One of the greatest things television can do is whisk us away from our problems. While there are a ton of shows that accurately investigate modern ills and reflect our troubles to us for a different perspective, sometimes all we want is to get away. That's probably why so many shows are set on islands or at sea. TV can be a mini vacation, and the best TV is a compelling vacation.

Aaron Spelling is, statistically, the most prolific television producer of all time. He literally holds a Guinness World Record for it. Spelling produced 4,501 hours of television before he died in 2006. Many of them featured glamorous characters and exotic locales that offered us a getaway from our worries. Especially because a lot of these shows had worries aplenty of their own, it was easy for us to ignore whatever was going on in our lives. At least for a few commercial breaks' worth of TV time, we could forget about paying our bills and whatnot.

As it turns out, Spelling was someone who needed the escape perhaps more than most. In a 1984 article in the Regina, Saskatchewan Leader-Post, Spelling touched briefly on his childhood. What he relayed was bleak enough for any made-for-TV movie of the era.

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"Somehow, people were always expecting me to waste away and die. I think I often made myself sick just so I didn't have to walk to school and get beaten up along the way."

Sheesh! 

Luckily for Spelling, these frailties and mistreatments were left behind with childhood. As an adult, he made obscene amounts of money and wielded the kind of Hollywood power that brings with it ludicrous access to spaces and opportunities.

"I never expected any of this to happen," said Spelling. "I know that one morning I'm going to wake up and be back in a one-bedroom house in Dallas, with my three brothers and one sister living in one room, me on a pallet floor."