Graduating With Honors

By Richard Zoglin

SHOW: THE COSBY SHOW

TIME: THURSDAY, APRIL 30, 8 P.M. EDT, NBC, FOR THE LAST TIME

THE BOTTOM LINE: The most successful sitcom of the '80s makes a graceful exit.

Nothing on TV ages faster than a family show. The regulars at the Cheers bar or the M*A*S*H unit can stick around for years, with only occasional cast changes to accommodate stars who want to get into movies. But kids have a bad habit of growing up. Anyone tuning in after a few years' absence to this week's final episode of The Cosby Show may get a shock. Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), a junior-high student when the series began, is graduating from college. Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), once a pudgy preteen, is in college too, and has weathered a broken engagement. Cute little Rudy (Keshia Knight Pulliam) has ceded the spotlight to a passel of even cuter, littler kids: Olivia, 6, stepdaughter of No. 2 daughter Denise (who is married but doesn't appear on the show) and two tykes who belong to eldest daughter Sondra (who is married but does). Still with us?

After eight seasons on the air, The Cosby Show seems ready for retirement. It was quite a run. A hit immediately upon its debut on NBC in September 1984, the show had an amazing string of four straight years as TV's top-rated series. During its peak season (1986-87), it was watched in 34.9% of all TV homes in the country. (This season's No. 1 show, 60 Minutes, could manage only 21.9%.) It sparked a revival of the domestic sitcom, a genre that had fallen into disrepair. (Fittingly, several other long-running comedies of the same generation -- The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Growing Pains and Night Court -- are also saying goodbye this spring.) It initiated a healthy new attitude toward race on TV by building a show around an upper-middle-class family that just happened to be black. And it set a standard for wholesome TV families that inspired backlash (Married . . . with Children) as well as imitation (Family Matters).

The show was an amiable, unpretentious comedy that reflected the humor, tastes and ego of its star, Bill Cosby. The hourlong episode that concludes its run is entirely typical. The plot is as flimsy as ever: Theo is preparing for his college commencement, and Dad wants to invite more people than there are tickets for. This requires Theo to get on the phone to scrounge up more tickets, while the family exchanges wisecracks about the last time Dad brought too many people to a graduation (he set up lawn chairs for the overflow).

The trouble with The Cosby Show -- the reason why it won't be enshrined among TV's best family shows -- was that while it was packed with kids, it never showed much empathy for them. Every childhood problem, adolescent crisis or family dispute was refracted through Dad's eyes, perceived from a grownup's sardonic -- and often sentimentalized -- perspective. In the last episode, Theo's graduation is just another trial for Dad to bear. When Denise calls long-distance to tell the family she is pregnant, the sequence is mainly about how Dad doesn't get a chance to talk to her because everybody else hogs the phone.

Yet The Cosby Show makes a graceful, understated exit. There is no grand climax, tear-jerking finale or other last-show gimmick, and only one nostalgic flashback (a father-son talk from the very first Cosby episode). In the last scene, Cliff and Clair perform some minor business about a broken doorbell, dance together, then stroll off the set. Stepping out of character, they walk arm in arm through the cameras, crew and applauding studio audience. And, with becoming modesty, into TV history.