Thy local affiliate runs back to back episodes of The Goldberts every weeknight, a strategum that makes sense for a sitcom that’d been on for — maybe nine years — but for one that has a total of 4 years built up for second run syndication makes for a very quick turning.  So I believe in the past few months, I have now seen every episode of the Goldbergs (up to the current season, which will join second run in a fortnight) — a show with its definite attractions — a rarity in displaying a singular (autobiographical) voice — if maybe a tad sentimental and repetitive in the throw back “wrap up the small trifles in 30 minutes” manner.  I gauze a definite break off point in the near season — by design, lest Goldberg wants to follow on through his life.  I guess if you wish to run a show timed squarely to adolescence and to a particular decade, your best bet is to start when the main character of focus is in seventh grade — then you have a good six seasons available before the show stops making sense.

Diff’rent Strokes appears to have kept Gary Coleman’s character at a rough indistinct elementary school age for a good while, and then — as the discrepancy with the older brother (Willis) and step-sister became unworkable, made a quick leap between seasons.  The way they signified that he was now a teenager — if the shortest kid in class — was by having him wear t-shirts for contemporary musical acts — somewhat prominent in the opening credits we see Culture Club and the giant floating head of Boy George — and dropping the cutesy catch-phrase — “Whatcha Talking About, (Willis)?”  To compensate for the maturation of the once cute character, they had the rich white father marry and so bring in a new kid — notably shorter than Coleman — as well an older sister (the previous sister off to college, and never mentioned again — though when Willis went off to college, he remained in the cast and was still mentioned).  I suppose to contrast with the urban (black) experience, the new kid — Sam — was country-bred, and flirted as a part of his dad’s honky tonk country act.  But mainly Sam let the show have someone young enough to deal with those issues like bed-wetting and the family sitcom standard of being benched in little league by the coach dad in order for Coleman to dwell on heavy subjects like resisting peer pressure on sex and drugs.
Through the entire run, the show kept a discordant dichotomy in its forays to serious issues — where a full laugh track backed up scenarios bulimia and child predators — at least ’til the final act where the characters sat around to serve up the checklist of warning signs and intervention procedures and check off a line in the FCC ‘Community Service” filings.

Both The Big Bang Theory and The Facts of Life took off on a rocky first undeveloped first season, with the show getting a much needed (in the latter case drastic, in the former I don’t know the evolution) retooling at the second season.  It’s where the primary focus at the beginning of The Big Bang Theory is Leonard and his unrequited love/crush for the cool pretty Penny — where the show shifts to more fully develop the initially one note rest of the cast and give everyone else appropriate love interests to eventually marry.  And it’s where the obvious star in the textbook Asperger’s case Sheldon and his evolving relationship with someone just a little bit lower on the spectrum — Amy — is probably the biggest focal point.
The Facts of Life begins with a too large cast of students, so where the focus is on the administration (the male principal set off against Charlotte Rae, and their corralling of the herd.  It takes a retooling at the second season premier to focus on a group of four girls — most importantly the focus of the rich girl Blair with the blue collar Jo.  A looming problem is evident at the new beginning, where each season the show would have to concoct a rationale to keep the characters together — for the third season opener, they basically just recycled the premise of the second season opener — forced together as punishment.  Therafter, as the two older girls graduate, the contrivance stretches further with each season — Charlotte Rae is by necessity no longer head of the cafeteria that two of the girls wouldn’t have anything to do with anymore so opens her own place — and for one reason and another, spelled out in convoluted plot, the four girls end up working and/or living there.  The show runs though a few more seasons, and I don’t know the details after that because MeTV airs its one episode each morning and my scattered viewing started at the end of the its runs and turned over to the beginning — but I do know the final act of the series was strained and unfocused — as it settled off to its last episode of the standard motif of a marriage and the odd dimension of floating multiple possible spin off shows.   My best guess on when the show stopped making any sense and “jumped the shark” was when Charlotte Rae departed (seeing her role here not making any sense with everyone growing up) and so brought in a new matronly woman character to replace her role, and dropped some new teenager to keep that presence going.  Chugging at the end just as much as it did at the beginning.

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