The rash of comedies that came after Seinfeld... but there was only one Seinfeld.

But Boyle is completely wasted.

Yeah, I'm happy with that. Stick Becker in the same category.

DUD

bizarrely it has won many awards. Unfortunately I see it alot as my local affiliate sticks it between eps of the simpsons. I spend most of the time scowling at the tv.

I prefer my funny to be "funny because it's ridiculous and could never happen in a million years"

x-post

I mean how many times can we see the husband-as-stupid and in-laws-as-annoying schtick?

it's cringeworthy.

the best character is the father-in-law, frank. he is great. there's an x-files episode he stars in and he's great in that as well.

I kind of like this show. I mean, it IS very repetitive. Ray always does something dumb and his wife is sort of hoity-toity about it. But at the same time, it's all very self-mocking. I wouldn't compare it to Married with Children or Titus or Malcolm because those shows all have a tendency to make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. ELR has its serious moments but not ROSEANNE serious. And yes, the family has problems, but not the level of problems my own family has/had, so it's nice and escapist that way.

I wish Life With Bonnie were a little funnier. When they improv their lines, it can be pretty funny.. but you have a lot to sit through to get to the funny sometimes. Bonnie Hunt is the same as Ray Romano to me .. funny person, dud of a show...

Patricia Heaton is pretty hot, considering she's 45 or something.

like there's some psychological depth that reflects real things -- when ray fouls up the housework she calls him on it as an avoidance mechanism isntead of it being a gag about "oh men are no good at housework!" and etc.

I hate Everybody loves Raymond. Because of this, I haven't seen all that many episodes. I'm not sure I've ever seen an ep in entirety, come to think of it. So I could be missing something, I suppose, but I don't have the patience to find out.

I don't go out of my way to watch ELR, but it seems to be on all the time, so it's not like you have to look for it.

This is another reason why I dislike "Everybody Loves Raymond".

I am perversely attracted to Patricia Heaton, even though she's a whiny self-righteous uber-Catholic who's had plastic surgery to account for several of her attributes.

"even though" might mean "because"

(wow what an xpost!)

Home Improvement was terrible, even though the show had some elements that elevated it ever-so-slightly above the true shite. The main problem with that show was that the kids were unlikable, Tim Allen is unlikable, and it wasn't funny.

but holy shit Santa Clause 2! rotflmao

also when you get right down to it The Order with Heath Ledger is a loose remake of Santa Clause

i think ray romano has good comic timing and his child-like voice makes the ordinary jokes that much funnier. it's the way you say'em etc.

NB I think it's popular just insofar as it's pretty much the only old-school "adult" sitcom I can think of that's running right now. Plus I hate to say it after grimacing every time he ruined an episode of Dr. Katz, but in this context Romano is funny.

So sometimes it fails horribly, but then sometimes I must admit to really liking it.

Final note: Ray's mother is played by William Goyen's widow!

Although here in New York there seems to be some sort of covert agreement only to air syndicated sitcoms set in New York or surrounding areas. There is absolutely no good reason the King of Queens should be on three times a day.

sorry NA if i offend your highly nuanced sensibilites for crap culture.

I like the way the writers deal with Heaton's character and I like the way she plays it. Obviously the wife has to be the rock of stability and voice of sanity in an old-fashioned family sitcom ... but i think heaton and the writers find surprising and sometimes subtle ways to have fun with the mom/wife/housewife stereotype. And they constantly contrast her with doris roberts, who is the living embodiment of the stereotypical sitcom mom/wife -- she has nothing else to do but interfere in people's lives.

i kinda love this show

*horrible* show.

http://matt.rateagame.net

I saw an episode of this on my flight, twice (once there, once back), and HOLY FUCKING SHITTING SON OF A BITCH CRAP HELLDOG CUNTBUCKET is it the worst thing I have EVER seen. EVERY line is a COMPLETELY failed attempt at humour, the canned laughter is SICKENING, the characters EMPTY, the credit font OBNOXIOUS, and the jokes...ach my god, the jokes are beyond my limited powers of description. At first I thought it was a terrible Frasier parody, but no, it was something far, far worse. It was the sound of comedy sucking up its own intestinal tract and subsequently being unable to vomit itself out.

How do people with functioning brains like this shit?

lol i've always had a strong aversion to this show

This show is almost as bad as King of Queens.

You thought this seemed like Frasier???????

(P.S. At what point will people stop going on and on about how much they hate particular shows and finally say "Omigod, you know what, I just realized I just don't enjoy traditional sitcoms!")

well my friend and i were just talking about how the sitcom is really lost these days

hah.

I have never seen an episode of this show. No reason, really. I just don't stop on it while channel flipping the way I do with, say, Roseanne.

What do you mean by "traditional sitcoms"? I mean, I hate these shows:

King of Queens
Friends
Everybody Loves Raymond
Three's Company
Reba

But I love these shows:

Roseanne
Seinfeld
Good Times
Frasier
All in the Family
Golden Girls

all of which are considered sitcoms...

the hah was an xpost

yes but listen, seinfeld is done, golden girls (my favorite show of all time easy one period) are done, roseannie is done?

the good ones are fucking done.

okay "roseannie" was an accident

Yeah the sitcom is pretty much dead. I can't think of a good one.. maybe "New Adventures of Old Christine". But then you have crap like "How I Met Your Mother" and "Two and a Half Men" which get like crazy ratings but no one I talk to actually watches/likes...

there was this show on TBS called My Boys that i got into recently. haven't noticed it on latley but it was dissent when i caught it.

You know what rerun always trips me up? MASH. I flip past it and stop and say to myself, "Oooh. MASH." Then I watch five minutes of it and say to myself, "Wait a minute. This isn't funny." Sometimes I say, "This is creepy and depressing." This happens over and over again. Good thing I wasn't Pavlov's dog.

lol i know both of those sound incredibly groundbreaking =P

wait isn't some famous actressi n My BOys? or no

MASH... an 8th wonder i never got into

bth of those = how i met ur mother and 2 and a half men

I think the sense that sitcoms are constantly getting worse is based partly on the same factors that make people say music is constantly getting worse:

(1) being receptive and attached to whatever sitcoms were good when you were young, and just not having that receptivity when you're older -- sitcoms are extremely and transparently mechanical, and ALWAYS seem stupid unless you're making an effort to get into how they work

(2) lottery/memory effect -- you only remember the successful classics from before, and none of the hundreds of crap sitcoms in television history that were even worse than whatever forgettable shows are up in your face today

(Haha also that and sitcoms actually getting slightly less good -- I assume just as a function of network prime time not being the pinnacle of TV anymore, so the talent/money/development gets spread way thinner.)

nabisco, i thought it was a frasier parody for the opening 20 seconds, which featured a pair of grown-up brothers wisecracking with their aged but still unhealthily garrulous father. then i realised that it wasn't anything like frasier, it wasn't trying to be anything like frasier, and that it was dumb as a bag of birdshit.

latest post OTM however

Somebody get Doogie Howser on a better TV show, plz... I love that guy.

i dn' tknow, agreed on number 2, nabisco, but i think the "slightly less good" think is an understatement.

i mean, good sitcoms build up to punchlines with a certain number of comically 'inert' lines. ELR attempts to be funny with EVERY line, and in consequence is funny with none (that I saw).

I'll sometimes watch "Still Standing" (Jami Gertz plays the wife) for a few minutes just because it's just beyond-belief bad. Poor Jami Gertz.

The only sitcom on that "like" list that actually ran into the current decade is Frasier, which is kind of OFFICIALLY the sitcom that people who don't like sitcoms like!

I have kind of a soft spot for sitcoms, mostly because I kind of like the mechanical nature of them, the way they have to try and build an aesthetic out of really predictable behavior, and the way you kind of have to keep watching and pick up all sort of information about them for them to be really funny -- I mean, they're almost like fantasy fiction or something, where it seems stupid on the surface, but becomes kind of great if you actually immerse yourself in the details of them. I don't really see many of them until they're in syndication, but ... after thinking I didn't like it at all, I saw the greatness in The King of Queens ... I'll stand up for Yes, Dear, which was incredibly clever ... I think Reba is pretty lovable, once you get accustomed to how broad the humor and acting are ... I dunno, you kind of have to meet these things on their own terms.

I particularly don't put much stock in anyone who says "I just saw an episode of that show, and it was horrible" -- sitcoms just aren't built like that. Like 90% of their humor is built on repetitive character behavior -- I can't imagine getting much enjoyment out of a sitcom until you've spent at least three or four episodes figuring out their structure and how they work!

Seinfeld is an exception, I think. You don't need to watch four episodes to understand that George is lazy, venal, pathetic, and without any kind of moral compass whatsoever. Or etc for any of the other characters.

But of course there are threadfs for that, ad it's all been said, and yadda.

Nabisco, I'd pretty much worked out all the (thoroughly one-dimensional, stock, crass) character relations within five minutes. After that, all I could judge was the script, which was singularly cringeworthy. There's nothing more to it!

king of queens is so underrated.

sitcoms are in a slump right now (how could they not be after the ninties?) while everyone watches reality tv and cop/doctor/law shows. they'll be back.

Zowee, ONE dimensional! How could you even see them to figure out which was which?

Which episode did you see?

ELR >> golden rubbish girls

yes. i thrive on controversy

The best non-reality show on TV IMO is The Riches... I'm so glad Minnie Driver got an Emmy nom...

I have stood up for "Everybody Loves Raymond" in the past, mostly because Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle and Brad Garrett are so damn funny. But re-watching it now just makes me hate the insufferable Patricia Heaton and her character, probably the biggest sitcom shrew ever, especially in the late seasons.

I think "King of Queens" was probably rated correctly, but Jerry Stiller love and my residual crush on Leah Remini always made it a bit better than most crappy sitcoms. Then again, I think "Frasier" was a massively overrated piece of crap and insufferably pretentious besides. Then again, I watch a LOT of sitcoms and like many of them, especially when they aren't trying to signify "this isn't REALLY a sitcom" by namedropping Georges Feydeau right and left. Kelsey Grammer couldn't hold Feydeau's jacquestrap.

Oh and I cannot WAIT to avoid the Grammer/Heaton pairing in "Back to You."

ELR >> golden rubbish girls

yes. i thrive on controversy

-- Alan, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 5:50 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I like-a the "Malcolm in the Middle" a whole wholity lot. Are you people not categorizing Futuruama/Simpsons/etc. as sitcoms?

If only they'd given the last great hope for sitcoms a chance to grow on us

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460640/

that sitcom is news to me

Oh, EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS is a good current one. And Will & Grace was good as well..

I saw an episode where 'Marco' has to choose between his parents (or maybe his dad and stepmom), fails to learn how to play 'Happy Birthday' on the piano, and doesn't get taken to a poker night.

Oh and the short-lived Tori Spelling show SO NOTORIOUS was hilarious. I am not sure if it is a sitcom though...

omg i can't believe i missed that

The main thing about Frasier that eventually got on my nerves was far they started diving into very stagey, theatrical, Noises Off-style comedy: it was a huge asset at first, but at some point they kept coming back to (e.g.) long physical scenes of men and women sneaking into one another's bedrooms and having the wrong people be in hiding in the closets (there was an epic ski-lodge run-around like this), and it started to feel ... not good.

The more I think about it, possibly there are some very good and some very bad episodes of The King of Queens? I can think of some in my memory that were not entertaining in the least. And then I can think of others that really got me (like one where he fakes a heart attack to avoid admitting that he doesn't know someone's name).

Who's Marco?

Oh shit, wait, I actually DO know the episode you're talking about.

Ha, this is why I said you have to watch multiple episodes of any sitcom to make any headway: Marco is not even really a regular character on that show!

I'm going to go deface Patricia Heaton's page on Wikipedia.

I don't really know why I started this thread. King of Queens is fine for time-killing, ELR is pretty bad, but "Still Standing" is the epitome of the generic sitcom. They've got a guy from The Full Monty playing the oafish dad, but I have never seen them do any kind of joke or even reference to him being from the UK. As far as I can tell it's never discussed. That's how little imagination the writers have.

Those aren't his parents, either! Those are Raymond's parents! The whole joke of the episode is that those aren't his parents!

HAHAHAHAHAHA this is the second time on ILX that someone has said some sitcom was totally stupid and obvious and then quickly revealed that they totally didn't understand the most basic relationships of the people they were watching

I'm going to go deface Patricia Heaton's page on Wikipedia.

OMG we are eight years old aren't we?

I would totally do this though if I was a Wikivandal.

Nabisco, be that as it may (and you may rightfully crow in your success; I'll admit that that detail escaped me, and I assumed that he was some sort of long-lost brother, not following every word with religious adherence), the show was still an absolute crock of willies. The only character whose lines weren't unforgivable was Raymond himself. Hence, I suppose, the sitcom's title.

crock of willies!

I think the sense that sitcoms are constantly getting worse is based partly on the same factors that make people say music is constantly getting worse:

(1) being receptive and attached to whatever sitcoms were good when you were young, and just not having that receptivity when you're older -- sitcoms are extremely and transparently mechanical, and ALWAYS seem stupid unless you're making an effort to get into how they work

this is why I will never stop talking about Waldo Geraldo Faldo on ILX!!!!

I am always surprised that this show is actually funny.

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Events/5415/RayRomano_Grant_11443013_400.jpg

Ray Romano still not smiling properly as of 2007

Louis I'm not trying to crow too much, and I don't even think the show is particularly great, but you have to admit it's a little hard to put much stock in the dismissive criticism of someone who just had a sitcom go over his head.

This thread is now about "Still Standing."

http://wwwimage.cbs.com/primetime/still_standing/images/cast/stil_cast_main.jpg

from CBS:

"STILL STANDING is a comedy about a blue-collar Chicago couple working to raise their three children responsibly and not lose sight of their own youthfulness. After 17 years of marriage, high school sweethearts Bill (Mark Addy) and Judy Miller (Jami Gertz) still make each other laugh and try to keep their marriage intact, even when their family pulls them in different directions. Judy's unmarried sister, Linda (Jennifer Irwin), butts heads with Bill, and the Millers' precocious teenage daughter, Lauren (Renee Olstead), thinks her parents are uncool. Meanwhile, their uptight, studious son, Brian (Taylor Ball), is just discovering girls, and their youngest child, Tina (Soleil Borda), would prefer to run around naked. In addition to spending time with his family, Bill spends a good deal of time with his best friend, Danny Fitzsimmons (Joel Murray), who is working to raise his own son, who happens to be gay. Since Bill has a far more immature approach to marriage and raising children than Judy does, they work at striking a balance and remembering why they love each other, quirks and all. "

* Jami Gertz's character's name, "Judy Miller," was also the name of the little girl character created by Gilda Radner on "Saturday Night Live" (1975). This tie may be a tribute to Radner, since Gertz played her in the TV movie "Gilda Radner: It's Always Something."

* All episode titles begin with the word "Still".

Yeah that show really REALLY doesn't work.

Can we all share our thoughts on the Ellen DeGeneres sitcom next?

Bill: Come on Judy, let's go brain storm.
Brian Miller: That'll be a light drizzle.

Bill: I'll have you know I graduated second out of my class... among the three of us that had to finish up over the summer.

Judy: Is it just me, or is Bonnie getting a little bossy?
Bill: No, you're bossy too.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lauren Miller: Dad, I need some help with my homework.
Bill: Yeah, I know, I've seen your grades.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill: This family supports each other.
Lauren Miller: Since when?
Judy: Okay, it's something new we're trying.

Yeah this was not an honorable way for Jami Gertz to go out. Someone please cast her in something, thanks in advance.

"who happens to be"

wtf is with this phrase?? jesus that's making my blood boil all of a sudden

Nabisco, true, I may have only seen one episode, and I may have in my unscrupulousness misconstrued a familial character-relation, BUT what I did see, and did realise, is that each character had a very limited personality, a very limited means of replying (counter-zinging; just about every line is an attempted zing) to other characters, and a very blatant means of conveying themselves. It felt like a bloated, purposeless procession.

Plus, the lines were really bad!

*themself

hay where's skot's thread on ELR?? he had this genius insight that every single character on the show has nothing but extreme contempt for everyone else, but instead of it being this harrowing horrorshow of domestic misery and reduced horizons, it's, like, a sitcom. "o'neill w/o the booze" i think? i'd go with that. but it still blows.

goddammit, i did this with doctor who and got shredded. when will i learn?

he had this genius insight that every single character on the show has nothing but extreme contempt for everyone else

genius insight???! i saw one episode, and it was pretty evident that all the characters wanted to do was put each other down, mercilessly, line after line!

you'll note there was something after the comma there louis

lol curtis, still not smiling properly... couldn't see the pic but i get it

Back to You is an upcoming American situation comedy created and executive produced by Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan. The pilot was directed by James Burrows. The show stars Emmy Award-winners Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton as squabbling anchors of a news program.

oh lucky us

the wife on "Still Standing" is one of the worst actors EVER.

I always gave King of Queens (the only one of that whole CBS bunch I could stand) at first because of Stiller, but the rest grew on me. And Patton Oswalt!!

Louis: Scott always gets a break because when he says something, it's part of a thought process and experience with the subject at hand.

Renee Olstead = rrwoar!

Dude, I couldn't care less whether you liked the show or not, I'm just baffled by complaints like "the characters in the sole episode of a 30-minute sitcom I watched had a very limited personality" -- that's how sitcoms work! They're built for weekly repetitions of predictable behavior! And the way you get a broader sense of the characters is by watching multiple episodes, basically -- this is true of most every sitcom I have ever seen.

xpost - That's what I was saying about Everybody Loves Raymond upthread -- there's this cheerful bleakness where they're always muttering about murdering one another and it's, like ... often funny.

Also I enjoyed the episode where Raymond's mom made a sculpture that looked like a vagina, and everyone could see that it looked like a vagina except her.

"Raymond" always made me puke. I tried to watch for Boyle factor, but it wasn't enough. For some reason it was always on in the tiny gym I used to go to.

M*A*S*H was never knee-slapping hilarious, but I really enjoyed the early episodes. They kind of pushed the envelope for prime time TV - sex, gore, drinking (even Radar in the early eps!). It started sucking big time **warning: over-used critique ahoy** when "it started getting all preachy towards the end."

those dear dad eps were unbearable.

Louis: Scott always gets a break because when he says something, it's part of a thought process and experience with the subject at hand.

dude, no need to get ratty. i wasn't having a go at scott. the 'dark' light-comedy stylings you and nabisco describe are ten-a-penny in the UK, hence why I find it hackneyed and unoriginal.

nabisco is right to take me up on my 'limited personality' criticism; many sitcoms I like have very straightforward characters. that said, a sitcom like father ted has a great script and great jokes. however simple the characters are, they're vehicles for the writing. ELR had, to my ears, a dearth of genuinely comedic writing behind it. I accept that my criticisms were hasty, but my argument boils down to this: the characters were not strong enough to carry the script, and vice versa.

Also I enjoyed the episode where Raymond's mom made a sculpture that looked like a vagina, and everyone could see that it looked like a vagina except her

yeah this one kind of made me chuckle, but then I somehow saw it like 14 times, and I never even make an effort to catch the show! It was like they knew it was stronger episode and milked it for all it was worth.

Who's ratty? I was making an observation about Scott. If you want to take that as an implied criticism of your off-the-cuff la-de-da above-it-all style, it's okay by me.

But you're right, everything is better in the U.K.

Syndication always milks better episodes of a show-- they are putting them on for ratings, after all, not completion. There are episodes of some shows (partic. Seinfeld and the Simpsons) which get shown some 10 times more than others, and some that never even really make syndication. This is why it's always a big deal if a syndication "station" announces they're going to show a series in order, or a full season, or something.

For a guy who half-watched one episode, you care a whole lot about criticizing this show.

PS I am sometimes intimidated by references to some allegedly way-better UK comedy world we Americans don't have access to, but then I'll come across something like that show about the alien superhero and his nurse wife or whatever and be reminded that we're all basically on a par with this stuff.

Father Ted is way better than ELR, and is easily accessible in the U.S. via DVD.

I can't remember the last time I watched a live-action sitcom, apart from Arrested Development on DVD and maybe a Cosby Show I happened to catch late at night. I'd never even heard of The New Adventures of Old Christine until JLR was nominated for an Emmy, and I'd just barely heard of Two and a Half Men before finding out recently that it's already in syndication -- isn't 100 episodes generally the benchmark before you can get syndicated?

i didn't say that those ten-a-penny UK sitcoms were good. just that they were 'edgy'. most of them are shit. there are very, very few sitcoms i love, and they're pretty much split between UK and US.

father ted is so much better than ELR that the comparison is (to me at least) ludicrous. oh whoops, i'm being la-di-da again. :(

I approve of The New Adventures of Old Christine. I watch way too much TV.

All that said, MAYBE I JUST CAUGHT THEM ON AN OFF-DAY.

The acid-test, however, is 'Do you want to see another episode?', to which I answer 'No, unless loads of people CONVINCE me that it's brilliant first'. This thread's support of ELR isn't exactly convincing.

I repeat: nobody cares if you like Everybody Loves Raymond or not

Haha you weren't being la-di-da until the comment about how you were being la-di-da. No one here has argued that ELR is "brilliant," just that it was kind of funny sometimes.

I tried to watch "Father Ted." It bored me but I probably need to try again. I liked the part when the fat guy and the little bald guy were running around after the bikini-clad ladies...but then the ladies were chasing them!

Oh wait.

That is the second mean "Benny Hill" joke I have made on ILE. I apologize for Brit-baiting -- I actually have watched a lot of "Benny Hill" in my life.

Louis, I'd like to note that Nabisco is the only person I've met in real life who cares about Everybody Loves Raymond. Sure, it got huge ratings in the U.S. for years, but nobody I know has ever watched it regularly, and they pretty much admit it sucks. I don't think this is something you should worry yourself over.

xpost OK, maybe Matt thinks it's occasionally funny.

this is like the thread when i took on doctor who based on one episode and the thread where i took on the smiths based on a few songs ROLLED INTO ONE HORRIBLE NABISCO-FLAVOURED PULPING. i can only plead exhaustion after a long flight.

I'd like to note that Jaymc does not even watch television, as he is a Chicago hipster who is in a band and does not have time to sit around wasting his life watching sitcoms, good or bad. Also, he's got a database to maintain.

Dude, I don't particularly care about the show, I'm just annoyed by someone being like "I watched ten minutes of this one sitcom, while pumicing my corns, and I couldn't really follow the plot or the relationships between the characters, but I just want to let you know that IT SUCKED."

I have probably done that myself, actually, but I'm just knee-jerked peeved by complaints that a given sitcom is dumb / predictable / has too many zingers / etc. -- it's like, you have SEEN other sitcoms before, right?

jaymc watches television! Hard to imagine him watching heavy doses of sitcoms, though.

Kenan is the Prince of Lies. DONT BELIEVE HIM PEOPLE.

He watches Lost and The OC, I am sure of this.

jaymc.xls confirms

dumb / predictable / has too many zingers / etc. -- it's like, you have SEEN other sitcoms before, right?

true, true, but this is all forgivable only as long as the script is good. anyway, we're running in circles, so i'd say we adjourn the argument until i watch more episodes, which is unlikely.

Matt's kind of right, though. Most of the TV I watch is on DVD. Otherwise, watching TV when it's on TV seems like something to do at the end of the night after all other possibilities are exhausted (or after you get home at 11 PM from a three-hour band practice), so the shows I watch most frequently are Oprah and Conan.

I watch LOST now because the S1 and S2 DVDs got me hooked on it! I never watched a single episode of The O.C. when it was actually on TV. For a long time, I thought that Seth Cohen was the name of the actor, not the character.

p.s. arrested development has raised the bar. great script allied to interesting characters, complicated plot developments, lingual depth, and superb directing. THAT'S what I want (nay, expect) from my sitcoms now.

okay that explains a lot

never could stand that show, watched it once and david cross was being creepy and gay, that kind of homophobia will not stand

you are turning away the ambrosia goblet

yes, yes I am

the point with cross' character isn't that he's creepy, it's that he's comically latent.

Yes but the second time I flipped past the show it was the same joke. Oh well, it was not meant to be. I am of sturdy peasant stock and such highfalutin meta-ironic "comedy" is too rich for my blood.

I don't really think of Arrested Development as a sitcom, or at least not a trad sitcom. (Not that it can't still raise the humor bar for traditional studio-stage domestic sitcoms regardless.)

but it ISN'T meta-ironic*! just incredibly clever, well-written, and drop-dead funny! the situations they manufacture are often very stupid, but the way in which they're orchestrated is joyful to behold (jet-pack dude fighting molezilla being the best example). the characters are well-defined and strong, and it's profoundly funny in both an intellectual and a reflexive manner.

*Save Our Bluths notwithstanding

Good current U.S. sitcoms according to me: "How I Met Your Mother," "The New Adventures of Old Christine," "Everybody Hates Chris," "The Simpsons," "30 Rock," "The Office," "My Name Is Earl." Probably some others but I don't remember them right now.

(All of which I prefer to just about any episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond.")

http://a215.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/43/l_3f843da105ce0db5a71ba62e95d2582e.gif

I would like to watch more of The Office and 30 Rock. I've seen a couple episodes of each online and have enjoyed them.

I like them both -- the latter a LOT -- but Earl and Arrested Development have this narrative problem that always irks me: they use the narration to do a kind of collage of funniness that feels weirdly static, and with both of them I feel like I've just watched a thirty-minute intro to a story that never actually happens. This bugs me far more with Earl.

Weirdest syndicated sitcom I have come across recently = Damon Wayans's My Wife and Kids, which is ... umm ... loose

I can see how Arrested Development can come across as a bit frenetic and trailer-ish (i.e. they only show the good bits), but something made up entirely of good bits is better than something made up of some good bits and some bad bits, surely?

Great American sitcoms that relax a bit more, unwind, and tell a simple(ish) story...well, Frasier springs to mind...

Louis, we're just going to have agree that our aesthetic tastes could not really be further apart if they tried, apart from Super Furry Animals (although Rings Around the World is far from their best, you'll see that someday). I can't hate on you though -- I was once an overearnest lad attending a posh college.

xpost Some episodes of My Wife and Kids were nearly good. Others were crap. The teenage daughter was good, and I would watch Tisha Campbell in anything. But Damon was so sub-Cosby (tough talk but tender-hearted), the dumb son was boring, and all the "message" episodes were really bad.

I would love Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold to have a sitcom where they didn't have to put up with Martin Lawrence, I would probably quit my job and move to LA and beg to be their coffee boy/weed carrier/sex slave. But because that will never happen, let us just say that Tichina Arnold on "Everybody Hates Chris" deserves all the press and credit that Alec Baldwin, brilliant as he is, is getting on "30 Rock."

How about Campbell and Arnold as a lesbian couple raising the kid from Everybody Hates Chris, and Baldwin is their pompous landlord?

DONE.

THIS FALL ON FOX.

Man, Britishes sure do love them some Frasier. My New Years Eve 1998 consisted of watching a whole Frasier marathon on BBC2 in a Yorkshire inn.

I bet that quasi-British affectation is way funnier when you are at least quasi-British

that kinda shit never stops being hilarious maaaany xposts re: weasel freakin out

is GROUNDHOG

prairie dog, i thought

I'd just barely heard of Two and a Half Men before finding out recently that it's already in syndication -- isn't 100 episodes generally the benchmark before you can get syndicated?

They've made 96 episodes of Two and a Half Men so far.

yeah, i know it's a gopher, i just wish it was a groundhog

Sheen is a convenient sitcom guy, given that everyone knows what his character is supposed to be before the show even starts.

You know what was good, that he was on? Was Spin City.

I never really got to watch that one for whatever reason. Must've been when I couldn't pick up the local ABC (?) affiliate with my rabbit ears.

was his character's name Charlie?

I went over to a new friend's house once. He had gotten up to let me in the door and as we sat, I noticed that he had an episode of "Everybody Loves Raymond" on "Pause". I asked, Oh, you've got a DVR? and he replied,

No, it's the fourth season DVD!

http://a215.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/43/l_3f843da105ce0db5a71ba62e95d2582e.gif

Did use excuse yourself to the restroom and leave out the window?

YOU

Man if I were hi that would be freakin me out.

He also has special-edition "COACH" DVD with pigskin front cover and football notepad inside.

Renee Olstead = rrwoar!

-- Martin Van Burne, Wednesday, July 25, 2007

she just turned 18 like a month ago, which makes me feel kinda creepy for cosigning this.

/noncreepy

30 Rock and The Office aren't really sitcoms, though, are they?

Yes, they are.

How?

How are they considered sitcoms when Arrested Development isn't considered one?

Who said Arrested Development isn't a sitcom? NOT ME. I just think it is an overrated sitcom.

I don't really think of Arrested Development as a sitcom....

-- nabisco, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 7:49 PM (Yesterday)

Can you guys go back to talking about Everybody Loves Raymond so that you're not ruining shows that I actually like?

They're all sitcoms. AD and The Office play with the formula a bit, and AD a bit more than most shows, but 30 Rock is a pretty traditional sitcom.

yeah what exactly defines a situation comedy? When I was a kid I thought it meant a thirty minute long, ostensibly funny show with a live studio audience or (more likely) laugh track. I guess it could be much broader than that. Like, was "Moonlighting" a sitcom?

Nabisco, of course is the authority on such issues, ELR-love and all. :p

AD is a sitcom, but not as we knew it. Laugh tracks are not necessary for sitcoms, but a repeatable situation and attempts to be funny are.

Yeah, generally when I think sitcom I think "laugh track".

I actually remember that specific Frasier episode mentioned upthread, the ski lodge one, as being the point where I thought to myself, "this programme has become fucking shit, and I'm not going to watch it anymore". That must be the most precise, clear-cut example of shark-jumping ever.

Fuck all you guys, seriously.

"Life is like an unfunny version of Everybody Love Raymond"

All those shows are surely "situation comedies," yeah. But it seems sensible to differentiate a little between half-hour comedy shows and the particular weirdo form of the traditional studio-stage sitcom, which is frankly bizarre and highly constructed and stilted and stagey, and has its own strange system of conventions and repetitions that are just plain not really shared by these newish half-hour situation comedy thingummies.

(One main one would be that AD or 30Rock are very much like television, whereas the trad sitcom is still really theatrical -- set up and acted like a play, on a stage, with the sound of an audience laughing around you.)

more "Still Standing" quotes plz

i really like everybody loves raymond. a lot of people i know don't like it, but the more i watch it the more i'm sort of in awe of it. such a great cast...also it's very dark...the treachery of family relationships...some episodes get even more uncomfortable than like curb your enthusiasm to me...lots of anger too.

the only ELR plot I can remember off the top of my head is the episode where the kid writes a story called "The Angry Family" and the whole family goes into counseling; that was pretty funny. But at the end they revealed that the kid had just written it based on a TV show, which was kinda lame.

AD or 30Rock are very much like television, whereas the trad sitcom is still really theatrical

I'm not sure that's a useful distinction, since so much television has always been like theater, either like golden age sitcoms like "Lucy" or just straight-up variety shows on a stage. So what does it mean to be "like television"?

the only ELR plot I can remember off the top of my head is the episode where the kid writes a story called "The Angry Family" and the whole family goes into counseling; that was pretty funny. But at the end they revealed that the kid had just written it based on a TV show, which was kinda lame.

But what if the show was "Everybody Loves Raymond" itself? OMGWTFPDQ TWILIGHT ZONE BOZO BUCKETS

"i really like everybody loves raymond. a lot of people i know don't like it, but the more i watch it the more i'm sort of in awe of it. such a great cast...also it's very dark...the treachery of family relationships...some episodes get even more uncomfortable than like curb your enthusiasm to me...lots of anger too."

this is how i feel. but i am captain save-a-ray all over this thread:

i must be crazy cuz i love raymond AND the king of queens. i love the episodes that are just total psycho-dramas. like eugene o'neill but funny. plus, it helps if yer stoned. or so i've heard. there was an episode where ray and his wife were fighting on the floor and it was some of the best slapstick i've seen in years. plus, chris elliot as the weirdo brother-in-law is priceless.

-- scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, March 4, 2004 2:55 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

i've come a long way too. the urge to kill people on t.v. and movie threads on ile is waning in me. it's all good. just don't revive the mad t.v. thread.

ugh. Did I start that one? I very well may have.

heh... I started one of three "I hate Mad TV" threads.

i know where you live.

Look, one big reason people instinctively hate Everybody Loves Raymond is that it's called EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. EVERYBODY! The natural response is "Well, I don't love that fucker! Leave me out of this already." It's like there's been this galaxy-wide People's Choice Awards that everybody else got to vote in but me.

Umm, Kenan, point taken that lots of television formats are still stagey (like talk shows and whatnot), but I don't see how that muddies the distinctions between these two types of comedy:

One kind = voice-over, quick movements between scenes and settings, montage, pre-planned single-camera work, compression of narrative time -- all these are conventions of TV and, in different ways, film, and can be found in TV dramas and such. The Office is a wild card here in that it is actively aping the form of another TV medium, the reality show

Another kind = actors on sound stage. Multiple cameras get moved between in relation to actors' performance. Very few settings. The whole space between commercials may well be dedicated to one scene in one setting, without time compression, with the writing forced to move the characters in and out of the room as needed. You can't toss out a gag and then run away from it.

I think part of Everybody Loves Raymond's success (especially with older people) had to do with it REALLY going for that three-act theatrical structure, where it could reasonably get through like 7 minutes in real-time with just family members moving in and out of the living room and kitchen -- i.e., traditional old-school play-style sitcom, a style whose conventions are actually eroding as new sitcoms play around with the form more

Neither 30 Rock, Earl, the Office, nor (especially) Arrested Development would make much sense trying to do something like this -- keeping on one scene/stage for an entire segment. They just don't work that way.

PS -- ha, Martin, that's actually ALREADY how the title works -- the hidden bleak barb in the title "Everybody Loves Raymond" is that it's kind of from the perspective of his brother's bitching! (I think he originally said it, sarcastically, in the opening -- like "yeah, sure, everybody loves RAYMOND, ya bastards.")

But they do all depend on familiarity with the characters who will do predictable things, which I suppose is mainly what I was thinking of when I contended that of course they are all sitcoms.

But again, AD is on the edges of that, because it depends on the characters being predictably unpredictable.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000Y47.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Yeah, but that's just true.

yeah I think "Everybody Loves Raymond" isn't supposed to be taken literally, it's not exactly a jovial let's-all-pat-that-party-animal-Ray-on-the-back atmosphere on the show

100,000 Raymond Fans Can't Be Wrong

wow this revive really took it there

the original intro that sets up the title:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz6wOAIrX4

season two variation with flying people:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XrYHE9_fRXU

every once in a while there's some really bizarre, almost surreal episodes thrown in that i always find odd/cool...like the one time where robert's new girlfriend is set up as a great/amazing looking/cool new gf...then suddenly at the end there's this reveal scene where her apartment has literally like 1000s of frogs in glass cages in it...

...or the one where marie makes a sculpture that looks like a giant vagina.

lol wait the only one i really remember is kind of similar where someone meeets this really great girl but she ends up like eating flies or something???

Same one, I think -- Ray keeps saying he saw her eat a fly, Robert doesn't believe him, finally flips on a light in her bedroom and sees frogs everywhere. I believe there is also a coda where the fly story is perceived as a cover-up for Robert just being gay.

also louis was talking about stock characters, but that's exactly why i love this show...is that they are very easily identifiable early on as stock sitcom characters - lazy husband, nagging put-up wife, meddling mother, crotchety dad, etcetc, but then the show keeps showing them up as truly bizarre and sort of twisted people over the accumulation of moments and situations throughout the shows run....it's probably one of the shows that most rewards seeing a lot and a lot of episodes on daily re-runs...because there's moments that humanize the "bad" characters and show the more "noble" characters to be just as petty as the good ones...

xxxxxxpost
Sure, I know how the title works in the context of the show, but still, every time I hear it, it bugs me. Especially since, you know, "everybody" DOES love ELR.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/nobodys-watching-the-strange-genius-of-the-fourth,42394/

I still don't want to watch Til Death but this makes it sound a little more interesting.

Bumper sticker i saw the other day: "I'd rather be watching Everybody Loves Raymond".

ha I didn't realize I had started this thread. I must have been in an Alex in NYC mood that day.

I've barely even heard of this show ('Til Death), but wow.

what is the only sitcom to feature two cast members arrested for acts of 'lewd conduct' in an adult movie theater?

Designing Women?

did we have a 'til death season four discussion anywhere on ilx?

almost as bad as friends and what a pretentious title to start with as it is a false statement because so many hate him!

My mum used to love this show.