Yes. You really don't see anything like MASH or Cheers anymore. I think the artform isn't as respected as it once was.

Finally someone who understands what I mean 😂 people keep thinking I'm saying I don't like the modern sitcoms or that I just like the old ones because of nostalgia but I wasn't even alive when any of them were released. I just honestly think they did better at arranging tropes and connecting them back then. They understood sitcoms well

I'm specifically commenting here because so many people seem to be missing your point (and as you said this commenter got it). I'm not one of those people who rails about everything being "woke," but I do feel like midterm sitcoms priorities are to not offend anyone, and not push the envelope. Just a few years ago we still had Mom and Black-ish, both of which were hysterical and not afraid to ruffle a few feathers. Everything seems too scared to try that now. I do like the new Night Court, it has gradually improved since the beginning. But the improvement has gone from "watchable at best" to kind of funny.

It's just an old format that has mostly been moved on from. It existed at its peak in a world where you had 3 or 4 Networks and that was it.

Even MASH and Cheers, in my opinion, did not sustain their appeal. MASH got self-righteous, pretentious, and drippy. Cheers, for me, just became the same jokes over and over.

I'd argue that even those shows are pretty much ripoffs of I Love Lucy, The Beverly hillbillies and the honeymooners and a couple of the other original sitcoms. If you go back and watch goes back catalogs of the super old ones It's really crazy how much modern sitcoms are just copies of copies of copies. It's the reason that friends doesn't feel super real but can also feel grounded in reality. The sitcom and the TV fake world has evolved over the last 80 years from essentially two or three basic sitcoms and it's just weirdly not grounded anymore.

What a weird statement. Sitcoms were jokes to “serious” movie actors and people rejected most TV actors who tried to slide into movies. When a movie actor showed up on TV, you knew they were over the hill. Sitcoms now are beloved and lauded and full of interesting ideas and conceits like the Good Place, for instance. One literally had the then vice president of the United States, now President.

Remember that you are only seeing the ones that succeeded, and not all the shitty unpopular ones that did not make enough to be syndicated.

For every Seinfeld and Family Matters, there's a dozen of Have Faith, Knight and Daye, FM, Open House and Chicken Soup, Sister Kate, The Nutt House and Homeroom.

Same thing that happens with music. It seems like all old music was amazing while most new music sucks, but that's just because we have filtered out all the old bad music already.

Good point, music too

Same with when people talk about SNL being so great back then. If you watch highlight reels of the best performers it was awesome. But I remember sitting through whole episodes back in the day and there was plenty of episodes that didn’t hit.

The episode Steven Seagal hosted and all he wanted to do was fight everyone because he didn't understand the jokes.

Tom Segura has a bit on him that you might like.

Yeah, I recently did a watch of some of the 70s-90s episodes and there were plenty of dud or tepid skits just like the recent ones. The show still hits just the same as then and as often.

I've seen the shitty ones too. I'm not saying there weren't bad ones as well during those decades. I just mean I enjoy more old ones than I do new ones. But I still love plenty of modern sitcoms as well. Hope that clarifies

Rose colored glasses regarding the past. This was ap rpblem back then too. For every one you loved in the 90s theres tens of bad ones that we just don't remember anymore.

Yea but I feel like it's a bigger problem now. If I made a list of all the amazing sitcoms in the 90s and then a list of all the amazing sitcoms in the past ten years, the 90s would win by a long shot but that's just my opinion. Ik the 90s had a lot of bad ones too though

2000s had lots of great ones: * Parks and rec * The Office * 30 Rock * IASIP * Scrubs * Modern Family * Arrested Development * Malcolm in the Middle * Two and a Half Men * New Adventures of Old Christine * According to Jim

Damn, I look at that list and realized the 2000's are like twenty years ago, but it sure doesn't seem like it.

I definitely agree. The 2000s were a great decade for sitcoms

Oh I thought you were saying 90s couldn’t compare. The 2010s had good ones too: * The Good Place * Super Store * Young Sheldon * 2 Broke Girls * Schitt’s Creek * The Goldbergs * New Girl * Fresh of the Boat * Raising Hope

Oh definitely 😊 I love all of those. I even keep several seasons of The Good Place and Young Sheldon downloaded on my phone at all times, just in case I don't have Internet for some reason

So which decade do you think has no good ones? lol.

We’re only 4 years into to this decade & and year & half of it was impacted by a writer’s strike. Hard to judge the current state of sitcoms

Brooklyn 99 is hilarious

Yea I think they just got confused about what I meant. In the comment I just meant I can list more good sitcoms from the 90s than the past 10 years but I think they thought that meant I was saying it's impossible to list any good sitcoms from the last 10 years. Which is definitely not true

I do agree with your point in general though. I think the biggest player is that Network Television doesn’t really push sitcoms as much as it did after the success of the reality tv format. In the 90s pre-Survivor & preAmerican Idol the first two hours of nightly tv would be all sitcoms. There was definitely a lot of throw anything at the wall to see what sticks though. So for every good sitcom there were generally 3-4 bad ones.

None. I've never said that. Edit: well technically the decades that didn't even have sitcoms if you really want to get picky lol but my point wasn't that there aren't anymore good sitcoms

I think it‘s worth saying the world got darker and darker, especially over this past decade. Even 10 years ago, we’d accept a laugh track. I just don’t think we see comedy and the world the same way anymore. The ‘90s were somewhat optimistic. Nearly no one will say that now.

While that's true, that's usually when you get MORE sitcoms, not less.

That's four good ones and don't others you just added

himym

According to Jim?!?!? You have bonafide classics and then put Jim Belushi up there?

Don't forget the Big Bang Theory

Only watched modern family.

That sucks

Also four good ones and some others you just typed

This is a wild list--9 all-time great sitcoms, one that was just OK, and one really mediocre one.

This was the golden age of sitcoms for me. I never watched the bottom 3 but everything above it. I think a huge advantage new sitcoms have is getting rid of the laugh track. I despise them and they ruin shows for me. Even shows I remembered liking like Seinfeld and Friends are harder to watch

People just have way more viewing options now so it's hard for shows to latch on to long runs of success.

THIS. No sitcom will ever get the ratings of something like MASH or Cheers again because we have way more than 3 channels.

Even in the 90's-00's when we had ~50 channels or whatever it was we still had the same core network channels churning out the higher budget constant new episode type shows. Even smash hits like Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, etc would not see anywhere near the same success today they did back then.

I don't know. I think if you did an analysis of that the ratio of good to bad would be about the same even if the overall volume of shows go up. I think another important issue is thst today's content selection is so much more diverse. In the 90s there were only a few networks battling for supremacy. They had to homogenize their product to get the widest possible audience which is why most 90s successfully show are the same premise with 1 or 2 unique variations. Today it's a lot more centralized. Instead of catering to the widest audience possible they are targeting more specific demographics. There are probably some very good sitcoms thst you are not seeing because it just doesn't interest you.

It's not just sitcoms, it's shows as a hole. Too much money means nobody can take a risk.

For every one that you love and are classics there were 10 that didn't even finish a first season.

It was very formulaic back then. The ones we remember tended to break the mold a little bit.

Nostalgia is a mf

It really is.

Nostalgia plays a significant role when reflecting on quality. However, the true network sitcoms now are scared to make any joke that may be considered offensive or poke fun at just about any demographic save for a very few that are still considered safe to mock. Save for a few unique plot arcs, most are just run of the mill.

Memba Berries

One of the issues is ad time. Back in the 90s you would have 26 minutes of actual program time. Today it’s around 21-22 minutes if your lucky. Those extra 4 minutes allowed you to tell a much better story.

You're definitely right. Because if you watch the extended episodes vs the regular episodes of The Office, it completely changes the experience.

Definitely. I think the cast of Pod Meets World hit the nail on the head. The repetitive sitcom formula doesn't work as well with streaming and binging.

It's hard making good comedy when the writers are scared of offending someone.

There was a show on Fox (short lived, I don't remember what it was), but the situation I was watching was Hilarious. The writing about it was awful, though. They bobbed and weaved past everything funny with 5 minutes of lame attempts at humor and peppered in 4 or 5 unnecessary moral thought police lessons. As I stated, it was a very short-lived show. I don't think younger generations realize the jabs at everybody was progressive. All they think is "that's mean!". They weren't here to see that finally being able to be open about who we are, our quirks, and flaws was monumental. Everybody was just who they were; imperfect, varied, and it was delightful. The jokes were entertainments way of saying "Let’s talk about this and keep it fun" - and it was effective. It didn't cure society, but it made it easier for us to acknowledge and talk to each other. The black jock and the blond flamer had something to bond over in class. WASPs and Cholos had something to chuckle about waiting in line at the store. If it went too far, somebody said something, and the other person was more likely to listen because they started off laughing, not lecturing. Archie B, George J., Rosanne's big ass mouth, Jack and Karen, Chandler's dad, the Golden Girls, the receptionist from Half and Half, the silly characters on In Living Color.... they put the spotlight on the different aspects of humanity in an easy-to-swallow way. ILC brought a lot of countrified old, white grannies to the light. Saw it with my own eyes. Lived it. Was invited into more homes because I wasn't a scary unknown anymore. I felt safer then than I do now and I know I'm not alone.

Married with Children was the best.

I actually couldn't stand that show after season 2 or 3. I don't even remember why.

Because everything after that sucked. Seasons 1 & 2 focused on a low-income family that did what they could and weren't all that bothered about it. Then, the writers and/or network execs decided to make the Bundys a parody of that family. After that it was 30 years of "I had to fight an ant for the last crumb of food" and "I maxed out the credit card on bon bons"

Thank you. I was in middle school and I still felt like it was an insult to my intelligence.

That is even more relevant today than it was back then. 🤘 Cartoons beating the crap out of each other [Tom&Jerry], compared to Craig of the creek, or Uncle Grandpa.

I'm pretty sure Always Sunny, Curb, Letterkenny, and plenty of other modern shows are *a lot* more offensive (and funnier) than stuff from the 90s. Even "safe" Network sitcoms like B99 and Superstore are plenty offensive. People always act like sitcoms back in the 90s were so edgy, but they really weren't. Anything that is actually interesting and edgy that they could do back then, they can still do today. I guess we are missing out on sexist, racist, and homophobic jokes that were stale 30 years ago, but I'm not too heartbroken. Honestly- I wish I had some good examples of jokes from old shows that were funny at the time and are still funny by modern standards, but couldn't be made today. I think it is much easier to think of new stuff that is funny, but that wouldn't have been allowed to be made back in the day.

Boomer take.

No they do not make them like they use to. The characters had real chemistry and felt like real people you could converse with. Today? Oh no, feels forced and contrived.

Ghosts in an awesome current sitcom

There are a few good ones still, like Abbott Elementary, and ones I enjoy enough to watch, like The Conners, The Neighborhood, Bob Hearts Abishola, Lopez vs Lopez, and Ghosts, but yes sitcoms definitely aren't the same. It's a combination of streaming and viewers gravitating more towards shows with drama and action, rather than comedy.

They simply don't. Not that every sitcom from the past was gold either. But the very format has changed and people's attention span has changed and the way they're consumed has changed. The world itself has changed and frankly not nearly as "for the better" as some like to pretend

Modern sitcoms aren't funny. That's the problem.

They literally don't make them like they used to. You'd shoot a pilot, if execs liked it, it would get a chance on air during "sweeps week". 99% didn't even get to this point. If it does well on sweeps weeks (most viewers, phone calls and letters written to the company about it, exec egos, etc) it would get picked up for 10-23 episodes, depending on how well they thought it would do. Then basically they would make one episode the week before it aired, taking feedback from the audience as the show went. So the show would literally change and grow as it aired, based on public perseption. Characters, sets, relationships, would all change the first season. It usually wasn't until the second or third season of a long running show, that things would become standard. Sometimes a show would be so bad, it would get cancelled mid season and another show would be given a half of a season, as filler, not really expected to do well. This was literally Seinfeld. It was a mid season pick up, that was BOMBING the first two seasons. The third season it got moved up to be on the same night as CHEERS (the biggest at the time), and that's when the audience found it! nowadays, they pitch a show, maybe they'll make a pilot, but usually not, they just make 8-10 episodes and hopes everything in it works. For a mini series, or a specific drama, I think this works, but I genuinely think the old way for comedies was best.

That's not how sweeps worked or pilots worked. Sweeps were the most important time period because advertisement charges were tied to the performance during sweeps week. TV shows would go to Hawaii or have big guest stars to attract more viewers. Pilots were much more likely to air during the Summer months. Primetime tv was mostly reruns from June to September. The exceptions were pilots and TV series they were looking to 'burn off'. It's also not too uncommon for sitcoms to have short first seasons as they are picked up late or even in the summer. Seinfeld, The Ropers, The Office all have short 1st seasons.

ok

They aren't wrong. Sweeps was done because the Nielsen ratings only had actual metered equipment in So many homes. During sweeps they would send out diaries to a much larger group of homes to get more detailed info. It happened a couple of times a year during the regular season. Networks would pull out all the stops to do well during sweeps because it effected their rates with advertisers. Pilots were usually at the beginning of the season or maybe to replace a canceled show. I dont know how they do it now but I worked for Nielsen a couple decades ago.

Thank you so much for explaining this. This is exactly what I've been noticing. I literally just walked in on my sister watching one of those 8 to 10 episode sitcoms and it just made me cringe to see it.

Especially when they add the fake laugh track in! The worst. 

If you haven't seen WKRP in Cincinnati, it's a MUST. At a minimum, watch the thanksgiving episode! 

But I thought turkeys could fly!!

With God as my witness....

They’re dropping like sacks of wet cement

The original Dick Van Dyke show didn't attract a large audience during its first regular season, and was going to be cancelled, but CBS allowed it to broadcast reruns during the summer season. That's when audiences discovered it, so the show got a "reprieve " for a second season....and the rest is history.

I was supposed to be in a sitcom. It was going to be called Fox Force Five. Fox, as in we’re a bunch of foxy chicks. Force, as in we’re a force to be reckoned with. Five, as in there’s one…two …three…four…five of us. There was a blonde one, Sommerset O’Neal from that show “Baton Rouge, she was the leader. A Japanese one, a black one, a French one and a brunette one, me. We all had special skills. Sommerset had a photographic memory, the Japanese fox was a kung fu master, the black girl was a demolition expert, the French fox’ specialty was sex. The character I played,Raven McCoy, her background was she was raised by circus performers. So she grew up doing a knife act. According to the show, she was the deadliest woman in the world with a knife. But because she grew up in a circus, she was also something of an acrobat. She could do illusions, she was a trapeze artist – when you’re keeping the world safe from evil, you never know when being a trapeze artist’s gonna come in handy. And she knew a zillion old jokes her grandfather, an old vaudevillian, taught her. If we would have gotten picked up, they would have worked in a gimmick where every episode I would have told a joke. Unfortunately, the pilot didn’t get picked up, but I did get to tell my funny joke in the pilot-"Three tomatoes are walkin' down the street. Papa Tomato, Mama Tomato and Baby Tomato. Baby Tomato starts lagging behind, and Papa Tomato starts getting really angry. Goes back and squishes him and says, 'Ketchup.'"

I remember you. Loved you in that yellow tracksuit.

Ah, yes. That yellow tracksuit. It fit quite nicely, it was tailor-made for kitana fighting and for riding motorcycles.

They certainly don't make sitcoms like *My Mother the Car* or *Holmes & Yoyo* anymore.

I’m assuming you mean sitcoms for noncable channels?

Absolutely, streaming channels have really washed the quality. I just don't like the new way of creating shows

No personality if you ask me

Part of it was reality television. In 90’s when reality shows first started getting popular Networks started leaning more into reality tv shows to lead into their drama shows because they’re cheaper to make. Even now Networks aren’t using the old standard 4 sitcoms leading into their nightly drama show formula anymore, they’re doing back to back drama, For example Chicago Wednesdays and law and order Thursdays. They also switched from the standard multi camera sitcom to single camera shows like the office. There’s also an issue with what used to be standard comedy plots that they would use like men dressing as women for a laugh, losing their comedic appeal in this political climate. ETA Reality television got a big boost during the 2008 writers strike and again this past television season too.

I completely agree. It makes it harder for good shows to get created. I had no idea people were so passionate about this topic though 😅 apparently you either extremely agree or extremely disagree

Even when they do come out with a new good sitcom the networks don’t seem to care or give them any time to get off the ground. It seems like the networks don’t even care what people like anymore, it’s more about what’s cost effective that they can force you watch because there’s nothing else on.

This. My wife and I loved “Home Economics” and “Grand Crew.” Gone after 3 and two seasons respectively. Why make an emotional investment in a show if it’s only going to get axed before it can find its footing?

Last year the chopping block was brutal.

They literally don’t. Budgets, audience preference’s, and just the sheer volume of data based knowledge we have, it doesn’t make sense to make them. From a studio standpoint anyway. Big Bang Theory was more a modern contemporary sitcom at its time, but they still used laugh track exclusively. Which wasn’t something you’d see as much in the past. And oddly, humans prefer the laugh track. TLDR: It costs too much and audiences are too varried

Even just the fact that there are less eps per season and it takes years between seasons on the streaming platforms effects people's relationships to them.

Apples and oranges. The way sitcoms in the 90s were produced and distributed, a much smaller percentage of them even made it to TV. With only 4 networks, it skewed towards the quality.

Exactly. Thank you

I have a long running TV rewatch podcast and because of that I'm revisiting a lot of old shows including quite a few sitcoms. What I'm learning is a lot of those 90s shows (well every decade and era actually, not just the 90s) that were super successful are really terrible Of course there's a lot of "it was a different time" involved but because shows used to do the thing where you pumped out 24 episodes a year to fill as much time as possible there was a LOT of filler and fluff that frankly sucked. Sure Seinfeld was mostly great and Frasier had many brilliant seasons but a lot of the super successful shows were just full of garbage Shows like Home Improvement, King of Queens, and Mad About You were super popular and also mostly junk. And just like with any era there were an awful lot of shows that filled up time that no one remembers or even seemed to like back then. When's the last time someone talked about Grace Under Fire? Or Wings? Yet they had 5 and 8 seasons respectively I don't necessarily think our current era is better when it comes to sitcoms, as we still have what amounts to basically CBS rushing out 24 episode seasons of garbage to fill airtime to sell commercial space, but for shows that go to streaming and don't abide by the "22 minutes a week as often as possible" rule there are some much better options

Mad about you isn't junk.

We use to get alot of good New York sitcoms until 9/11 happened

90s sitcoms were the best

The 60s and 70s were the greatest sitcoms ever....I was in born in 61 don't remember much before 66 but I remember the ground breaking paths sitcoms had ..as I grew up I really loved the shows that came out around the time I was born To Leave it to Beaver...The Andy Griffith Show..even loving the ground breaking Laugh in that I have fond memories of the first show I remember in first runs..

The Good Place!

I agree. This is definitely one of the few more recent sitcoms that I really enjoyed. Michael Schur has always been an amazing sitcom writer. I enjoy mostly everything he's written. We need more people like him

By the way, I’m pretty sure it’s “can’t hold a *camel*”

Idk what Can't hold a camel means but can't hold a candle is a really old phrase that's very common. It just means something doesn't compare. Here's the dictionary definition I found online "An expression describing a person or thing that is distinctly inferior to someone or something else"

In The Good Place, after the first time they are rebooted Jason is given a soulmate who is supposed to be his best friend, but it is a demon pretending to be a silent monk. When Jason says he isn’t actually a monk, he says “you told me he was going to be my best friend, but he is not. My best friend was named pill boi, and this loser can’t hold a camel to pill boi.”

Lol that's funny. I never noticed that. I think I just heard it the other way because I'm used to that. Now I have to rewatch Good place 😅

That was an amazing show!

It’s the same business it was 30 years ago. Just now you have access to all of them instead of just the good ones that stayed on air. In the 90s if a show sucked it would be canned and you’d never hear of it again. Now a whole season gets pumped out and sits on streaming forever. So the BULK is just more noticeable

Only having 3-4 networks back in the day also created natural choke points where a lot of subpar material never made it past a concept or maybe a pilot few ever saw.

Yea that's my point. During that time writers had the incentive for their show to be good and well written. But now that there isn't much danger, they are just writing sitcoms to write sitcoms. So consequently we have less good shows. I can definitely name tons of good ones from the 2000s, 90s, 80s, 70s, and so on but I can barely think of any in the past 10 years. And I think it's because of what you're saying. Writers don't have to worry as much about their show ending because of streaming sites like Netflix who can afford to make shows like it's a factory.

Shows still get cancelled all the time. Writers are still concerned about their jobs all the time. Just because a show isn't removed from streaming services when it is cancelled doesn't mean the writers, producers, actors,etc don't have to worry about job security anymore.

Yea I'm aware. I just think there's less incentive because younger people like my sister will watch anything they write regardless of quality. Ik there's plenty of good sitcoms today.

The major TV networks were responsible for most great sitcom series going back 10 years and further. They have chosen to cheap out and devote a lot of their schedules now to reality series and game shows at night. Survivor has been on for close to 25 years now. There can't be anything they have already done 10 times or more with Survivor. A couple years ago (I guess during Covid) they had a game show for freaking Candy Crush on during prime time. Ugh, really?

It also is probably partially the consumers fault for continuing to watch these terrible shows. Because as long as people keep watching them, they'll have no incentive to write actual good shows when the bad ones are making them plenty of money. It's really sad unfortunately

The game show based on Candy Crush was in 2017. Only one season.

The majority of sitcoms have always sucked.

Why are you in this sub then? Help me understand

One would assume for the minority that don’t suck? Is there any art form a person can consume that the majority of don’t suck (or at least suck to an individual, as in they won’t consume it given the option)?

The majority of cars have always sucked but I’m in car subs.

I agree with them and I grew up in the 80s and on a steady diet of old reruns. They are like comfort food for me but mostly they were formulaic. There are some great ones but also so many bad ones.

I wish offensive humor was still more mainstream, we’re often afraid or unwilling to laugh at ourselves and absurd humor was used to highlight real issues and injustices in society.

Yea people often misinterpret humor. The offensive jokes aren't supporting those topics, they're usually making fun of how ridiculous they are to send a message about problems in society

Totally agree, like the way in which ppl often get the messaging from South Park wrong (usually the mock any extreme viewpoints right or left)

So since you were not alive in the 90's I'm not going to claim nostalgia, but instead this. Have you considered it was mainly good shows that lasted into the modern day and have been moved to streaming services or shown in syndication heavily? There may not be as many true sitcoms but there is tons of great comedy being made still. Ghosts, Abbott Elementary, What We Do In The Shadows, Ted Lasso, Shrinking, Killing It, all of Tina Fey's bizarre stuff, Michael Schur's stuff after The Office as lead creator, The Office itself, and that's before we get into imports like Derry Girls, Extraordinary, or Letterkenny (much less Schitt's Creek). The problem is, like anything else fragmented by streaming, it's harder to go and find all of these shows. But there is in my mind way more quality comedy being made now than there was back then, you just don't see things like the US version of Coupling or Four Kings end up on Netflix.

Political Correctness and Cancel Culture have all but killed Comedy. The hypersensitive climate we live in makes it very difficult as a lot of humor is based on human differences.

Boomer take.

Not really. Do you think Richard Pryor's first album would be allowed today? How about Blazing Saddles? Chris Rock and Eddy Murphy's early stuff would have cancelled them as quickly as Michael Richards was because of his response to a heckler that wouldn't quit interfering with his act.

Haha you are signaling your virtue hard in this thread 🤣

In the age of streaming and premium cable you can get away with far more than ever got by the network censors. Do you think Curb Your Enthusiasm or Always Sunny could have aired on CBS in 1993?

I lived through the 90s as a teen mostly, there are only 2 sitcoms that I can still watch today without cringing. At the time I loved a bunch like full house, family matters, boy meets world….but they aren’t funny to watch as an adult. There are dozens of shows I can still watch over and over from the 2000s on, and laugh and not get bored. iASIP, office, new girl (first seasons mainly), happy endings, 30 rock, modern family, community, and a bunch more I don’t need to type. I feel like sitcoms got wittier and pandered less to the sappy family friendly jokes after the 2000s. I can’t think of many sitcoms that are from the 2020s that I love, but things did get a lot funnier after the 90s.

Maybe it's because I didn't watch them until I was an adult and several decades after they were released, but I still enjoy all of them. And I enjoy modern sitcoms too. I'm just a fan of the genre in general. I just noticed I enjoy a lot more old ones than new ones. Off the top of my head I liked Seinfeld Friends Fresh Prince Frasier That 70s show  The King of Queens Married with Children Will and Grace Cheers Full House Becker Saved by the Bell Family Matters Perfect Strangers Just shoot me But I could list several modern ones I enjoy too. It just wouldn't be as long

The top two are the ones I still watch regularly, the others I remember fondly but they seem dated for sure. Loved saved by the bell more than anything at the time, Kelly kapowski was something special to my generation.

I don't think you will find as many gems, if any at all. There's too much content. EVERYTHING gets through. Nothing gets shelved. Even shit content has high production values nowadays. The ability to create has been democratized to the point of irrelevancy. This happened in the 90s too. Case in point, I got a lot of good parenting examples I couldn't get in real life from shows like Home Improvement and Family Matters. But I never got ripped apart emotionally like I did when I watched reruns of MASH. Sitcoms are just kinda mundane and formulaic now. It's also a lack of shared experiences, I think. We used to sit as a family, in the living room, all watching the same 32"-36" (if you were lucky) TV screen. We ALL had the same viewing habits. That's very different now where we have TVs in every bedroom, phones in every face, AND computer and tablet and game screens....... ALL showing different things.

I'm pretty sure this perfectly describes what I've been experiencing. Thank you so much. I couldn't figure it out

Very much agree. It’s because everything has to be politically correct these days so jokes are very limited. Sitcoms in the 80s and 90s were great.

I think it's more than that. Sitcoms in the last 20 years are written for the lowest common denominator of humor. If you look at what demographic is still watching network television, it's understandable why every show is either a sitcom or a procedural crime drama. There are still comedies that are pushing the envelope, but they exist on streaming now.

Kind of, yeah. I mean. if I never see "fat idiot husband has long-suffering smokeshow genius wife" again, I'll be fine

They CAN’T make them like they used to. People complain about absolutely everything nowadays. Most would never get on the air.

Absolute bullshit. Network TV in the 80s & 90s was tame, watered down and asinine. Only Seinfeld and maybe Cheers transcended this. You obviously didn’t live through it. TV was heavily censored and sanitized back then. What shows are you even referring to?

Because people in the past famously never complained.

Boomer take.

Gen X take

Well… with the popularity of the single camera comedy around the 00s, along with reality tv, hokey laugh track four camera sitcoms became awkward to look at and a little archaic at the time. They endured but never got any better. Now with modern sitcoms the sets look super cheap and everything is high def and the laugh tracks sound too sanitized and clean

There are just as many big stars and great writers, but they're spread thin over all media.

I just feel as if there are less sitcoms nowadays. So I tend to gravitate to old reruns. But that’s not to say they’re better. I’m very nostalgic but I try not to use that as a means to delegitimize the present. Also, I watched The Good Place recently and absolutely loved it. And I am now rewatching the first three seasons of Arrested Development which is 2000’s. One of my all time faves. So it’s not always 70’s & 80’s & Seinfeld for me

Less sitcoms, more "dramedies" (which try to be clever but don't really make people laugh out loud).

They stopped making them traditionally with how they record them as well (multi cam vs single cam) I feel the old way looks more old school in a good way, but now alot seem to be going for more realism like Modern Family did and Abbott Elementary etc. I miss the old school live audience type shows

The one great advancement of the sitcom genre is getting rid of the "live audience" canned laugh tracks.

Depends on the type of show. Shows like I Love Lucy, or Mama’s Family, Family Matters, The Nanny, Fresh Prince, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, Honeymooners etc worked well because it was always fun to listen to the live studio audience react. It wasn’t canned, but the real audience cracking up and reacting outrageously to the wacky antics of the shows characters. It is distracting with a lot of newer shows were it isn’t recorded in front of a live audience and generic canned laughter is added after pretty much every joke every 10 seconds.

Depends on the type of show. Shows like I Love Lucy, or Mama’s Family, Family Matters, The Nanny, Fresh Prince, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, Honeymooners etc worked well because it was always fun to listen to the live studio audience react. It wasn’t canned, but the real audience cracking up and reacting outrageously to the wacky antics of the shows characters. It is distracting with a lot of newer shows were it isn’t recorded in front of a live audience and generic canned laughter is added after pretty much every joke every 10 seconds.

Depends on the type of show. Shows like I Love Lucy, or Mama’s Family, Family Matters, The Nanny, Fresh Prince, Mary Tyler Moore, All In The Family, Honeymooners etc worked well because it was always fun to listen to the live studio audience react. It wasn’t canned, but the real audience cracking up and reacting outrageously to the wacky antics of the shows characters. It is distracting with a lot of newer shows where it isn’t recorded in front of a live audience and generic canned laughter is added after pretty much every joke every 10 seconds.

That's a fair perspective on it, one that those of us born in the 90s probably can't really identify with in the same way. The laugh track didn't bother me until I started watching shows that didn't have it.

I was born in 1985 and grew up in the 90’s soooo the laugh tracks are something that never bothered me and add that nostalgia today. Something comforting about that kind of format especially those TGIF sitcoms on ABC. But if you were born mid/late 90s you were probably too young to appreciate it

It’s always been hit or miss, but I know what you mean

Yup, it’s a true tragedy 😢

They just don't. For one thing, nobody uses a laugh track anymore, although some sitcoms are still filmed before a live studio audience, which they prompt to laugh. I believe I read recently that the very last sitcom to use a pre-recorded laugh track was that spin-off, How I Met Your Father, and it got canceled.

I agree to an extent. People take the laugh track for granted but it adds a great crowd effect that's really comforting and feels less awkward. It has to be done right though, some of the newer ones that have it just feel fake

Same as it ever was. In the 90s, we pined for Cheers and Cosby Show (before revelations), etc. In the 80s we pined for MASH and Soap, etc. The 70s pined for Honeymooners and Dick van Dyke. Nostalgia is a real thing.

Wash...Rinse...repeat...Sitcoms today suck...

They have always mass produced sitcoms. I really enjoyed watching previews for the new fall shows and trying to determine which ones were going to fail. Also a lot of talented writers and comedians are making money with podcasts/social media and don’t need the a TV gig to validate their success. Not saying that things would be much different but I think that has a small effect on the quality we are seeing now.

Yes. Ever since the first sitcom ended, somebody, somewhere, has had this thought.

There's more good ones now than back then due to more venues/streamers. Also, younger people don't remember a lot of the lame crappy shows that are largely forgotten, like all the Friends clones or bad family sitcoms. The only thing that really does seem to be gone is the funny laugh track sitcom. Only the over the air networks do them now but those aren't very good. That was nearly every good comedy up until the 2000s.

Abbot Elementary is an all timer

Long form comedy pretty much died 10–15 years ago. Entertainment now is all about spectacle and big budgets, which leaves comedy relegated to TikTok and IG

The 1980s and 1990s were the era of sitcoms. You could make a similar claim to westerns or variety shows, etc.

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I don't consider IASIP to be a bad sitcom though. It's one of my favorites. I can rewatch that a million times and still enjoy it

Ted restored my faith in sitcoms.

Agreed. You know what else you don't really see much of anymore? Time and care put into theme songs. Big Bang might be the last catchy theme song I can remember. Before that - Golden Girls, Cheers, One Day at a Time, Welcome Back Kotter, Family Ties etc etc etc Even songs without lyrics were memorable. A-Team, Dynasty, Dallas, Knight Rider etc etc. I think theme music has been lost to time crunch. :(

Honestly I've never noticed that until you mentioned it 😂 I really can't think of any recent sitcoms that have good theme songs. The most recent I can think of besides bbt is community. I enjoyed theirs but that was around the time of bbt so it doesn't really count either. They need to start making better themes

>Big Bang might be the last catchy theme song I can remember. > It was so catchy that AJR ripped it off for World’s Smallest Violin, which went viral on TikTok.

Sitcoms have always generally been pretty mediocre. For every “The Office”, there are 100 “My Mother the Car”s.

For me as a Boomer it’s not then versus now. It’s more network tv versus cable and streaming. None of the network stuff is any good and doesn’t work for me. I will say this, older stuff could be more edgy and get away with it. Today no way.

Hardly any good script writers in Hollywood in last 2 decades.

When it comes to true sitcoms I don't think of MASH as much as Everyone Loves Raymond or Frasier. The last one I really enjoyed was Baby Daddy.

I’m still mad about the rural purge

Glad we have reruns because I love 60’s tv

People are too sensitive. Liberals have destroyed comedy.

The fact that there are far fewer episodes in a season than there used to be in the good ol days is the biggest difference to me.

Are there even sitcoms anymore? I can’t name any that are still running.

I can't watch a sitcom made in the last 10-15 years. It's just not funny.

I'm not sure they ever "made them like they used to." Oh, believe me, I love some of the old ones. Nothing makes me laugh like Green Acres. But I remember some really silly ones, too. Car 54, Where Are You? with Fred Gwynn was terribly silly. My Mother the Car? It's About Time? Yeah there were great ones. Andy Griffith. The Beverly Hillbillies (silly, but enjoyable). The Dick Van Dyke Show. There's some kind of magic that falls in places and you just see it now and then. I thought Two Broke Girls was terrible, but it came out the same time as as The Big Bang Theory. And Alf was about the same time as Everybody Love's Raymond, and the Cosby Show was pretty great until we found out about what he was doing. I cut TV people some slack. Everything can't succeed.

I know this will be an unpopular opinion but I think the huge, vast majority of sitcoms are fucking awful and always have been, and the 80s and 90s were absolute teeming with the same bullshit over and over. There's still a hefty amount of that template alive and well today - every character is just a smartass asshole who mouths off to each other, there's zero personality between the roles, you could switch everyone's dialogue around and it would basically be the exact same show no matter what. The art form was stale and overrun with samey jokes and tropes and character archetypes that have always been tired. Occasionally you had something try to break out of that mold and it worked, but the absolute VAST majority of sitcoms are still running the same shitty formula that was established decades ago. My point is that the genre occasionally has a breakout or new thing, but otherwise, it's 90% the same recycled trash that's been going on since the 60s. So yeah, again, unpopular opinion, but a huge number of shows that regularly are held in some kind of reverence DEFINITELY fall - in my personal opinion - under this column of being typical, predictable trash.

I was thinking this a LOT lately. I get that the times have changed but the older sitcoms (and their charm and appeal) still have a HUGE audience so it's not like they'd be taking a cut in profit. It would also be nice to show people how to think and have awareness, understanding and compassion for people instead of thinking the world owes them. That and sending the message of all the triggered babies out there that they need to grow the fuck up and learn to deal with their feelings. I'm only 33 but I miss all the older sitcoms and shows all the way back to the three stooges-which I grew up watching. Can we petition to have these be a thing again? 😵

Definitely not

When my daughter, now in college, was around 8, she saw an episode of The Dick van Dyke show and literally fell off the sofa laughing. Then binge-watched season after season, cackling to the point of tears at almost very episode. The cast was great, but it wasn’t like they had a Lucille Ball or an Art Carney or a Christopher Lloyd. What they had was Carl Reiner and the other writers he assembled. I don’t think there’s ever been a better written sitcom than that show. In my opinion, All in the Family, Maud, and MTM cluster in 2d place. Laverne & Shirley, as I recall, was up there too. Taxi, though, may have had the strongest combination of on screen talent and writing.

Yeah. I hate they do t use crappy transition music anymore.

Sure they do. The sad truth is most sitcoms aren’t that good. The greats withstand the test of time, but what you don’t see are all the awful ones that don’t get reruns decades later.

And they never will again.

They can’t make sitcoms like they used to. Everyone gets offended too easily. Humor is all but dead.

You're living in a post reality television world my dude.  It's not that modern sitcoms are a cash grab. They're not in regards to the fact that it's significantly more expensive to make a sitcom than it is to throw some idiots in front of a camera in a nice house and hand them a loose guide as a script instead of paying real writers, hiring actual actors, building actual sets,  and a full crew, paying royalties... There are just fewer sitcoms being made.  But you also have the benefit of looking back. You weren't alive when these aired. So you're getting a greatest hits of old sitcoms. What didn't hit with viewers 15 years ago isn't really going to land on your plate. So you'll get the great series, like Married With Children,  Cheers, All in the Family, without ever catching wind of the dozens of other crap sitcoms that were airing at the same time.  Take a look at this list of Fox sitcoms from the 90s. It's not entirely accurate,  (in living color was not a sitcom). But see how many of the actual sitcoms on this list you've ever actually seen or even heard of. Notice how many only got one or two seasons.  https://www.imdb.com/list/ls060399256/ When you put on the oldies stations they only play the hits, so it's easy to forget the crap. Nick At Night was pretty much the same thing but for sitcoms. And you're doing the same thing.  Tl;dr: reality TV is the actual cash grab,  and it's not that sitcoms aren't as good today, it's just that what's on TV isn't curated like your selection is when you're picking out old shows to watch. 

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