The Sad State of Contemporary TV Sitcoms

Today’s Situation Comedies Lack the Charm of Yesteryear

In talking with a friend about the state of TV sitcoms, he said something brilliant: “Sitcoms are not variety show skits.”

Or as Buster Keaton once relayed to Lucille Ball, “You have to play comedy, dead straight. You have to believe that your ‘nose is on fire’” (which was a reference to the classic I Love Lucy episode, titled, “L.A. at Last,” in which Ball’s Lucy Ricardo accidentally set her snout a flame).

In other words, for a sitcom to be funny, it has to be based in reality.

As another example, The Wonder Years, ABC’s classic sitcom from the mid-1990s, was based on reality, opposed to that same network’s more recent sitcoms like The Goldbergs and The Kids Are Alright, both of which think they’re The Wonder Years. But they’re not. Far from it, actually…mostly because they lack charm…which The Wonder Years so perfectly imbued.

With regard to the contemporary situation comedy, there’s not an ounce of reality in any of them, with the few exceptions maybe, possibly being ABC’s Emmy champ Modern Family.