Sitcoms That Still Make Me Laugh

I enjoy watching sitcoms. I also enjoy buying/renting/borrowing entire seasons of shows. Consequently, I've been delving into older, available sitcoms all the way from Barney Miller to Frasier. Some hold up better than others. (For the purposes of this post, I'm sticking to American sitcoms.)

Barney Miller holds up surprisingly well. The cast is excellent, especially that ham Abe Vigoda. One of the refreshing aspects of the show is how truly tolerant it is (not the pseudo-tolerance that supposedly open-minded people throw around today). Everyone from crazy UFO con artists to nudists is treated kindly and respectfully by Barney. The only show that comes close to this attitude today, in my estimation, is Numb3rs.

M.A.S.H. also holds up although I tend to watch it less than the others. Interestingly enough, it is the most historical of the shows, partly because it is based around the Korean War and mostly because it was written at the time of the Vietnam War. However, it remains extremely viewable. I don't think this is due to the "message." I think it is due to the acting and to the premise. Basically, M.A.S.H. is House with Alan Alda playing House and Mike Farrell playing Wilson. (And Gary Burghoff just being adorable.)

Night Court, oddly enough, does not hold up. It is still funny, and John Larroquette is worth watching in just about anything. But the 80's sentimentality is somewhat off-putting. Barney, at least, locks people up. Night Court talks them to death.

So does Family Ties, but Family Ties has Alex P. Keaton plus some real grist. The family problems are all solved with big hugs, but at least they are solved intelligently. (It is simply more believable that two loving parents will be able to talk their children out of making stupid mistakes than that a judge can talk a stranger out of a lifetime of crime.)

However, in terms of intelligent family sitcoms, Home Improvement has the best longevity. The show is funny and clever, and the family relationships are quite believable. I am on Season 7 of Home Improvement and have been continually impressed by how the show's issues mature around the characters without splitting up the parents or resorting to other distasteful plot arcs.

I'm also a big fan of Coach. The comedy is actually quite different from the above shows. For one thing, Craig T. Nelson is a far more physical actor and Jerry Van Dyke a far more vaudevillian one. Yet, individual Coach episodes are more likely to split my sides than any of the others. (Note to ABC: Will you hurry up and work out whatever the problem is and get the remaining seasons onto DVD? I'm not going to do Watch Instantly on Netflix. If I wanted to do Watch Instantly, I'd get cable.)

Speaking of sitcoms not released onto DVD, only the first season of Dharma & Greg has been released so far. I own that season. It is delightful. I have always preferred romances/movies/television shows where the premise is NOT "Will they get together?" but "Now that they are together, how will they work things out?"

I have watched the first two seasons of News Radio to death. I kind of lost interest in the show after that, but the first two seasons are some of the best comedy ever produced on television. Few people do straight man comedy as well as David Foley. Few people do odd straight man comedy as well as Stephen Root. Maura Tierney and Vicki Lewis have perfect comedic timing. And nobody has ever been as wonderful as Phil Hartman.

I enjoy Frasier although I tend to skip the episodes where Frasier gets completely humiliated (I don't really enjoy those types of sitcoms; I loathe Everybody Loves Raymond). More than any of the others listed so far, Frasier episodes can get positively British in their set-up and pay-off. That is, some minor joke will be set up in the first ten minutes and then paid off with complete precision in the last five. The only other sitcoms I know that do this better are British sitcoms.

Sitcoms I'm interested in: I've had such luck with Barney, I've considered checking out The Jeffersons, All in the Family, and Taxi.

Sitcoms I'm not interested in: Oddly enough, I like Cosby but I have no real interest in the sitcom. I'm not sure why. Partly, it could be that my Cosby is the Cosby from the live recordings he did before he got really famous. I grew up in a more affluent neighborhood than Cosby, but my childhood resembles his real childhood far more closely than the childhood of his sitcom family. (Basically, my childhood was Sandlot.)

I tried to get into Mork & Mindy. Bizarrely enough, I thought it just wasn't funny. I mean, Robin Williams is a funny guy, but there just wasn't anything that made me laugh.

This is also true of Drew Carey. He himself is hilarious. His show isn't. I don't know why.

I like Friends when I watch it directly on television. Renting it deliberately just makes me feel skanky. I don't know why. It isn't any raunchier than anything else I watch. But it's just so . . . cotton candyish. Very funny. Very lite. Very "I actually bothered to rent this"? (But if the T.V. is on, and Friends just happens to be on . . . I have actually seen most of Friends. I used to watch it right after work in the local station's 5:00/5:30 slots.)

I am more likely to rent Becker, but I don't watch it in batches like other shows.

People keep telling me to watch The Office. I'm not sure it is as much my type of thing as people think. They think I like sarcastic stuff, and I do, but I really hate mean stuff. I don't know where The Office falls. Okay, I guess I'll have to watch it!

Cheers is extremely well-written and funny, but it may be too raunchy for me. (There's a distinction between raunchiness and earthiness which is too extensive a conversation to go into here. Let's just say, British comedies generally bother me less than American sitcoms, and Dexter doesn't bother me at all.) Actually, though, I think my main problem is Shelley Long. I don't know if it is she or the character she plays, but watching her in Cheers is like nails on a blackboard to me.

Can't stand Two and a Half Men.

Haven't seen Soap in a million years.

Wow, that's a lot of sitcoms!