NEW & IMPROVED What's on TV, ILX? It's the American Sitcom Tournament Round 1/Group 4

Green Acres, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cheers, Three's Company for me.

Dick Van Dyke Show vs. Soap is stupid hard for me. I went with Soap.

The Bob Newhart Show, Soap, Night Court, Murphy Brown

ok haha JF and i are obv comedy polar opposites

Cheers feels like a shoo-in for me, though, even against Night Court, which was also all-time great.

Here I am lamely retreading the steps of Bob Newhart from the intro to the show. Except it's summer and not winter, and it's a beach now instead of a park, and Bob had a briefcase instead of a bicycle.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/newhart-bldg-me.jpg

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i191/fluxion23/newhart-bldg-orig.jpg

Green Acres is really pffft.

Newhart vs. Green Acres is a hell of a thing to make people choose between in round 1.

Newhart, DVD, Court, Threesome

The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cheers, Three's Company

I hate Green Acres.

Green Acres is delightfully bizarre in much the same way that Bob Newhart's '80s show was.

Newhart reminded me of the Vermont of my childhood; Green Acres reminded me of how long 30 minutes was.

who came up with the brackets? why isn't How I Met Your Mother or Community or Parks and Rec not on here?

I guess I missed out on the nominations and subtractions round. Also Wings

wow, no Two and a Half Men either

maybe those four can suddenly jump in at the end

I left out freshman shows (I know P&R is technically two seasons old, but we all pretend that first mini-season never happened). HIMYM was in the bracket on the first draft, but didn't make the cut when it got hammered out the second time. Two and a Half Men was never in consideration.

I agree with you about Community and Parks and Rec being too new for the poll.

HIMYM, Two and a Half Men and maybe Wings (I never watched it but I've heard people swear by it) do seem like they could of knocked out some other shows but whatever

I thought about Wings, but it really had no afterlife. It wasn't even until whatshisface showed up in Sideways that any of the cast members even got another decent job (unless Monk as a Shaloub vehicle came before that, but anyway...)

Two and a Half Men is probably the worst 'comedy' programme I have ever seen. Surely there's no point in putting something that unfunny and terrible in the poll?

The Bob Newhart Show, Soap, Cheers, Three's Company for me, though I've not seen much green acres, or any Murphy Brown. DVD vs Soap was killer. Cheers was a no-brainer.

Two and a Half Men gives set-up/knock-down joke sitcoms a bad name. I can't at all figure out why it's so popular, seeing as how no one on the show is even likeable in any small way (not even the kid, who's no longer funny now that he's a teenager).

I'll be surprised if there's a bracket where I have an informed opinion on all four match-ups--I've followed maybe half-a-dozen sitcoms since the '70s. But there are three here I want to vote for--Green Acres, Dick Van Dyke, and Cheers--so I'll cast a vote for Murphy Brown on the basis of never having seen it (except for the fake scene that turned up in Seinfeld). I won't pretend that I wasn't one of those teenage boys who watched Three's Company its first couple of years for the same reason as everyone else...yeah, of course, Norman Fell!

Two and a Half Men is a show that revels in its badness (sort of like Trailer Park Boys but totally different). Even though TaaHM is quite banal I would much rather watch it than Scrubs, Will and Grace or Sex and the City any day of the week. Actually King of the Hill would have been a decent addition to this poll.

There's a lot of old shows in this poll that might be good but I would trim one out for How I Met Your Mother. There's going to be tons of ILXors who have never watched a lot of the very old stuff.

Sorry for the post-decision making ranting!

The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond are both as worthy as the worst sitcoms on this poll, at the least.

Raymond, especially. I love how hate-filled that show is. They're both kind of bad shows in a way, but in another way, they both feature a comedian who can be be really funny sometimes. I got no beef with Kevin James, truly I do not.

I wouldn't expect the stereotypical ILXor to like Two and a Half Men. I would expect them to hate it!
Also I have no qualms with it not being in this poll, or Raymond or King of Queens for that matter. Or Full House

maybe the stereotypical lurker ILXor likes Two and a Half Men

Newhart, Soap, Cheers, Three's Company. Not even a moment's thought about the competitors. From about age 10 to age 15, those shows were like the Holy Grail of comedy.

I voted against Three's Company, even though I probably saw every single episode of it growing up. It's very one-note. Or at the joke goes, "Hey, remember that episode of Three's Company where it all turned out to be a sexual misunderstanding?" Farce, yes, but even farce can be bigger than that.

as in Fraisure

Indeed.

Three's Company is of course very simple, but I think the characters did a fine job of filling the empty space that was left behind by the absence of more complex plots. Even between Chrissy and Terri, the one season with Chrissy's cousin Cindy filling in the third roommate spot wasn't a complete wash because it made Jack, Janet, Mr. Furley, Larry, etc. all that much stronger.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

bump

The Bob Newhart Show is one of the greatest television shows ever.

I was never able to get into Cheers or Night Court, but Cheers seems like the lesser of two evils to me, for some reason, even though all of its characters were annoying and the writing always seemed a couple of beats off, in need of some tweaking

Three's Company is classic, if not particularly funny. Absurdly thin concept, even as far as sitcoms go, Norman Fell, a ridiculously likeable John Ritter plus all of his mugging and slapstick, Larry, the Regal Beagle... seemingly every sitcom cliche ever was transplanted into the milieu of the singles life in southern California of that era...

hype hype

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

three's company beat murphy brown? fine by me, 'cuz i remember neither of 'em.

oh man night court got PWNEd :(

Runoff?

Oh nevermind, I guess we add together everything?

No ties here. Low turnout, though!

The Bob Newhart Show - 29
Green Acres - 12

The Dick Van Dyke Show - 19
Soap - 22

Cheers - 31
Night Court - 10

Three's Company - 25
Murphy Brown - 16

Wow, Green Acres was crushed. But I know people love the first Newhart show.