Our 9 Favorite TV Families

The Huxtables, The Cosby Show

Life always seems more exciting in their living rooms than in ours. These onscreen clans had us wishing we could become one of them or wondering how to avoid turning out like them. But they always had us laughing.

From the pilot's very first father-son chat—"I am your father. I brought you in this world, and I'll take you out!"—to Cliff and Clair's final waltz off the set, The Huxtables stole the hearts of every TV watcher in America. We wanted to be one of them—to sit around the dinner table with Sondra, Denise, Vanessa, Theo and Rudy; to bring our friends over to play bucking horse or turn our house into the "real world." Dr. and Mrs. Huxtable, a doctor and lawyer respectively, were the first upper-class, African-American, happily married couple we saw on TV. They showed us what a real family—no matter what color—should strive to be.