I used to love sit-coms. Cheers. The Cosby Show. M*A*S*H*. Friends. Seinfeld. I adored them. I love quippy comebacks and funny set ups.
Then suddenly I stopped watching them. I'm pretty sure it was tied to events in my own life. I stopped being an easy audience and suddenly they weren't that funny to me anymore. I was also really sick of the schlubby guy with the impossibly hot wife thing. I turned my nose up at the lot of them. I was a one-hour drama girl (although not medical dramas because they ALWAYS have a brain tumor episode and I can't abide them).
Maybe it's a sign of mental health on my part (although I doubt it), but I'm starting to groove on sit-coms again. It started with Modern Family. Then I decided to branch out to Parks and Rec. I still can't do The Office because, frankly, it's like spending an extra half hour at my day job and who needs that? Then I discovered reruns of The Big Bang Theory and now I'm burning through Suburgatory. I had a brief flirtation with Two Broke Girls which might get more serious if episodes show up on On Demand. I'm not so sure about New Girl, but it's starting to win me over.
I do this with genres of books, too. I'll go through a phase where I only want to read mysteries or romances or chick lit or sci-fi, but it's usually a genre and not a format. Although I supposed "novel" is a format. Someone told me the other day that she never reads short stories. She doesn't like them.
Do you do this at all? Just stop reading or watching something based on its format and not its content?
5 comments:
I don't think I shun reading things because of format, but like you, I stopped watching sit coms for most of the past decade until the last couple of years.
I don't think I got sick of sit coms, I think it's because sit coms really sucked for a while. Like you said, so many had schlubby guys with hot wives and/or dumb really low-brow humor. But right now, I'm falling in love with the sit com again. Modern Family and Parks & Rec are my favs. But I also enjoy Big Bang Theory (I started watching when it went into syndication), New Girl and Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23. I'm a little bit over 30 Rock, but still enjoy it most weeks. And Community either makes me LOL or shake my head depending on the episode. Sometimes that show tries to be too clever for its own good.
I watched the first couple 2 Broke Girls episodes, but I didn't really get into it.
I don't know if it counts as a sit com per se, but also loved the first season of Veep.
I'm with you on sit-coms. I can't handle the "live audience" type anymore.
Modern Family, New Girl and Community are the only ones to make the list.
I have tried Big Bang - because I know so many people who love it - but just can't get into it.
It's good to know I'm not alone!
I think all these things go in waves - both us liking them, and really good things happening with them. For awhile, it seemed all the best writing was on dramas - all the clever and all the sharp and all the exciting was dramatic. But then smart people got involved in comedy again and it came back from the schulbby guy mold faster and funnier and with more wit.
I love episodes on HBO and Nurse Jackie - which some might say isn't a comedy. And I still have my girl crush on Tina Fey and 30 Rock.
Oh, Nurse Jackie! How could I have forgotten her? How do the writers make a lying, philandering, drug-addict so flipping sympathetic?
I'm a bigger fan of Fey's Bossypants than I actually am of 30 Rock. I can see adding her to my girl crush list. SHe has to get in line behind Rachel Maddow though.
Post a Comment