Paul Walker's Short-Lived '80s Sitcom Is Impossible To Watch

Paul Walker is best known for being an original member of the Fast family with his many appearances as Brian O'Conner in the "Fast & Furious" franchise. But like any movie star, he had to start somewhere, and Walker's early years as an actor involved starring in the '80s sitcom "Throb" long before he gained recognition for his breakthrough performance as Brandon Collins in "The Young and the Restless." Unfortunately, any fans looking to revisit this long-forgotten sitcom will have trouble, as "Throb" is basically impossible to watch today.

TV History is strewn with short-lived sitcoms that have since become lost media. Before "Friends," Matthew Perry starred in a sitcom that's almost impossible to watch today, and Christopher Lloyd's Western sitcom is similarly tough to find. Many times, the fact that these often misguided series have been consigned to history is probably for the best, but there's no doubt the inability to watch entire projects feels a tad wrong if only because it reminds us that any media can be essentially deleted at any moment by our media overlords — just like when HBO Max started quietly removing shows and movies at the behest of Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav and his mission to reduce his company's debt.

In the case of "Throb," the only place you can watch episodes is on YouTube, where the quality unsurprisingly leaves much to be desired. Otherwise, the show is completely unavailable to stream or purchase in a physical format, which is a shame because, despite its unfortunate name, "Throb" was a charming little show that ran for two seasons in syndication and featured several other up-and-comers that many viewers would no doubt recognize today.

"Throb" starred Diana Canova as Sandy Beatty, a divorcee in her mid-30s who starts a new job at the titular independent record label in Manhattan. There, she's a fish out of water among the hip young employees and is overseen in her work by Zachary Armstrong (Jonathan Prince), who also harbors a major crush on Sandy. Maryedith Burrell played Meredith, a teacher and Sandy's best friend who lived in the same building, while Richard Cummings, Jr. played business manager Phil Gaines. The show also featured a pre-"Frasier" Jane Leeves, who played Sandy's co-worker and the label's talent co-ordinator Prudence Anne Bartlett, aka "Blue," long before the British actress became known as Dr. Crane's live-in housekeeper Daphne Moon.

Where does Paul Walker fit into all this? Well, a 12-year-old Walker played Sandy's son Jeremy during the first season of the sitcom, on which he was credited as Paul W. Walker. After that first season, he was replaced in the role by Sean de Veritch for season 2, which saw Sandy move to a penthouse alongside Leeves' Blue. The show became much more about Sandy and Blue's mismatched personalities in that second season, by which point Walker was off doing other things and preparing for his rise to fame in the '90s and early 2000s.

In total, Walker appeared in just 12 out of 48 episodes. The show ran in syndication, which means it was shown on independent stations across the U.S. rather than having a specific network home. After its second season, no more episodes were produced, bringing an end to "Throb" in 1988. Today, it has been mostly lost, though if you want to see a young Walker, you can catch low-quality episodes on YouTube.