To say the top ten is THAT bad is to ignore a lot in terms of history and cultural impact. I like some of those shows more than others but even the ones I’m not fussy about are unquestionably some of the greatest sitcoms of all time. It would be madness to leave out The Simpsons, Seinfeld, or I Love Lucy, no matter how one personally liked them; they are objectively seminal, centre-of-the-canon sitcoms.
When the aliens finally destroy Earth, it will be because we polluted the galactic airwaves with I Love Lucy reruns.
Objectivity’s got jack to do with personal opinion, which was very clearly what I was expressing.
Seminal and canonical =/= great to me. Seinfeld is unwatchable crap to me, I wouldn’t put it in a top 100, influential or no. The only American sitcom I despise more is Curb Your Enthusiasm, quelle surprise. And I Love Lucy was not my cup of tea at all, but not utter shit like Seinfeld is, so would not be in my top 20. Which is generally not full of American stuff, anyway.
It wasn’t clear at all. After all, the list is pretty clearly NOT one person’s personal opinion, but a committee effort to rate sitcoms in some historical context, so why would the top ten be a badly chosen list if it wasn’t by the same criteria you’re personally applying?
Why even debate such a list if it’s NOT by some standard other than one’s own personal preferences? Debating or arguing with personal preferences is pointless, it’s what teenagers do over music. Trying to rank them according to some sort of common criteria, though, is kind of interesting.
It should have been.
Was this your first time reading a Rolling Stone listicle? They are nothing if not highly subjective opinions by adults who never really left their teens.
is this bluey the kids show? disney junior is showing it right now and i think its better than most anything disney shows …
That’s the one. I’ve been generally pleased with the Disney kids’ shows (Elena, Sofia, etc.), particularly compared to whats on Nick jr (Paw Patrol), but Bluey is just on a whole different level.
It’s still a kids’ show, so don’t expect complex plots with adult-adult themes, but it definitely has kid-related adult themes. An entire episode about trying to leave the house, Mom’s insecurities, or trying to get the kids to sleep.
Mostly though, the kids on the show act just like little kids.
Given the time spread of the top ten, it definitely had some thought put into it. You’ll note they didn’t include, say, Family Guy. The top ten are all
- Extremely popular in their time,
- Had an impact on TV that lasted beyond their run,
- Were critically acclaimed, and
- Are, in the case of the older ones, still well remembered.
Literally none of the top ten save “The Simpsons” are ones I’d rank in my personal faves but I can’t say I disagree with the list. “The Larry Sanders Show” is the one that surprised me - it is the exception to points 1 and 4 above, as it wasn’t as wildly popular - but I can understand its inclusion.
You know what they very conspicuously don’t have, that by all lights should be there over, say, Parks&Rec or Larry Sanders?
The Cosby Show.
- 5 seasons as the number-one rated show on television.
- Had a huge impact in how Black people were depicted on TV in subsequent shows
- Hugely critically acclaimed
- Despite the tarnishing of it by Cosby’s own crimes, still quite fondly remembered.
And that’s how I know it’s just completely subjective and has nothing to do with objective … anything.
Yeah, I did not see that it was not on there. A Different World is, though. They should have at the very least opened by saying they considered it, but decided against it now that we know that Cosby is a huge creep and was even at that time.
It’s on the list, at 16. But if the idea is that it’s an entirely objective list of “greatness”, why is the show that supposedly was responsible for “reviving the sitcom itself when the genre was on the verge of extinction” not in the top 10?
There was a thread a while ago about long running shows you only remember a scene or two from. Several people mentioned The Cosby Show and, amusingly to me, the only scene I remembered was the one in the Rolling Stone list (Theo’s sister makes him a comically bad bootleg designer shirt). So it felt like people remember it was a thing but not really the show itself. Combined with Cosby’s shit poisoning the brand, #16 seems fair. I’d question more the claim that it saved the sitcom genre.
It’s not just Rolling Stone saying it, Wiki also quotes TV Guide saying in 2013 that it “was TV’s biggest hit in the 1980s, and almost single-handedly revived the sitcom genre and NBC’s ratings fortunes.”
Well, I guess that gets you a spot in the Top 20. I need to be able to remember more than five minutes out of however many seasons to care if you make Top Ten.
Despite giving it that praise, I see that TV Guide also rated it #28 out of Televisions Top 50 Shows. Granted, that’s not only sitcoms but it couldn’t even crack the upper 50% and was behind numerous other sitcoms. And this was in 2002, before we all knew about the rape stuff and before 19 more years of television to compete against
I can see why it should be top ten; I’d bump Larry Sanders, which I liked. #16 is very high anyway; the difference between #16 and #10 is tiny. There have been THOUSANDS of sitcoms.
My emphasis - Like I said - nothing objective about this exercise.
I’ve never understood why people think things like this have to be either (completely) objective or (completely) subjective—that they can’t be a misture of the two.
Yeah, if you want an objective list, devise some formula of viewership by seasons and have at it. I mean, you can’t even objectively weight “saved sitcoms” since each person will view that differently.
Because any non-trivial amount of subjectivity means objectivity no longer exists. You can have degrees of subjectivity, but you can’t claim both subjectivity and objectivity.