[October 15th marks the 70th anniversary of I Love Lucy’s debut. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied Lucyyyyyyyyyyyy and other sitcoms, leading up to this crowd-sourced laugh riot featuring fellow SitcomStudiers—add your howlers in comments!]
Responding
to Monday’s
post on sitcom dads, Glenna Matthews tweets a
comparison between “Father Knows Best
v. Happy Days with the Fonz
knowing best. Great way to document the evolution of youth culture.”
Matthew
Goguen analyzes Happy
Days differently, calling it “manufactured
nostalgia as entertainment.”
For
a different kind of response to Monday’s post on sitcom Dads, Irene
Martyniuk writes, “This
summer there was an anti-sitcom called Kevin Can F**k Himself. In the show, the traditional sitcom scenes were
in color and were typical—the husband was essentially a grown man-child who was
constantly up to weird hi-jinks with his buddies. He was overweight and
slobby but had a hot, helpful, tolerant wife--just like in most
sitcoms. However, in this show, when the wife went off on her own, the
show went to darker colors and we saw a real person--she has problems and
drinks, etc. To be honest, I have not seen the show--I think it streamed
on a service I don't get or I was just lazy or too into watching European detective
shows with subtitles. But the show got a lot of press because it was both
ground-breaking and well-done.”
Responding to Tuesday’s Friends post, Matthew Teutsch adds, “I just
rewatched the last 3-4 seasons of Friends,
and I agree with all of this. For me, Community was ahead of the curve in a
lot of ways. I wonder about It’s Always Sunny, mostly because it’s easy for someone watching a show like
that to buy into the crap they do.”
On Twitter, @policywanks shares, “I
really enjoyed the first five seasons of Friends
at the time, even knowing it was problematic in many ways. The criticism of its
seemingly whites-only NYC was contemporary. After that, it started to wear on
me and it has aged really poorly, IMHO.”
Diane
Hotten writes, “I've
tried to re-watch Friends many times,
but I just can't get into it given the lack of diversity and sensitivity to
culturally important ideas, like diverse representation in sitcoms, since the
show ended. Think about Blackish and the hugely popular Ted
Lasso.”
Other
SitcomStudying responses:
Charlie
Hensel nominates Third Rock from the Sun
and its portrayal of “life in general from an alien perspective.”
My
FSU colleague Kyle Moody nominates “Community,
The PJs, Taxi, Martin, Fresh Off the Boat and Everything Sucks.”
Derek Tang highlights, “The Wonder Years—both versions. I think
that'd provide some good juxtaposition in looking at how two kids who are so
different yet so similar grew up during a turbulent period.” He adds, “For an
Asian immigrant perspective, Kim’s Convenience and Fresh Off the Boat are good options, even though they’re pretty much the ONLY
options.”
Tamara
Verhyen writes, “I’m curious to see the demographics of those who like sitcoms
filmed in front of a studio audience. I know for me I find it annoying, if it's
funny I'll laugh, I don't like to be peer pressured into laughing at an unfunny
joke. But I can understand how it might be nostalgic for people. To answer your
actual question I loved Clarissa Explains
it All
and it think it's interesting that they had a live audience. Also Will and Grace would be an interesting study
because of it being about modern gay relationships. It seems like that could
have had some bad apples ready to protest, so I'm curious about if they vetted
the audience.
Jeff Brenner tweets, “Looking
forward to your discussion of ‘military’
type shows (McHale’s
Navy, F Troop, Hogan’s Heroes, et al) and what they say
about our military, other countries’ militaries, and, of course, America.” [ED:
I didn’t post on those this week, but now Jeff has added them to the mix!]
Lauren Arrington tweets, “Mary
Tyler Moore and Rhoda! My read
is that Rhoda undoes feminist
interventions MTM tried to make. Rhoda:
so much body negativity; it’s all about the husband, the mother-in-law
stereotypes—really sets up the 80s for US TV.”
Finally,
my Saturday Evening Post colleague
Troy Brownfield shares a bunch of great SitcomStudying:
Everything Norman
Lear
did in the 1970s: Social aftermath of the 60s as it pertains to generation gap
(All in the Family), race (Jeffersons, Good Times), social issues (Maude),
single mothers raising kids (One Day at a
Time), etc. Family Ties: Effect
of 60s on 80s, rise of the young conservative, how the hippies became 80s
parents. Friends: how did it manage to exist outside of almost every major issue
of the 90s? (Carol and Susan being the exception). The Big Bang Theory: How did simply naming things (hyperlink NSFW) from
subcultures become humor?
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other sitcoms you’d study?
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