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TV SITCOMS
The Sitcoms Soldier On
by Daren Foster

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TV SITCOMS - The Sitcoms Soldier On
by Daren Foster

"Allow me a little hyperbole, if you will, for it appears that the long awaited return of the sitcom salad days is upon us. "

Networks are littering their schedules with the once near-dead genre, obviously having sussed out an increased appetite for the old stalwart from an audience grown tired of mind-numbingly dull reality programming and by rote police procedurals. Where the networks are garnering their information is a mystery, as a quick glance over the weekly ratings reveals a mere 2 sitcoms placing in the top 20: the long since and quite possibly never funny, Two and a Half Men and the recently re-installed The Rules of Engagement. (Is that the one just like Friends but they’re all married or engaged? David Spade instead of David Schwimmer? Why exactly did they bring that one back?)

Right, right. I said the networks were littering their schedules with sitcoms, denoting garbage, refuse, trash.

But it’s not all bad. At least the sitcom has not been given up for dead. Despite financial pressure to go all unscripted all the time, the networks keep churning out sitcoms if not churning them out well. Life remains in the old girl yet and the news of her demise has been greatly exaggerated. Again.

Back in the day, let’s call it B.C.E., Before Cosby Era, a similar pall had been cast over the once glorious situation comedy format. There was great shrieking, gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands as the demise of the onetime reigning champeen TV format seemed imminent. The western had come and gone. Variety shows imploded along with Sonny and Cher’s marriage. No one thought it could happen to the sitcom. It was too ingrained, practically part of our genetic make-up, a family staple since the ascendancy of I Love Lucy in the 50s. But in the spring of 1984, the impossible reared its ugly head and the once proud sitcom was put on the endangered list. At the end of that television season, the Nielsen ratings showed only 2 situation comedies placing in the top 20 most watched shows. (Sound familiar?) Night time soap operas were the ratings royalty.

The following year Bill Cosby showed up for yet another kick at the television can and as legend has it, the Good Ship Sitcom was righted and order was once more restored throughout the universe. By the time The Cosby Show assumed the number one spot during the 1985-86 season, the sitcom was back, baby. Because of the Cos, the world could laugh again.

Or so it goes. A highly unscientific glance through ratings history suggests we might be giving credit where little is due, assigning causality where none was. It could well be argued that the 1984 drop in popularity for the sitcom was merely a blip, an anomalistic divergence from the mean. A year earlier, the final episode of the long-running M*A*S*H* recorded the largest ever TV audience with over 100 million viewers. That, I think, reflected the real explanation for the brief down tick. The old guard from the 1970s had lost steam with some even jumping the shark as they say in the business. New shows were finding their sea legs, lurking in the wings in preparation for taking centre stage.

Once The Cosby Show kicked open the door, the proverbial floodgates (more aquatic imagery) opened. Arguably, the next 15 years or so were the sitcom’s zenith, at least numbers-wise. On average, there were more than 9 sitcoms in the top 20 shows throughout the 80s. In the 90s, half of the top 20 were sitcoms. The list is truly impressive: Cheers, Roseanne, Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends, The Simpsons. These were the so-called water cooler shows that everyone talked about at work the following day. It was a genre that seemed impervious to failure.

But then it failed.

Fast forward ten years after Seinfeld went off the air to frolic in the luscious green of syndication and DVD pastures and all that remains of the once mighty and noble genre is Two and a Half Men, the lone sitcom in the top 20, feebly holding down the fort in the face of marauding hordes of reality programming and CSI/Law & Order knock-offs. Genghis Caruso and Attila the Donald. How could it have gone so terribly wrong?

My theory is that all the dreck and drivel that occupies most of the primetime space these days provides all the hilarity anyone could ever expect from TV. Almost none of it is intentional or deliberate, mind you. One doesn’t laugh with the latest instalment of Survivor or The Biggest Loser. One laughs at it. The gut-splitting guffaws that come at the expense of one Horatio Cane emanate from a sense of incredulousness: The guy left NYPD Blue and ended up here? Hardee, har, har, har! It is the rueful laughter at unbridled desperation and the complete, utter collapse of good sense and common decency. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. We just laugh at the destruction.

Yet, the networks soldier on, flying in the face of sound economic underpinnings and quite possibly the slow march of history itself. Each year they roll out a few new sitcoms whether there’s audience demand or not. Granted, they may be killing the format with such kindness as most of the shows range from forgettable to, well, astoundingly devoid of any humorous content whatsoever. It’s hard to imagine how shows like How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory or Gary Unmarried (And Unfunny.. Jay Mohr used to be funny, right? It’s been so long that I can no longer remember) are going to revive our love affair with the sitcom. Rather than enticing people to tune back in, programs like these only reinforce why they stopped watching in the first place.

While the flat lining has been prolonged, tempting us to call an official time of death, there has been the occasional bleep of life on the EKG screen stalling any attempts to tag and bag the patient. Breathing life into the comatose format, two recent entries have made the sitcom’s possible demise at least interesting.

Better Off Ted is as close to Arrested Development as I thought could be humanly possible. Coming from me, this is the highest of praise. It is still my belief that Arrested Development got as close to perfection as we unperfect beings could ever hope to achieve. This also means that Better Off Ted’s days are surely numbered, so get watching while the watching’s good.

While it has misfired more in its first 4 episodes than AD did in an entire season, BOT has still been brilliantly funny. Like AD, it eschews the standard 3 camera, taped in front of a live studio audience sitcom format and dares to try and be funny without an enhanced laugh track. (Was that funny? I think it was funny but I didn’t hear anyone else laugh. Maybe it wasn’t funny. Why was nobody else laughing? It probably wasn’t funny. I’m so stupid thinking that was funny. This so is stupid!) It employs flashbacks and cut-aways smoothly and Portia Di Rossi plays an even more pathologically self-absorbed character than she did in Arrested Development, which just doesn’t seem possible.

NBC seems to be angling to build another Must See TV Thursday with the midseason addition of Parks and Recreation to its line up. Created by a couple of producer types from The Office, P&R may suffer from being too much like The Office as sometimes I think there’s already too much The Office in The Office if you know what I mean. That said, too much The Office is a whole stink of a lot better than too much Two and a Half Men, to pick one off the top of my head, and Amy Poehler is a whole lot funnier than Charlie Sheen, John Cryer and Jay Mohr combined. But watching her, I’m always reminded of another funny Amy, Sedaris, and I wonder how much better whatever it is I’m watching would be with Amy Sedaris rather than Amy Poehler.

But sitcom beggars can’t be choosers these days and it’s still early for Parks and Recreation. It does give one hope, however, that amidst all the doom and gloom and prognostications of extinction, there are practitioners of the craft plugging away, trying to keep us laughing, trying to keep sitcom hope alive. As much as the nature of television is changing, to think of it without sitcoms -- the backbone of the industry as far as I’m concerned -- is to ponder a future that is nothing short of recognizable and poses the question: did Lucy and Ricky live, love, divorce and die all in vain?