I miss sitcoms.

[Transistor_Rhythm]

I love sitcoms as a medium, from The Honeymooners through Seinfeld and everything in between. I don’t love all sitcoms - there were some real stinkers that came out of the format, obviously - but I do love the format. It’s the TV equivalent of comfort food.

It’s weird how they’ve vanished. Just a decade ago, every major network had an evening lineup of at least four titles rolling. They weren’t all great, but it was still nice to even have the real shitball ones around, like Dharma & Greg. I admit that I’ve never as much as chuckled at an episode of Will and Grace, but I’d still rather run into it than one of these bizarre Ballroom Dancing or Reality shows.

I don’t think that the format was dead as much as the reality fad caused everyone to hastily decide it was dead and just stop making them. In a way, I think that the mega-success of Friends and Seinfeld precipitated the “death” in the same way that the early Hollywood summer blockbusters raised earning expectations and squeezed out smaller, quirkier films.

What’s weird is the way that sitcoms barely seem to be in syndication on cable TV these days. Sure, you can catch the latter-day stuff like “Seinfeld,” “Everybody loves Raymond,” and “Friends,” but that’s about it. Oh yeah, and one of the channels becomes nothing but “Roseanne” from about 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. (and yet it’s somehow always in the unwatchable last season). But there’s no chance of running into “Night Court,” or “Good Times,” or even the execrable but loveable “Who’s the Boss?”

Sure, you can get every TV show ever on DVD for $18.99, but it’s not the same. At least half of the zen-like experience of watching sitcoms is being receptive to random episodes coming on at random times, like when you’re in the middle of doing laundry and then suddenly you get sucked into that Cosby show episode where it’s the grandparents’ anniversary and they put on the big show for them. Watching DVD sitcoms with their compressed, no-commercials pacing, episodes in order - it’s just not the same. I’d watch an episode of freaking 227 if it happened to come on, but I won’t even get Night Court (a personal favorite) on DVD. I’d sit through a one-off Mr. Belvedere or A Different World if it came on while I was ironing.

The Odd Couple. Bob Newhart. What’s Happening. Head of the Class. Step by Step. Perfect Strangers. The Facts of Life. Different Strokes. Amen. Herman’s Head.

I love them all.

[filling_pages]

Right this second, with local cable, I could sit down and watch Golden Girls, Good Times, Living Single, or Reba. My best friend is a sitcom buff and regularly catches reruns of all sorts of fat guy/pretty wife shows I don’t know the names of, all evening long. I enjoy 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, (the recently canceled but rerunning like crazy) My Name is Earl, the new show Community - I think you get the idea. There may be less Honeymooners knock-offs being made these days, but the sitcom is going nowhere.

[Justin_Bailey]

There are 20 sitcoms currently on the air right now. If the genre “died”, it left a really good looking corpse…

Fox Sunday
The Simpsons
The Cleveland Show
Family Guy
American Dad

CBS Monday
How I Met Your Mother
Accidentally on Purpose
Two and a Half Men
The Big Bang Theory

ABC Wednesday
Hank
The Middle
Modern Family
Cougar Town

CBS Wednesday
The New Adventures of Old Christine
Gary Unmarried

NBC Thursday
Community
Parks and Recreation
The Office
30 Rock

Fox Friday
Brothers
'Til Death

[joebuck20]

@Transistor_Rhythm

What’s weird is the way that sitcoms barely seem to be in syndication on cable TV these days. Sure, you can catch the latter-day stuff like “Seinfeld,” “Everybody loves Raymond,” and “Friends,” but that’s about it. Oh yeah, and one of the channels becomes nothing but “Roseanne” from about 8 p.m. until 4 a.m. (and yet it’s somehow always in the unwatchable last season). But there’s no chance of running into “Night Court,” or “Good Times,” or even the execrable but loveable “Who’s the Boss?”

Not having to do exactly with your thread, but it seems like the Golden Girls is on all them between Hallmark, WE and Lifetime. My wife is currently unemployed and that seems to be the only thing she watches from morning til night.

[Wallenstein]

@Transistor_Rhythm

Sure, you can get every TV show ever on DVD for $18.99, but it’s not the same. At least half of the zen-like experience of watching sitcoms is being receptive to random episodes coming on at random times, like when you’re in the middle of doing laundry and then suddenly you get sucked into that Cosby show episode where it’s the grandparents’ anniversary and they put on the big show for them. Watching DVD sitcoms with their compressed, no-commercials pacing, episodes in order - it’s just not the same.

Interesting! My wife and I regularly have exactly this discussion… over here (UK) they re-run Friends on a particular channel, and will show two epidsodes at two different times in the day.

We have all the Friends series on DVD so my wife can watch it whenever she likes, but she prefers to plan her time around watching the TV re-runs at 6pm.

I cannot fathom this at all. She does the same with films… if “Day After Tomorrow” is on at 9pm, she’ll make sure she’s free to sit down and watch it, annoying ad breaks and all, even though the DVD is sitting on the shelf right above the TV.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

This OP might have worked a couple of years ago, but sitcoms have come back in a big way. ABC, NBC, and CBS are each running a night with a full block of four sitcoms. (Cartoons are not sitcoms. I’m old school that way. If you want to count Fox, you can.)

In addition, a couple of years ago most of the sitcoms were multi-season relics being run into the ground. Since that time they’ve learned to write for the modern era and a few of the new sitcoms are getting good advance reviews. (If there are two a year, that’s a fantastic year.) I’ve only seen Community and liked that. I’m not alone, either, since the thread here was overwhelmingly positive.

And Justin_Bailey’s listing doesn’t even include ABC’s Better Off Ted, which will come back at a midseason replacement. Check out the threads here on it. It may overtake 30 Rock as the best sitcom, which may mean the best show on network tv right now.

Wrong time to write off sitcoms. Maybe people should worry about reality shows instead.

[Gail]

My guilty pleasure is ABC Family’s Ruby and the Rockits. David Cassidy is in it and I used to have a crush on him when I was in 6th grade. (He’s still dreamy.)
I get a couple solid laughs out of every episode. It’s very upbeat and Alexa Vega is adorable.

[Transistor_Rhythm]

@Exapno_Mapcase

This OP might have worked a couple of years ago, but sitcoms have come back in a big way. ABC, NBC, and CBS are each running a night with a full block of four sitcoms. (Cartoons are not sitcoms. I’m old school that way. If you want to count Fox, you can.)

In addition, a couple of years ago most of the sitcoms were multi-season relics being run into the ground. Since that time they’ve learned to write for the modern era and a few of the new sitcoms are getting good advance reviews. (If there are two a year, that’s a fantastic year.) I’ve only seen Community and liked that. I’m not alone, either, since the thread here was overwhelmingly positive.

And Justin_Bailey’s listing doesn’t even include ABC’s Better Off Ted, which will come back at a midseason replacement. Check out the threads here on it. It may overtake 30 Rock as the best sitcom, which may mean the best show on network tv right now.

Wrong time to write off sitcoms. Maybe people should worry about reality shows instead.

Actually, there’s an important distinction; I think that shows like The Office and 30 Rock aren’t classical sitcoms, but some new breed. Multiple camera angles, no laugh track…not a sitcom, but some new category of comedy show. It seems like many of them have gone in this direction.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Barney Miller–most topical sitcom ever.

Night Court–terriffic cast.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Transistor_Rhythm

Actually, there’s an important distinction; I think that shows like The Office and 30 Rock aren’t classical sitcoms, but some new breed. Multiple camera angles, no laugh track…not a sitcom, but some new category of comedy show. It seems like many of them have gone in this direction.

The single-camera sitcom is not a new breed, and some of them (Malcolm in the Middle, MAS*H as seen in the UK) haven’t had laugh tracks.

@Wikipedia

The 1960s saw increased technical standards in situation comedies which came to have larger casts and to utilize a greater number of different locations in episodes. Several comedy series of the era also presented sophisticated visual techniques. To this end many comedies of this period, including The Addams Family, The Munsters, Get Smart, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan’s Island, Hogan’s Heroes, The Andy Griffith Show and The Brady Bunch, used the single-camera technique. Apart from giving an overall slicker and more polished look, this was more suited to the visual effects frequently used in these shows; the magical appearances and disappearances, and the appearances by lookalike doubles where the regular actors played a dual role were created using editing and optical printing techniques, and would not have been possible had the shows been shot using a multicamera setup. In the case of Get Smart, the single-camera technique also allowed the series to present fast-paced and tightly edited fight and action sequences reminiscent of the spy dramas it parodied. Single-camera comedies were also prevalent into the early 1970s. With its large cast and varied locations, the MAS*H TV series was shot using single camera style. Happy Days began in 1974 as a single-camera series, before switching to the multicamera setup in its second season. However, the success of All in the Family (which was taped with multiple cameras live in front of a studio audience, very much like a stage play), and Norman Lear’s subsequent sitcom productions led to a renewed interest by sitcom producers in the multi-camera technique; by the latter part of the '70s, most sitcoms again employed the multi-camera format.

By the mid-1970s, with domestic situation comedies in vogue, the multicamera shooting style came to dominate.

More recently, television has seen a rise in the use of single-camera in innovative comedies such as Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–), Malcolm in the Middle (2000–2006), Scrubs (2001–), Arrested Development (2003–2006), The Office (2005–), My Name is Earl (2005–2009), Weeds (2005–), Peep Show (2002–) and 30 Rock (2006–). Unlike single-camera sitcoms of the past, nearly all contemporary comedies shot in this manner are produced without a laugh track.

[AlsoNamedBort]

@Thudlow_Boink

The single-camera sitcom is not a new breed, and some of them (Malcolm in the Middle, MAS*H as seen in the UK) haven’t had laugh tracks.

It’s not new, but it’s becoming the rule, not the exception. I have seen all the shows on that list, but it seems like CBS is the only one with multi-camera sitcoms anymore.

[dropzone]

A Chicago station has all old sitcoms, all the time.

[ISiddiqui]

@AlsoNamedBort

It’s not new, but it’s becoming the rule, not the exception. I have seen all the shows on that list, but it seems like CBS is the only one with multi-camera sitcoms anymore.

While it may be true (exception/rule thing), I don’t see how it makes a show any less of a sitcom.

[The_Shroud]

@ISiddiqui

While it may be true (exception/rule thing), I don’t see how it makes a show any less of a sitcom.

Actually, I was just thinking today how I’d love to see another sitcom like All in the Family, which in its early years was pretty much a two-act play in real time in front of an exuberant audience. I wouldn’t want every show to be that way, but I’d love to see someone bring that back and do it well.

[Disgruntled_Penguin]

@Transistor_Rhythm

Sure, you can get every TV show ever on DVD for $18.99, but it’s not the same.

That’s a fantastic deal. Usually, you’ll pay that for just one season of one series. I wouldn’t have time to watch them all though.

[Markxxx]

Outside of “Two And A Half Men,” (#10 for last year) there are no sitcom hits. Last year “The Big Bang Theory” was at #42 for the year and it was the second biggest sitcom.

There may be a few sitcoms left but that is because there’s nothing better to put on.

Furthermore, all the sitcoms now are being sold into syndication as barter, which is not going to produce much income. Usually reruns are what gives you the money, and if it’s a barter basis that is not really much

[Grrr]

I just recently discovered “Gary Unmarried”.

Holy crap that guy cracks me up!

[gwendee]

@Gail

My guilty pleasure is ABC Family’s Ruby and the Rockits. David Cassidy is in it and I used to have a crush on him when I was in 6th grade. (He’s still dreamy.)
I get a couple solid laughs out of every episode. It’s very upbeat and Alexa Vega is adorable.

I really like it. It isn’t likely to ever have a weekly thread here but I have no complaints. It’s just nice.

Though I certainly see the OP’s point I don’t mind watching sitcoms on DVD, but I’m not inclined to own them. Fortunately my local library system has a large supply , and they check out for free for 7 days at a time (They charge $2.50 for 2 nights for feature films). I just picked up season 1 of Big Bang Theory.