Barefoot-friendly TV shows

Hey, so what shows are on TV these days that are friendly to the subject of barefooting? Mind you I'm not talking about occassional "foot shots"...

I noticed that "Surface" was very barefoot-friendly for a while, but not so much lately. "Invasion" had a few barefoot-friendly episodes (I daydream of Alexis "Kyra" Dziena's lovely feet!). I'm very much surprized at "Lost" still - I mean, people are shipwrecked on a tropical beach and everyone wears shoes all the time.

Your picks?

 

I haven't been a fan of sit coms lately and quite frankly really don't watch that much television. However, I do watch a daytime reality series called "Starting Over", it's a program that consists of six female housemates that live together under one roof while they work to achieve a new life changing goal. Most of the housemates are seen either barefoot or in flip flops.

Years ago there was a very popular sit com called "Gilligan's Island", a story of seven shipwrecked people on a tiny island. In the very early episodes, two of the characters the Skipper and Gilligan were barefoot a couple of times, but as the series progressed, they were always shod, and even slept in their shoes!!!

 

Heck, the people on Survivor usually wear shoes, even in the water.

 

Lost: I have definitely noticed that the Lost cast has gone from occasional barefooting in season one, to almost none in season 2. Claire appeared to be barefoot much of season one, and she alsmost always has sandals on now. Either one of two things could explain this. Either the actors and actresses started to see that their feet were dirty, scratched and injured all the time and got tired of it, OR it's actually a part of the storyline. Now that we're getting to see more of the Others (who seem to have no trouble walking barefoot through the jungle and leave no footprints) the actors may have been told to don shoes as a way to subtly contrast themselves with the Others. I don't know...personally I also find it strange. Another thought I had is that the characters have now been on the island for around 2 months...perhaps their longing to get back to civilization is starting to manifest in a desire to cling to things such as wearing shoes - and if a rescue ship or plane somehow appeared they may not want to be scrambling around the island saying "Where are my SHOES?!"

One of my other favorite shows "Battlestar Galactica" on Sci-Fi, while set in space on a military ship, has a surprising amount of barefooted character moments, and the producers seem to have no qualms about showing people at various points going barefoot in their quarters or whatever. There have been some stellar close-up shots of the ladies feet on that show as well!

I would think any of the "mundane" reality shows would also be good candidates for barefoot scenes. I know the Apprentice always delivered, particularly in those moments when the applicants were relaxing at their posh pad just before or after a task.

 

Actually that has never been true before this past season. I've watched every Survivor since the series began, and that's one show I would have said - before this last one in Guatemala - was more "barefoot friendly" than any show on TV. There's a new Survivor season starting next week, so it remains to be seen if they go back to being mostly barefoot as they used to be, or if they continue pretty much shod all the time as they did in Guatemala.

Another good usually barefoot friendly show is Big Brother (not currently on TV, but will return I'm sure). I've seen all those shows as well, and the people on there are barefoot a lot of the time. But I did notice in the last season of Big Brother, there was not quite as much barefooting as there had been in past seasons, but there was still a lot.

 

In the 1980's, when I was into wrestling, I remeber there being a few female wrestlers who wrestled barefoot.
Also, if anyone remembers GLOW, there were a couple of barefoot wrestlers too.
Show sucked otherwise.

 

Maybe the producers of some of these shows wanted their actors to wear name brand shoes so that people would want to go out and buy those shoes and the show would get some money for advertising them on tv. After all they dont wanna make all their fashion industry buddies unhappy. I guess those few extra bucks are more important to them than their star cast's comfort.

 

during the early years of the Waltons tv show, the kids were always barefoot, as was the custom of the times, but suddenly one season they stopped being barefoot, even during the summer.

the Brady Bunch, I swear those kids musta slept in shoes and socks, never a barefoot seen.

on Flipper the kids were barefoot sometimes but mostly they had on deck shoes without socks, and this took place in Florida.

 

I did hear somwhere that viewers of the Walton's complained about the kids being barefoot, so they had them wear shoes in the future episodes. Could you imagine that? That's the way it was in that part of the country during the depression era, shoes were more of an expedatiture.

Concerning the Brady Bunch, isn't it strange that a family of six kids and not even one kid ever took off their shoes? However, Marcia was seen jumping out of bed barefooted then running to the mirror to take a look at her healed over nose which was previously stuck by a football.

The popular 60's sit com "Gidget" starring Sally Field was barefoot in many of the episodes.

 

Sitcoms generally never show anyone barefoot, even in their own homes. For example, Still Standing is really a funny show, imo, but it is so ridiculous the way everyone always has shoes on even though most scenes take place in the family's livingroom. And they're always putting their feet up on the couch without removing their shoes, which to me just looks horrible. I don't know of anyone who does that. However, in one scene recently, they all went over to someone's house who was Asian and were told that it was customary to remove their shoes in the house. They did, but everyone had on socks. It's almost like the sight of a bare foot on that show would be obscene or something. All sitcoms seem to be like that.

 

There used to be a show on public televison (PBS) in the 1970's called "ZOOM". It was a show for kids and by kids. There were teens and tweeners that were on there, and most of the time, they were dressed in t-shirts, jeans, and barefoot! Not only that, but many a time, the cameras focused on their bare feet long enough that you could see them wriggling theri cute widdle toesies, or if they were sitting on the floor (as they were most of the time they were talking amongst each other) if there was something at their feet, you could see them fidgeting with it with their feet. Kinda fun to watch (for me anyway). Who knew I was a pre-teen voyeuer? Hahahahaha!

There was a ressurection of "Zoom" not too long ago, but these kids weren't as fun as the originals.

Maybe with the new sitcom "Courting Alex", we'll get to see Jena Elfman barefoot. One can hope. Jenna is a "barefooter" in real life and has some awesome looking feet and long spider-toes!

Morgana

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*giggle* I second the Jenna Elfman sentiment!

Alas I'm not old enough (or American enough) to have seen "ZOOM".

 

The exception being, of course, Mad About You where Paul Reiser was seen quite often with bare feet.

 

There was show called You Cant do That on TV, every once in awhile, you would see someone barefoot.

 

Yeah like maybe Alanis Morrisette.

My friend Lynne was one of the barefoot kids on ZOOM back in the 70's. She still likes to go barefoot a lot today.

 

I also remember bare feet often on this show.
I do believe it was a Canadian-produced show ... I suspect they might be less weird about it than America ... cultural comfort with bare feet seems to me to correspond highly with peacefulness and justice in a country.

Peace,
Ryvr

 

haha, that comes as no surprise.

 

Looks like we might be seeing a little more barefooting on the current Survivor than we did the last one where there was none. Hope so. As I mentioned in a previous post, there's always been lots of barefooting on that show before the Guatemala show. Now the new season has started, and things are looking much better so far.

 

malcolm in the middle had the kids bf quite a bit in the first season, but not after...

 

that's so true; i hadn't thought about it til you brought it up, bfrank, but everyone in sitcoms always has shoes on. silly!!!