing some pet network theories. Back in 1984, the sitcom form was being pronounced dead by a good many experts. No more, went the laments, will we see the likes of Lucy and Ricky, or Archie and Edith. Then, with not much initial network enthusiasm, along came the Huxtables. The show turned out to be the top-rated series of the 1980's, with 20 percent more viewers than "60 Minutes," its nearest competitor. Tackling still another persistent network taboo, the cast consisted almost entirely of black performers who were not called upon to be silly clowns, pathetic addicts or menacing thugs.

With his executive producers, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, and his co-creators on the series, Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, Mr. Cosby took the sitcom form and turned it into an intensely personal working space, just about obliterating the line between the performer and the character being played. To an unequalled degree on prime-time entertainment, Cosby is Huxtable, going so far as to add to the show, after the premiere, an oldest daughter so that the fictional configuration of four daughters and one son would coincide with that of his own real family.

In retrospect, the series was simply the next inevitable step in Mr. Cosby's extraordinary career. In his earlier stand-up comedy appearances and recordings, he constantly used his own experiences as basic material. Some of those routines were later incorporated into "Cosby Show" episodes (a tactic later used to spawn series like "Roseanne" and "Seinfeld"). And even his early childhood was used to flesh out the Saturday-morning cartoon series "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids." But it would be a mistake, I suspect, to think that the carefully fashioned public persona reflects the entire man.

For someone who frequently lauds the benefits of discipline, Mr. Cosby has made a habit of breaking rules. He does not, for instance, play traditional industry games, especially the ones involving prize competitions. His refusal to participate in glitzy ceremonies no doubt accounts for the fact that one of the most popular shows in television history has won only six Emmy Awards over the years.

More to the point, despite his disarming insistence that "The Cosby Show" is just another sitcom about a middle-class family that happens to be black, Mr. Cosby single-handedly and uncompromisingly brought a new level of consciousness to prime time. The Huxtables don't just happen to be black. They are triumphantly black and protective of their heritage, in addition to being upwardly mobile. How do they jibe with the reality of most black Americans? Never underestimate the power of images. In the role of quiet revolutionary, Mr. Cosby has been cleverly using an old lure: the American dream. Obviously, it still works. The Cosby Show Created by Ed. Weinberger, Michael Leeson and Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D. The final episode, "And So, We Commence," was written by Janet Leahy, Gordon Gartrelle, Courtney Flavin and Hugh O'Neill. Terri Guanieri, Mr. Gartrelle and Adriana Trigiani, producers; Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Ms. Leahy, executive producers. A production of the Carsey-Werner Company in association with Bill Cosby. Tonight at 8 on NBC. Dr. Cliff Huxtable . . . Bill Cosby Clair Huxtable . . . Phylicia Rashad Sondra . . . Sabrina LeBeauf Theo . . . Malcolm-Jamal Warner Vanessa . . . Tempestt Bledsoe Rudy . . . Keshia Knight Pulliam Elvin Tibideaux . . . Geoffrey Owens Olivia . . . Raven-Symone

An Article From Time Magazine

Graduating With Honors
Monday, May. 04, 1992

By RICHARD ZOGLIN

SHOW: THE COSBY SHOW

TIME: THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 8 P.M. EDT, NBC, FOR THE LAST TIME

THE BOTTOM LINE: The most successful sitcom of the '80s makes a graceful exit.

Nothing on TV ages faster than a family show. The regulars at the Cheers bar or the M*A*S*H unit can stick around for years, with only occasional cast changes to accommodate stars who want to get into movies. But kids have a bad habit of growing up. Anyone tuning in after a few years' absence to this week's final episode of The Cosby Show may get a shock. Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), a junior-high student when the series began, is graduating from college. Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), once a pudgy preteen, is in college too, and has weathered a broken engagement. Cute little Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) has ceded the spotlight to a passel of even cuter, littler kids: Olivia, 6, stepdaughter of No. 2 daughter Denise (who is married but doesn't appear on the show) and two tykes who belong to eldest daughter Sondra (who is married but does). Still with us?

After eight seasons on the air, The Cosby Show seems ready for retirement. It was quite a run. A hit immediately upon its debut on NBC in September 1984, the show had an amazing string of four straight years as TV's top-rated series. During its peak season (1986-87), it was watched in 34.9% of all TV homes in the country. (This season's No. 1 show, 60 Minutes, could manage only 21.9%.) It sparked a revival of the domestic sitcom, a genre that had fallen into disrepair. (Fittingly, several other long-running comedies of the same generation -- The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains and Night Court -- are also saying goodbye this spring.) It initiated a healthy new attitude toward race on TV by building a show around an upper-middle-class family that just happened to be black. And it set a standard for wholesome TV families that inspired backlash (Married . . . with Children) as well as imitation (Family Matters).

The show was an amiable, unpretentious comedy that reflected the humor, tastes and ego of its star, Bill Cosby. The hourlong episode that concludes its run is entirely typical. The plot is as flimsy as ever: Theo is preparing for his college commencement, and Dad wants to invite more people than there are tickets for. This requires Theo to get on the phone to scrounge up more tickets, while the family exchanges wisecracks about the last time Dad brought too many people to a graduation (he set up lawn chairs for the overflow).

The trouble with The Cosby Show -- the reason why it won't be enshrined among TV's best family shows -- was that while it was packed with kids, it never showed much empathy for them. Every childhood problem, adolescent crisis or family dispute was refracted through Dad's eyes, perceived from a grownup's sardonic -- and often sentimentalized -- perspective. In the last episode, Theo's graduation is just another trial for Dad to bear. When Denise calls long-distance to tell the family she is pregnant, the sequence is mainly about how Dad doesn't get a chance to talk to her because everybody else hogs the phone.

Yet The Cosby Show makes a graceful, understated exit. There is no grand climax, tear-jerking finale or other last-show gimmick, and only one nostalgic flashback (a father-son talk from the very first Cosby episode). In the last scene, Cliff and Clair perform some minor business about a broken doorbell, dance together, then stroll off the set. Stepping out of character, they walk arm in arm through the cameras, crew and applauding studio audience. And, with becoming modesty, into TV history.

For 2 Websites dedicated to the 1980s go to http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/index.htm and http://www.inthe80s.com/

For 2 Reviews go to http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/cosbyshowt/cosbyshowt.htm and http://www.televisionheaven.co.uk/cosby.htm