"If you were old enough to be obsessed with weekly 46-minute plots, you were old enough for social consciousness."
LOL. At that age, I didn't even pay much attention to the plots. I was just waiting in anticipation for some dude to transform into a green man, break his shirt, roar, and probably throw someone across the room. With the Dukes, it was obviously the car chases, the car jumps, and watching how they'd climb out the window of their car without opening the door. I used to imitate that, too, until my hand got caught in the door behind me when someone slammed it. It was quite an ugly wound. Luckily, the windows on that car didn't have frames, so it healed.
"No early Reagan memories? Assassination? John Hinckley? All right past you?"
At that time, yeah. I might have vaguely noticed that they changed Ralph Hinkley to Ralph Hanley on another show I watched, but I had no idea why.
"John Lennon getting shot? No?"
Nope. I didn't even get into popular music until later in the 80s.
"Top 1980 movies: www.boxofficemojo.com"
Wow. I can't believe "The Jayne Mansfield Story" starring Loni Anderson and Arnold Schwarzenegger aren't on that list!
The first movie I remember watching in a movie theatre was The Dark Crystal. The second was probably Back to the Future, but that was a few years later.
