With the sad death of Matthew Perry …
Mike, aren’t all deaths sad?
Trump?
Well, maybe not all. Carry on.
With the sad death of Matthew Perry, there seems to be a lot of talk about how wonderful “Friends” was. People of a certain age seem to think sitcoms started and ended with “Friends” and “Seinfeld,” but I didn’t care much for either show. In fact, sitcoms haven’t done much for me since “Cheers,” “Newhart” and “Murphy Brown” went off the air.
I never saw even one episode of “The Office,” and there’s another sitcom — something about Philadelphia — that has been on the air since 2005. Never seen it.
I did try “Schitt’s Creek” and watched the first 4-5 episodes.
Didn’t hold my interest.
There is actually one newer show I liked a lot and watched every episode of its seven seasons.
I thought Julia Louis-Dreyfus was wonderful in “Veep,” although I still wouldn’t include it on a list of all-time greats.
In fact, I’m not qualified to do a list of the 10 best situation comedies ever. There are just too many I haven’t seen.
I will, however, do, a list of my 10 favorites with a few honorable mentions. And I won’t even count down from 10-1. I’ll start with the best.
First, “The Simpsons” stands out in so many ways, not the least of which is that it’s still funny after 35 years and 757 episodes. It has been disrespectful and sarcastic since the beginning, to the point where then-President George H.W. Bush said America needed more shows like “The Waltons” and fewer like “The Simpsons.”
The reply from Bart Simpson? “We’re just like ‘The Waltons,’ sitting around waiting for the Depression to end.”
Second is the show that made all the others possible. “I Love Lucy” came on the air in 1951, but it was so far ahead of its time technically it holds up more than 70 years later. The show is the closest to a one-character show — Lucy and her supporting cast — of any of the ones on the list.
Look at how few scenes there are without Lucille Ball i them. When she isn’t on the screen, it’s usually because the other characters are talking about her.
Third is the second oldest show on my list. “The Dick Van Dyke Show” came on in 1961 and was one of the earliest great ensemble comedies. Carl Reiner was the great comic mind behind the show and Van Dyke himself was a master of physical comedy. His scene where he explains that pain in funny when it’s someone else’s pain is a true classic.
Fourth is a show that could be called an offspring of Van Dyke’s show. Mary Tyler Moore costarred as Van Dyke’s wife and a decade or so later was the lead in her own show. “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” had an amazing ensemble cast to the point where the wonderful Betty White was about the fifth or sixth banana. There are few episodes funnier than the funeral of Chuckles the Clown. And new forget that Lou Grant hates spunk.
Fifth is a show that aired right after Mary on CBS in the late ’70s. I’m not sure their was ever a funnier, more deadpan straight man than bob Newhart. It was tough deciding between “The Bob Newhart Show” and the one that fllowed it in the ’80s, “Newhart.” I picked the first show because it had a slightly better supporting cast, and because when the second show put on the best final episode of any sitcom ever, it was a reference to the first show.
Sixth on my list was my favorite ’80s sitcom. “Cheers” lasted 11 seasons and even survived the loss of two of its most important characters. Shelley Long left after five seasons and was replaced by Kirstie Alley, only a slight drop-off. Nicholas Colasanto died after four seasons and was well-replaced by Woody Harrelson as a similar yet different character.
“Cheers” made Ted Danson a star and Rhea Perlman, John Ratzenberger and George Wendy appeared in all 270 episodes and were a wonderful supporting cast. Maybe most amazing of all was Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane, who was with the show for 202 episodes and then did 11 seasons and won four primetime Emmys on the wonderful spinoff show “Frasier.” Oh, yes, and they brought back “Frasier” this fall as the spinoff of a spinoff.
Seventh on the list was a Broadway show and a successful movie before becoming a wonderful TV show for five seasons. Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon starred in the movie version (and a sequel) of “The Odd Couple,” but the power of television makes Jack Klugman and Tony Randall the best remembered Oscar and Felix.
An odd note, since we started this talking about Matthew Perry, but he played Oscar in a sitcom remake in 2015 that lasted two seasons. And that wasn’t the only other version. It’s a premise that gets done again and again.
The last three spots were tough ones for two reasons. First because they were a dropoff after the top seven and second because there were a half dozen shows to choose from. I want to start by naming great shows I didn’t consider for various reasons. The great Norman Lear shows — “All in the Family,” “The Jeffersons” and “Maude” — miss out because they really didn’t age well. All three are very much shows of the 1970s. “M*A*S*H” misses first because the movie was much better and second because in later seasons it became a political soapbox for Alan Alda.
Back to the list.
Eighth on my list is a show I mentioned earlier. “Frasier” was truly a wonderful show based on a character from “Cheers” with a slight twist. Instead of a psychiatric practice in the first show, Frasier Crane had a radio call-in show where he dispensed advice to the people of Seattle. David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin were as good a supporting cast as you can get.
Frasier and Niles were about as close as you could get to a gay couple who weren’t actually a couple and weren’t actually gay. “Will and Grace” came later.
Ninth on my list is “WKRP in Cincinnati.” This is a different show from the others on the list because there was no main character. It was just a wonderfully funny show about a struggling radio station. Howard Hesseman, Gary Sandy and Tim Reid were the closest thing to a main character, but Gordon Jump, Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders were important too.
The show did have maybe the funniest unfunny line of any show ever. “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
The 10th show on my list would be much higher — top five, easy — except that it technically wasn’t a sitcom. “Moonlighting” was ostensibly a detective show and was an hour long, but during the years it ran, 1985-89, it was as funny as any show on television. Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis may have hated each other, but they had amazing on-screen chemistry.
Glenn Gordon Caron was amazingly creative, but the show was hampered by his drug problems and ended up with only 66 episodes. But hey, birds gotta fly, bees gotta be.
***
If I hadn’t wanted to sneak “Moonlighting” onto the list, “Fawlty Towers” with John Cleese as an English innkeeper would have had spot No. 10. It’s hurt by having only 12 episodes. Similar problems cost “Police Squad,” which had just six episodes but wound up being three “Naked Gun” movies, and “That’s My Bush,” made by the “South Park” guys and only having eight episodes before 911 made George W. Bush much less humorous.