YMMV / It's a Living

• Awesome Music: "Life's not the French Riviera...." Even though critical reaction to the show has always been mixed, it's rare to find anyone who has seen the show and doesn't love the opening theme song by George Tipton and Leslie Bricusse.
• Accidental Innuendo: The name of the show infamously caused some viewers to think the girls were supposed to be sex workers, rather than waitresses. The first-season slutty uniforms (uniforms in later seasons were sexy, but not stipperific) and the fact that they worked out of a hotel probably didn't help, nor did the many plots where they became romantically involved with restaurant patrons.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Well, during the first season, at least. Subsequent seasons featured more modest uniforms for the waitresses and considerably less emphasis on T&A.
• Questionable Casting: Even viewers at the time couldn't believe Susan Sullivan as a waitress.
• Retroactive Recognition: Many of the girls would become much more well-known through other sitcoms:
  • Gail Edwards (Dot) would later become better known as Vicky on Full House.
  • After a long Prime Time Soap stint on Falcon Crest, Susan Sullivan (Lois) later played Greg's mother on Dharma & Greg.
  • Wendy Schaal (Vicki) would later get fame as a voice actress, voicing Francine on American Dad!.
  • Crystal Bernard (Amy) would later become much more well-known for Wings.
  • While already somewhat famous as a theatre actress, television audiences in The '90s probably think of Sheryl Lee Ralph (Ginger) as Dee on Moesha or more recently as Barbara Howard on Abbott Elementary.
  • Other actors and creators:
    • Joe Mantegna as the mugger who gets maced by Dot in "Of Mace and Men". At the time he also had a recurring role on Soap, which, like this show, was executive produced by Tony Thomas and Paul Junger Witt.
    • Co-creators Dick Clair and Jenna McMahon later went on to create Mama's Family and also previously created The Facts of Life.
    • Co-creator Stu Silver is also best known as creator and executive producer of Webster.
    • Sheldon Bull wrote 12 episodes. Bull is best known for developing and producing Newhart.
    • Andrew Guerdat and Steve Kreinberg wrote five episodes. Both are best known for creating Herman's Head.
    • Kevin Abbott wrote an episode. Abbott is best known as developer and executive producer of Malibu Country.
    • The terrorist Hager in "Desperate Hours" is played by a pre-Seinfeld Michael "Kramer" Richards
    • A pre-Full House Bob Saget shows up as Nancy's doctor in "The Doctor Danny Show."
    • "Dot's Hope" guest stars Lisa Wilcox before she gained fame headlining two of the A Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Considering the episode aired the same year The Dream Master premiered, it and the movie almost served as retroactive recognition for each other.
  • In "The Bar," a pre-Ghostbusters Ernie Hudson and pre-Star Trek Jonathan Frakes both turn up as men trying to get dates with the waitresses.
    • Speaking of Star Trek, John de Lancie shows up as the groom at the wedding being held in the restaurant in "The Wedding."
  • "He Never Sang for his Father" features a pre-Frasier Jane Leeves as Sonny's love interest of the week.
  • Yakov Smirnoff shows up as a KGB agent in "From Russia with Love". This was several years before his comedy career took off and TV appearances became de rigeur for him.
• Values Dissonance: In the episode "Gender Gap," Sonny dates a transgender woman (ironically one of Nancy's ex's). The main characters all express revulsion at the concept. While in the 21st century, individual opinions might or or might not have changed, a transgender person would no longer be the subject of ridicule on prime time television.
  • The episode "The One About the Tattooed Lady" is even more jarring from a modern perspective. Nancy’s cousin Grace, who is from a rich and snooty part of the family, comes to see her to make amends for her family’s past behavior toward Nancy. Grace had since left to join the circus, and got a bunch of tattoos. While she has many tattoos, they are fairly small and spread out on her body, with no full body, sleeve, face, or neck tattoos. But all of the main characters treat her like a freak. Jan started the kind of speech to Nancy you would expect, about how her cousin is a gracious woman and family who she should accept, only to break down laughing, saying she couldn’t go through with it.
  • Sonny makes a number of Date Rape jokes throughout the series that are treated with the same levity as his pickup lines.
• The Woobie: Dot in the last episode, as she is the only one of the girls not to get her happy ending. The ending hints that she might end up with Sonny, but nothing is ever made explicit.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: The waitress uniforms in the first season were very revealing and caused viewers to think the girls were meant to be strippers. Later seasons gave them much more modest outfits.
  • Cassie's pageboy cut. It was her trademark at the time, but modern viewers, and even some at the time, tend to find it weird and unflattering.
  • Likewise, the big hair the girls had towards the end of the show.