Cultureshark remembers Gary Coleman

In the year 2010, it's tough to think of Gary Coleman without thinking of the health issues, the parental problems, the anger management thing, and the sundry embarrassments he's suffered over the years. When I came of age, though, the guy--well, the kid--was a superstar. I mean, he may not have been on the cover of every issue of "Bananas" that made its way to my school's book fair, but it seemed like it.

I watched way too many episodes of "Diff'rent Strokes" way too many times back in my misspent youth, even though for some reason--I swear I'm not making this up--even in my youth I had enough old man in me to think Conrad Bain was the coolest guy on the program. Years later, it was with great excitement that I learned the show was back on in reruns...and with great disappointment that I actually watched it. I think on 2 or 3 diff'rent occasions, I gave the show a shot and wound up thinking, "Did I really watch this so much as a kid?" (Conrad Bain was still cool, though.)

Gary Coleman's kidness, which was so appealing to other kids at the time, wasn't enough to compensate for the shameless mugging and sass that grated so much when I was an adult. Maybe that's why the show never seems to latch on in reruns nowadays, whether it's on TNN (remember that?), Nick at Nite, or BET. But Gary was just doing his job, and the show was huge at the time. Even now I find it hard to believe there isn't a place for it somewhere.

As for Gary, yeah, his Arnold Jackson is hard to take even in 22-minute doses, but in recent years, I've seen his guest shots on "Buck Rogers" and "America 2Night," as well as his starring role in the TV movie "The Kid with the 200 I.Q." You know what? He's pretty entertaining and appealing in those appearances, which makes me think we have to give him some slack for what he did on "Strokes," where after all he was a franchise, a meal ticket, and a catchphrase machine before he was old enough to drive.

As he aged, I never quite knew what to make of him. Sometimes, he came off like a pretty cool guy who had come to terms with his rise and fall as an A-list TV star. Other times, he came off like a bitter misanthrope who was too scarred by Hollywood/his folks/his own personal demons to live a healthy life even without his well-known physical difficulties. Sometimes he seemed both. Mark Evanier posts an amusing anecdote about TV animation legend Joseph Barbera's miserable pitch meeting with Coleman about a planned Saturday morning cartoon for NBC. Evanier writes:

Barbera got the deal. Barbera always got the deal. But first, he said, he had to listen to about an hour of little Gary Coleman telling him how they should rerun Space Ghost, how Gary didn't like the Godzilla cartoons, how Gary thought Scooby Doo was getting stale, etc. Then he had to sit there as Gary rejected pitch after pitch, lecturing J.B. on how to create a good cartoon show.

I don't know about you, but though the point of the story is what a pain in the rear the kid could be, I have to laugh and almost admire the chutzpah. I don't know what kind of animation ideas Coleman had for his own show (which wound up being no winner, but then, how many of Hanna-Barbera efforts from that era WERE?), but he sure had a point about Scooby being stale, Godzilla 'toons being weak, and Space Ghost being ripe for reruns.

So I want to remember all of Gary Coleman, the good, the bad, and the so cute it was almost ugly, and I hope an enterprising corporate TV channel does something besides show a "Diff'rent Strokes" marathon (although even that is looking doubtful right now). Run the TV movies. Run the cartoons. Heck, run "Space Ghost." But run something. Maybe it's just because I grew up at a certain point in time, but I think Coleman was a big enough star--even if for a short time--to merit some recognition as more than just a perpetual punchline.