I am old enough to know that sitcom is short for situation comedy, and recently two powerhouses in the genre, “Friends” and “Frasier,” made their exits, stage left. Next year another hit, “Everybody Loves Raymond,” will meet its maker and be sent to comedy heaven: non-stop syndication.
Although these three series had long ago become stale caricatures of themselves, they were responsible for keeping the genre of the sitcom — a genre I grew up on and still love — clinging to life. Now that they are gone forever, the survival of the situation comedy depends on an infusion of fresh blood in next season’s fall pilots.
Well, last week the television networks unveiled their fall lineups for the first time to anxious advertisers, and I am prepared to mark the sitcom’s official time of death.
Sitcoms will be absent from primetime in the fall at a level not seen since the early 1980s. Instead of scripted comedy, the networks will be cramming unscripted “reality” shows down our throats, as many as their conscience will allow, and these are television executives, so …
For example, the unwatchable ABC will feature another new British reality show rip-off called “Wife Swap” (it is not what you think), as well as “The Benefactor,” an “Apprentice” rip-off from Mark Cuban. They will be dropping sitcoms such as “I’m with Her,” “It’s all Relative,” and “The Big House,” although they are renewing “Hope and Faith” (God only knows why).
This same trend is happening up and down the dial. NBC will feature only four comedies next fall; at one point in the late 1990s, NBC had 16 sitcoms in its lineup, according to The New York Times.
Comedy writers are already in mourning. They are desperately asking the same question I am: Why are the networks running away from the sitcom? The first answer is obvious: Dead presidents. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars more to produce a scripted comedy than to drive Paris Hilton into the boondocks or boat a dozen-or-so retards onto an island.
The second reason is that young viewers, the most coveted demographic, are increasingly turning away from sitcoms and tuning into reality shows. As Bill Carter from The New York Times puts it: “Viewers, especially those under 35, seem to be bored with the entire conceit of setup/joke and four-to-six characters sitting around a sofa on a Hollywood sound stage.”
They would much rather see the Osbournes or Anna Nicole Smith sitting around a sofa in their real homes, swearing, which seems to me to be infinitely more boring. The Sitcom Generation, my generation, is being outmuscled by Generation Unscripted in television land. And the consequences will be disastrous.
When sitcoms are at their best they do the work of a great piece of art and shine a spotlight on the human condition. While dramas show us humanity at its most extreme, sitcoms show us humanity at its most mundane, as we operate day-to-day, at home and at work, as we seek food, shelter, companionship and happiness.
Reality shows offer us none of this insight. They are empty and meaningless. The pleasure comes merely from being a voyeur. It is indicative of the slow, painful death of art itself in this country. So many young people today seem uninterested in delving creative (and therefore, created) work for deeper meanings. They are unimpressed by the creative process. They’re only interested and impressed in the surface of things, in the gimmick, and the raw reactions that result.
They don’t want the comedy of a carefully crafted joke; they want the comedy of a ball to the crotch or a woman eating the balls of a rhinoceros. Rather than see the highs and lows of dating through scripted reenactment, they want to see a supermodel date a bunch of ugly guys, or a midget date average-sized girls. Rather than see fictional characters living normal lives, they want either to see celebrities living normal lives or ordinary people living extraordinary lives, because both satisfy our fame-lust, which seems to be the guiding human principle these days.
I am still holding out hope for the sitcom, however. “Seinfeld” reruns are the best thing on television these days, and they are a constant reminder of the power of the sitcom. “The Simpsons” is still going strong and another brilliant adult cartoon sitcom, “Family Guy,” is back in production. If only they would do the same thing for “The Critic” and “Duckman.”
And speaking of Jason Alexander, he will return to the boob tube this fall as a sportscaster in “Listen Up.” Conan’s hilarious sidekick Andy Richter will star in the sitcom “Quintuplets” on FOX. And maybe the “Friends” spin-off “Joey” won’t be as bad as everyone is assuming.
The Sitcom Generation is left with only hope, and, unfortunately, “Hope and Faith.”