In honor of the lack of new programming on during the summer, and my TV being busted, here are my picks for the best TV comedies of the past twenty years:
10. Futurama- Often overlooked in favor of more popular cartoons, Futurama was created by the Simpsons genius, Matt Groening, and featured the adventures of a package delivery crew set in the year 3000. Always creative and smart, Futurama utilized the malleable setting of a future in which everything is possible to take the viewer on a wild romp, satirizing everyone from Richard Nixon to the WNBA. Futurama toiled in the shadow of the Simpsons, never quite receiving mainstream popularity, but achieved cult status, and based on the strength of its syndication ratings is poised to make a return with new episodes on Comedy Central.
9. Scrubs- Starring previously unknown actor Zach Braff and a talented ensemble cast that features Donald Faison and John C. McGinley, Scrubs attempts the difficult balance of humor in a serious, often tragic setting. While dramas such as ER achieved success with a sober and mostly realistic look into the challenges faced by our hospitals, Scrubs went in the other direction, choosing instead to make light of life and death issues with an ever-increasingly ridiculous shtick that includes a barbershop quartet, a TV series about hospital vampires (Dr. Acula, get it?), and the sophomoric antics of Braff and Faison, who share the combined maturity of frat boy pledges.
8. Curb Your Enthusiasm- Larry David, the genius behind Seinfeld, proves that lightning can strike twice, with this brilliant HBO comedy that is often unscripted, and even more often funny. Set in L.A., Larry does not have to do much acting as he plays himself, a semi-retired comedy writer who manages to get himself into a series of hilarious problems, due to some combination of his obnoxiousness, rudeness or just plain bad luck. There are far too many highlights to list them all here, but let's just say he manages to piss off Joseph from a manager performance, owns a racist dog, picks up a hooker to use the carpool lane, is almost murdered by a gangsta rapper, and endears himself to his Jewish bretheren by inadvertendly preventing a baptism. This would be higher if not for its similarity to Seinfeld.
7. Cheers- I admittedly do not watch this show with great regularity, but I felt I would be remiss if I did not include it. This seemingly average show about some friends hanging out at a Boston bar managed to last twelve years, spawn a successful, long-running sitcom of its own (Frasier) and launch many careers: Woody Harrelson, Ted Danson, and Kirstie Alley (although I wish we could un-launch that one).
6. Friends- NBC picked up Friends in 1994, a show about 6 20-somethings living together in New York starring people no one had heard of at the time. 10 years and $1 million per episode later (plus syndication fees), Friends had become a international phenomenon that enthralled every member of white Americans. Millions of loyal viewers soon spawned making any real friends and instead huddled around the TV every Thursday to hang out with characters that were both more beautiful and witty than anyone you could meet on the streets of, for example, Duluth, Minnesota. Friends did not have Cheers' luck with spinoffs, as the Joey experiment was an utter disaster.
5. The Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart- originally hosted by Greg Kinnear, than Craig Kilborn, and finally settling on Jon Stewart, it seems to improve every year, hitting its peak in its "Indecision 2004" coverage of the 2004 elections. Stewart has perfected the satirical news show, slicing up all our national leaders and pundits with an often acerbic tone that belies the frustration that many liberals and independents alike feel towards the general state of affairs in our country. It has become a stepping stone for comic actors, as alum Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert have gone on to much bigger things post-Daily Show.
4. Family Guy- Seth MacFarlane follows the path carved out by the Simpsons, and creates a cartoon about an overweight idiot, with a much hotter wife, 2 adolescent kids, and a baby (sound familiar?). But FG would not be this high on my list if not for its uniqueness. Largely ignored by viewers the first time around (except for yours truly, I am proud to say I have been a fan since the beginning), MacFarlane created a niche with his fast-moving jokes, flashbacks, and innumerably obscure pop cultural flashbacks so diverse that no one person could truly appreciate all of them. Much like Futurama, FG languished due to the ineptness of Fox executives, only to be resurrected by loyal fans who had purchased DVD's in record numbers and made the Cartoon Network look smart for picking it up on syndication.
3. Arrested Development- I feel this show deserves an entire blog entry, but I will restrain myself to one paragraph. Narrated by Ron Howard and centering around one man's (Jason Bateman's) failing efforts to keep a dysfunctional family afloat, Arrested Development has possibly the best writing and ensemble acting of any show since Seinfeld. The Bluths are dysfunctional to the extent that they could include the likes of the Menendez brothers or Jonbenet Ramsey's parents (although they don't actually kill anyone). There is the youngest son who has a crush on his cousin, the sister who will take up any cause without actually truly caring, her husband, the always homoerotic brother-in-law, the one-handed, slightly-retarded brother, the failed-magician deadbeat dad other brother, the alcoholic, racially insensitive mother, and the father who merely is trying to stay out of jail. This show created such a rabid following that some University of Michigan Law Students created a club in hopes of saving it. Alas, they failed, and 3 brilliant series is all we'll ever have.
2. The Simpsons- Starting off as a feature on the Tracey Ullman show in the late-80's, no one could have predicted the cultural and financial impact it would have on America. At first defined by lame catchphrases such as "Don't Have a Cow, Man" and "Eat My Shorts" the Simpsons evolved into an entire world of ground-breaking and wildly imitable characters and plotlines that defined our generation. Every male born between the years 1978 and 1988 knows the words to the Mr. Plow song or can recite many of the one-liners that blundering father Homer Simpson states with regularity.
1. Seinfeld- "The show about nothing", Seinfeld managed to do what many of the above shows struggled to do; achieve critical success, in addition to massive popularity that still exists today. Combined with shows like Friends and the Simpsons, Seinfeld seemed to define the 90's, introducing many phrases into our national lexicon, such as "the puffy shirt", "sponge-worthy", and "shrinkage." Seinfeld seemed to transcend television and obtain a popularity and relevance reserved for more important things than a simple show with four friends hanging out, and doing, essentially nothing. Seinfeld had an unsatisfying finale, but followed the advice of George Costanza in ending the show before it became old hat: "always leave on a good note."
