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April 16, 1999 Features DEATH OF THE SITCOM It's not the first time sitcoms have fallen on hard times. But with more networks and fewer wits and sages, this is anything but the golden age of comedy. Is there still hope, or are we squeezing the last laughs out of TV's ailing genre?
Whether you're male or female, young or old, chances are your
longest-running romantic relationship has been with television,
and it's time to accept a harsh reality: You're getting fat and
your date is getting ugly. A handful of shows are as good as television has ever been, but
with more networks and more total airtime than ever, the pool of
writing and production talent has been drained. And nowhere are
the waters shallower--or the bottom feeders more plentiful--than
in the programming genre that has most shaped American popular
culture over the last half century. The sitcom. With the exception of a scant few comedies--Friends and
Everybody Loves Raymond chief among them--the current generation
of sitcoms has two fundamental problems. The situation, which is
mind-numbingly familiar from one show to the next. And the
comedy, which not only is a threat to national intelligence but
often carries the unfortunate burden of not being funny. Network
bosses don't like admitting any of this, but when they start
pushing interchangeable sitcoms across the TV grid like
checkers, schedule two Drew Carey Shows in a week, and renew the
likes of Veronica's Closet and Suddenly Susan, it's clear that
not only have the wheels come off the wagon, but they're
traveling without a map. "There's no question there's frustration on everyone's part,
because there are too many sitcoms that look and feel alike,"
says Garth Ancier, who will jump from The WB to NBC in May to
take over programming. That narcotic sameness is one reason why
the comedy that snaps you awake is on shows that are technically
dramas--Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Sopranos,
for example--and animated shows like The Simpsons, The PJs, and
King of the Hill. The irony, says Simpsons coexecutive producer
Ron Hauge, is that "on a prime-time animated show, you go out of
your way to make characters real, because they're cartoons. But
if you're doing comedy with live people, nobody ever says,
'That's too cartoony, don't do it.' " You'd think that with 50 years of practice and obscene piles of
money to play with, TV could knock one out of the park at least
as often as zoo pandas mate. Think about the development of air
travel during that time, or the advances in medicine. Over the
same span, television has taken us from I Love Lucy to Two Guys,
A Girl and a Pizza Place, and you begin wondering if they're
bringing people in at gunpoint for the laugh tracks. We are going to explain why it has come to this. We are going to
hear from the brightest minds in sitcom history and look for a
silver lining in the mediocrity that has become the industry
standard. We are even going to ask a question that makes
television execs hyperventilate: Is the sitcom dead? It's an easy, loaded question, sure. But when you ask it of the
genius responsible for arguably the most intelligent sitcom in
TV history, and he says "Yes," you shut up and give the man his
own paragraph. "It is just over," says Larry Gelbart, the creative force behind
M*A*S*H. Given the limitations of a 22-minute form, and the
tendency of networks to play follow the leader, he thinks the
sitcom is as stale as yesterday's newspaper. "You have this
wall-to-wall cloning. It's as though we were still watching
silent movies in black and white. It's as if we haven't advanced
the form one bit." It will come as no surprise that Los Angeles is filled with
people who respectfully disagree. "There was a tremendous hue
and cry about the sitcom being dead in the '80s, and then The
Cosby Show came along and was getting between a 50 and 54
share," says ABC exec Jamie Tarses, who admits sitcoms "may be a
little tired," but insists there's still a pulse. Indeed, if the sitcom were actually dead, James Burrows would
definitely be a pallbearer, and he's not polishing his shoes
just yet. But the man who had a hand in Cheers, Taxi, Friends,
and Will & Grace admits the patient has looked better, and he
knows exactly what's wrong. "It's the writing. Today's TV writers were weaned on television,
so their work is imitative," Burrows says, adding that he and
Gelbart, James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi), and
Norman Lear (All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Maude) were
steeped in books, film, and theater, and perhaps brought a tad
more depth to the table. "The second thing is that it's a little
like the NFL. In the old days there were eight great teams. Now,
with expansion, there are 29 mediocre teams and maybe two great
ones. It's the same in TV. There are more examples of bad shows
than ever because there are only so many good writers."
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