Occasionally when I get up on work days, Vickie is still up for some reason or other (she redefines the term NIGHT OWL) and is watching some old classic sitcom or cartoon show. Often she has on Leave It To Beaver and I'll sit with her for an episode. Incidentally, there are two types of episodes of the Beav. They either revolve around Beaver getting suckered into doing something stupid by one or more of his friends and being left holding the bag (the soup billboard being the most classic) or Wally's growing into a young adult. I personally prefer the Wally-centered shows because they most often entail Eddie Haskell, one of TV's classic naughty friends.
My point is that many of these old classics seem to have gotten lost even in my own generation when they gained a new audience in rerun heaven/hell. Beav is an exception at times, though there are some episodes I once liked that now seem pretty dumb. This applies to mostly sitcoms, although some old westerns like Bonanza and Gunsmoke suffer a slow and painful re-airing.
There seems to be something about the format and end product of the situation comedy that makes it more often than not the sacrificial lamb of many a new TV season, often scrapped before Christmas. Other times, a sitcom can stick around for a long time with a fairly stable if not large audience and not strike true funny bones. Often they stick a cute kid in it and make money off the less than precocious brat.
Where the fuck did sitcoms come from?
For those on millennial island, let me explain a little history. A hundred years ago, there was no TV...or computers or smartphones or Kardashians. Hell, even movie theatres weren't in vogue yet. Entertainment came in the form of vaudeville, a set of live comedy acts on a stage. Many of these acts were so popular that they made it to radio and occasionally to television from there. I've listened to some of these old radio comedies and while corny, they were generally well-written when they weren't throwing in cheap commercial spots within the show itself. When some of these radio shows came to television, audiences weren't quite ready for the sight of their favorite performers and the show fizzled. By the 1960s, most if not all of the radio comedies had died out.
The trick, as far as I can see, of a successful sitcom has to be a combination of good writing and relatable characters. Beaver worked because he and Wally were like any other American older and younger brother relationship. Similar regular family situations were in Father Knows Best and The Donna Reed Show, among others, and they worked in reruns for decades after, right into the early 1990s. Soon after, we were entering a new age of digital addiction and the old entertainment norms no longer resonated with many, and the older audiences were starting to die off.
Two examples of successful sitcoms that to me seem timeless with their successes are Barney Miller and WKRP in Cincinnati. The former works because there were just 2 parts of the set: the squad room and Barney's office. The success came with clever lines and the wacky perps who passed through. With WKRP, there was an almost surreal quality among the characters that made them so engaging. New station manager Andy Travis was frequently saying he had to get out of that place. Why? There was another layer cleverly put into that show that really showcased the Ohio-ness of the station's employees, and really any midwestern state has something unique about their people and towns. I know because eastern Pennsylvania small towns have that quality as well!
Apart from that, there are some classics that have remained classics in my opinion, at least in terms of watchibility, and others I just can't sit through anymore. Aside from Barney, the Beav, and WKRP , let's take a look at a random sampling...
My Three Sons: How this show lasted 12 years (1960-72) boggles my mind, because the highlight character is Uncle Charley and he was only on for 7 years. The rest of it doesn't grab modern attention. Definitely as white as one can get, and the Disney touch is present. Star Fred MacMurray had a strict shooting schedule that made for a non-linear episode shooting each season. The boys had to get frequent haircuts to make those episodes look fairly sequential.
Gilligan's Island(1964-67): I once loved this show. I even bought season 2 on DVD when shows on disc were the craze. However, when watching it I just couldn't get into it. The sex appeal of Ginger and Mary Ann was not enough to sit out the inane situations anymore. To me the coolest character was the Professor, always will be.
The Brady Bunch(1969-74): Another childhood favorite...but as I have caught it a few times in recent years, I have definitely spotted the major flaw: THE WRITING SUCKED!!! Not only that, the canned laughter now brings a sense of nausea. I can see why Robert Reed conflicted with the creative team often. Incidentally, both this and Gilligan were produced by Sherwood Schwartz, a creator who seems to have had a knack for parallel dimension concepts. The Brady Bunch Movie in 1995 and its sequel captured this alternate universe well.
Get Smart(1965-70): This show really took the spy genre to task...for its first 2 and a half seasons. After that, the originality left. Max and 99 getting married and then having kids just killed it. The highlights me were the wacky KAOS villains, especially Bernie Kopell as Siegfried. When you see him playing Doc on The Love Boat ten years later, it's a mind-number.
Diff'Rent Strokes(1978-86): Like the Bradys, the writing on this show sucked big time, especially after it got into the 1980s. The first season is still watchable, though, for some reason...perhaps the freshness of the concept. By 1982, Gary Coleman's overdone "Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?!" couldn't save corny and, shall I say, LAZY writing.
Indeed, there are several sitcoms of the 1980s that suffered from a 'malaise of laze': Webster, Silver Spoons, Who's the Boss, and Full House depended on some form of cute factor. The more adult-oriented shows,,while not always faring better on the classic show streaming channels, at least had good writing and fun characters to make them work at the time. I can still watch Cheers and Night Court and, forgive me for saying this, but despite his despicable actions I can still watch The Cosby Show because even though there was a 'cute' factor with Keshia Knight Pulliam and Rayven Symoné, there was enough intelligent writing to make the characters real. I could relate to Theo's school struggles a bit in the early seasons.
As we pulled into the 90s, the old lazy formulas were generally relegated to Friday and Saturday nights when people generally had lives. There was some experimentation with laughless sitcoms (no audience, no laugh track) that gave the viewer respect as to what they could laugh at...it was too early, though, and not until we got shows like The Office did that audience respect pay off.
I couldn't get into Friends. I've seen less than 25% of the series and, while some episodes were well done, it wasn't a discussion point the day after like other classic shows of the 80s had done.
As we moved into the new millennium, the sitcom formula was really dying. Luckily, many of those vomit inducers were on Disney, so I was spared. A friend of mine recently posted this about sitcoms:
"I finally figured out what I hate about sitcoms and modern television- these crappy shows try too hard and so do the studio audiences! They laugh hysterically over something that was, at best, mildly amusing (if that). Older “classic” shows relied on a catch phrase (“kiss my grits”; “heyyyyyy”; “dyn-o-mite”) and milked them to death in every episode. The vast majority of old shows are dated and unwatchable- awful outfits, canned laughter, studio audiences who laugh hysterically at every single implied “funny” moment, etc. Yuck!"
He has a point. Those studio audiences probably get paid pretty well to act wildly amused.
A lot of sitcoms were skipped, but mainly because of the 'overdone' phrases. I could easily have picked at Happy Days as it ran 11 seasons. I left it, and Laverne and Shirley, alone because of their nostalgia draw at the time. Apart from that factor, Potsie Webber is probably the longest-running useless character of all time. After Richie Cunningham left to make good movies, the Fonz wasn't as cool anymore.
I really couldn't ever handle I Love Lucy or The Lucy Show, either...ever! Nothing against Lucille Ball, just not my type of comedy.
You know who I miss? John Ritter. He took a pretty racy and daring concept character in the 1970s and made it a classic. He's what made Three's Company work, not Suzanne Somers.
In closing, the sad truth is that in this modern 'woke' era where funny isn't what it once was for many...or never will be ever...the situation comedy concept is dead in terms of development. You can take any old hackneyed concept, put a racial/cultural spin on it, and reheat it, or add cussing and nudity for a quick cheap laugh. It'll get the teenage boys watching, but it doesn't make it smart.
My funny bone isn't broken, just arthritic!
