Bill Cosby had loftier goals than just revitalizing the multi-colored sweater industry when he created "The Cosby Show," he wanted to bring good parenting back to television, according to ABC News.
"I based the series on two important things: Number one...I hated those series where the children were brighter than the parents, and those parents had to play dumb," Cosby told ABC news. "Number two was that I wanted to 'take the house back.'"
Many of the popular sitcoms airing at the same time as the "The Cosby Show," and even more since then, have portrayed parents as bumbling side characters when compared to the children of the family. For example, on "The Simpsons" and "The Family Guy" the babies of both the Simpson and Griffin families are significantly smarter than their fathers, an idea that Cosby cannot stand.
If the need to entertain children comes "at the expense of parenting, at the expense of keeping children out of harm's way to get these laughs, to make these parents look stupid, to make kids look like they are ultra-bright but still lost, then we have a problem," Cosby said.
Often good parenting makes the parent have to play the bad guy, a role that is certainly not embraced when wanting to write a main character for a sitcom.
"[We] parents make it difficult," Cosby told ABC News. "Because we want to be well-liked. And I'm not saying that parenting, you shouldn't want to be well-liked, but you also have to have some kind of judgment."
Many of the themes that were used for the Huxtable family came from Cosby's own personal experiences growing up with his grandfather Cosby being especially influential. Cosby shared a story about how his grandfather had told him not to play football because his bones weren't strong enough to take the physical pounding and how he reacted after the younger Cosby broke his shoulder during the first game of the year.
"I was at home, and I had the cast on and granddad came [to visit]," Cosby told ABC News. "He just turned that handle, walked in, and he looked at me and I was on the sofa. He was talking to my mother and I set my ears back so I could listen to him, because I knew I was waiting on him to tell my mother, 'I told junior not to play football.'"
It turns out that his grandfather had no intentions of rubbing it in that he had been right about football being too dangerous for Cosby.
"He bent over and he kissed me on the forehead and said, 'How you feeling?' And I said, 'Fine, granddad. I'm just really sad.' And he put a quarter in my hand and he said, 'Go get yourself some ice cream. It's got calcium in it,' and he left."
The brilliance of "The Cosby Show" was that it showed that you could portray a normal family led by level-headed parents and still be hilariously funny, something that is sadly lacking in many of today's sitcoms.
