http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/vi...egree-of-style/

Laugh-track sitcoms about families and singles have been dead to me for years. I just can't watch them, which means my dial is never anywhere near CBS and its lineups. I can forgive my age-old favorites their canned laughter but that device just seems so old-hat now.

The newer single camera shows make me feel as though I'm getting closer to the people in them; while they're not devoid of wacky characters, shows like THE OFFICE offer plain, every day people in silly situations, which is preferable to me than "Oh, what Kramer did!"

I mostly stopped watching sitcoms in the 80's. I miss the days when they were just plain, silly entertainment like I Love Lucy or topical and sharply-written(All in the Family, for example). Most anything past the 80's is pretty much junk. I am annoyed by schizophrenic shows like Will & Grace which try to be silly one second and then serious and emotional the next. Of course, that is quite preferable to say, brain-killers such as Full House or whatever that Urkel show was.

And no, not everybody loves Raymond.

This was a tendency that I saw grow out of TAXI and CHEERS (I'm sure some TV watchin' expert can do a much better job of tracing it than me) and which has unfortunately invaded many shows. It was effective in places like TAXI and, to lesser degree, CHEERS, because it seemed well-thought out by good writers but now it just seems obligatory. We MUST be forced to CARE about these characters, not just laugh at and with them, and not just care in the usual sense of being interested in them, but in this maudlin, melodramatic soap opera sense.

This tendency finally drove me away from FRASIER which I was reminded (catching some of the first season episodes when my Mom was watching the new season 1 DVD) started as a really sharp, funny, well-written show. Quippy sitcom with a veneer of accessible artiness, sure, hey, but I don't watch much television and it made me laugh. But the drive to shamelessly milk the melodrama over the whole Niles/Daphne thing just curdled the show for me. I don't think I saw anything more than single episodes from the last 3 or 4 seasons before it ended.

And, re: the RAYMOND comment, some of use never wanted new FRIENDS either. I wouldn't be there for them...

I think M*A*S*H was the real culprit. Importance reared its imperial head on that show so often (especially in later years) that I wanted to buy it a hat.

I avoided FRIENDS through 8 of its 9 seasons because the cast had such hateful faces, every one of them, and as a New Yorker forced to live in an apartment the exact dimensions of a subway car I resented their spacious apartments. But with new girlfriends come new TV shows and I enjoyed the episodes I did watch and tortured my future wife with eight seasons of catch-up questions. ("So Chandler is who's brother?") I was very surprised to find myself most impressed with Matt LeBlanc, who turned a Joey One-Note into a consistently funny character.

Have there ever any sitcom housewives/mothers portrayed as buffoons, idiots, sexually frustrated morons like most of the sitcom husbands/dads we seem to be stuck with?

(besides Peggy Bundy in MARRIED WITH CHILDREN - horny, sure but not as full blown moronic as husband Al)...

To be a man in a sitcom is to be a complete jerk-off... :angry:

(unless you're Dick Van Dyke or Andy Griffith)...

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS and ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, where the female buffoonery was well-handled.

Well, there was a little series called I LOVE LUCY...

Yeah, Lucy was a moron.

I liked sitcoms when they looked like movies, i.e. shot on film in various locations, not stuck in one set, use of special effects, etc., e.g. Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan, Partridge Family, Brady Bunch, Andy Griffith, Beverly Hillbillies, Leave it to Beaver, Munsters, Addams Family and even, to a certain extent, Odd Couple and Mork and Mindy, both of which left their title characters' apartments often enough for this to count. Even stuff like Jack Benny, Burns and Allen and Abbott and Costello had more of a film aesthetic. A&C shows often played like lower budgeted versions of their movies (albeit without the Andrews Sisters, although Hillary Brooke kind of made up for it). Mork and Mindy is the last one I remember watching somewhat regularly.

LUCY (who was neither sexually frustrated, nor a moron or an idiot) made that particular kind of around-the-parlor sitcom standard, but there are plenty that are out and about, and away from the laugh track: THE OFFICE (more than you might think given the concept), MY NAME IS EARL, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, SCRUBS (which is full of wacky EFX)...I'm sure there are others, that I probably don't watch.

I'm not certain what language you watched I LOVE LUCY in that makes the title character into some kind of genius, but I can't think of too many LUCY plots that could have occurred unless Lucy acted like a complete imbecile. I'm not saying she was Gracie Allen, but please. Remember the episode where she thought Ricky was going to kill her because of an innocuous conversation she overheard? Or the time she got a trophy stuck on her head? Or when she climbed out on a ledge dressed as Superman? Yeah, Lucy was a real brainiac.

You know - that's something I never really thought about...

In EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND - every once in a while, they left the confines of various houses, apartments to go "on location" to little league games (where characters are only seen on bleachers, a golf course (a soundstage of a tee off area, of course), a gym, etc. Never to the extent like the shows mentioned above.

But during one season the Barrone family all went to Italy, where stuff was shot "on location." I imagine it was all really an excuse for stars and crew to go to Italy...these episodes also didn't "feel" right in context of the show...of which I'm a fan...