Yes, US Coupling is awful, but UK Coupling (written by the guy who went on to Sherlock and run the current incarnation of Doctor Who, as well as write some of the best episodes of Tennant Who) is brilliant.
Also, Leap of Faith remains a contender for "Best Cast In An Unsuccessful Show"--Sarah Paulson, Lisa Edelstein, Ken Marino, the late Jill Clayburgh, Regina King, and Tim Meadows.
And did NewsRadio never air on Thursdays? If so, it would be Top 10 easy.
I always proofread my friends' papers between <span>Friends</span> and <span>Seinfeld</span> and between <span>Seinfeld</span> and <span>ER</span> during our Thursday night viewing parties during undergrad.
Considering some of the truly awful shows on their (and I maintain Boston Commons was the worst of the Time SLot Of Death shows betwen Friends and Seinfeld), Single Guy and Caroline in the City are ranked too low. (Seriously, below Outsourced, Will & Grace and Madmen of the People?)
That said, I'm with the writer on my completely blanking on the existence of Daddio. Are we sure that's not a ringer to catch plaigiarsts, like fake streets on maps?
Is it some heresy in the TV Commentariat to not list Seinfeld as No. 1 of All Time in any list like this? I realize I'm somewhere down with the Flat Earth society in support of my position that it just wasn't very funny, but it can't be the case that everyone thinks it's the best sitcom in human history, can it?
I was wondering about NewsRadio as well, Matt, especially since it was bounced around so much by NBC, but it aired only on Tuesday and Wednesday (albeit in 11 different time slots).
And UK Coupling is indeed brillitant. For instance, the cushion rant:
TPE, I am relieved to hear you say this as I always feel like the odd one out in that I just wasn't a big fan of the show. Glad to know I have some company on this.
You cannot be serious about Caroline in the City being ranked too low. That was a truly horrible piece of television. I mean, there are a lot of shows on that list that should be tied for last, but Caroline in the City was one of them.
Last week's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast had a segment in which each participant highlighted My Least Defensible Position. We can do that here someday.
C'mon, you can't be serious that it should be ranked down with offensive shows like Outsourced and Veronica's Closet, right? Sure it's middling, but it's not actively offensive to both taste and comic sensibilities like Will & Grace.
"Does not hold up very well" is not mutually exclusive of it being the number one on this list. I loved Seinfeld at the time, and still think a few of its episodes would be in any list of best 30 minutes of TV list (The Chinese Restaurant and Master of My Domain at the two that come to mind). It was innovative and fresh and creative and funny as hell. But I cannot watch it now, with the possible exception of those two episodes - it just doesn't work for me anymore. Who knows why I can watch every episode of Scrubs a dozen times but cannot watch Seinfeld. But that doesn't mean it wasn't the best thing ever to air Thursdays on NBC.
Of course, the absence of Cheers, Night Court, and The Cosby Show from the conversation makes the list somewhat suspect.
And I'd move P&R up, Friends up, The Office down (too inconsistent) and 30 Rock down (ditto).
Marsha - It may be it was the best thing on Thursday on NBC (I don't agree - I think The Office is easily superior and am starting to dig on P&R, something I'd missed until recently). But he goes further and says it's "the best live-action sitcom of all time", right? These lists invariably put Seinfeld on top, but that always strikes me as so completely safe.
Marsha, their criteria are kind of vague, but I'm going to let the absence of Cheers, Night Court and Cosby slip by since they weren't shows that had started during the past 20 seasons. On the other hand, putting those three on their would automatically push Will & Grace down a few slots so there's that to consider.
Will & Grace was wildly scattershot and had some truly bizarre plot mechanics with Karen, but was often quite funny, though I'm not unsympathetic to the "gay minstrel show" argument about Jack's character. It also demonstrates that you can have a funny sitcom where the two leads are both basically straight men.
Caroline in the City did feature Amy Pietz being admirably crass and the amusing ongoing plot of how she was in the cast of Cats and loved it because the job was ridiculously safe and secure, even if Caroline herself may be the whiniest character ever to have a sitcom built around her.
I'm a big fan of Will & Grace (in what alternative universe of suck is Mad About You considered better than it?), but I've never seen much validity in the "gay minstrel show" argument about Jack. He's definitely more of a manchild or a clown. Very little of Jack's character involved mincing or "ooooooh, girl!" stereotyping; in a lot of ways, he's nearly asexual.
Personally, I'd likely argue that Friends was better than Seinfeld. Friends at its funniest was as good as Seinfeld at its funniest; Friends was funnier longer than Seinfeld was (the last two seasons of Seinfeld were pretty painful); and not that likeability is a requirement for greatness, but the Friends characters were far more likeable than the Seinfeld characters.
To be clear, my complaints about Will & Grace center less around Jack and more around the writing of Grace, who I always found a shrill character that I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to spend time around (that said, Debra Messing always did the best she could with it and I can't quite see why she seems to have dropped off the map).
Messing had two seasons of "Starter Wife" on USA, and is the lead on "Smash," the Broadway-centric drama that's apparently the hot pilot at NBC for the fall, and considered potential Thursday 10 PM.
The one thing I will say in defense of American Coupling is that the one episode they did that was not a remake of a Moffat script was actually kind of decent. (I believe the A-story was about what a man can expect from a date where he pays for dinner.) Had the show started out as its own thing rather than a carbon copy - a comedy about sexual mores but one that had the sensibilities of its own American writers - maybe the reception wouldn't have been quite so savage and it would have had a chance to survive.
JJF, Caroline was one of the shows that was so bad that it actually made me mad the few times I watched it. Didn't they decide at one point that the gay cartoonist and the shrill lead were passionately in love? WTF?
Yes. People give me dirty looks when I say this, but after the first year, Friends was an extremely well-written and well-acted sitcom. A couple of the characters didn't work (Phoebe and usually Ross) and the show sometimes repeated itself too much, but after that first year, it was always smarter than it was perceived, for some reason.
As for Caroline, Isaac, Malcolm Gets may be openly gay but his character was always into Caroline from the beginning. I'm not trying to defend the show as actually very good but it was amusing in it's own way and nowhere near the bottom of that list.
Alan, that Daddio line might be the funniest thing that show produced.
Oh, issac, we have a point of agreement! Joey and Chandler were a fine duo together, Jennifer Aniston turned into a fine comedic actress there, and they had overall an excellent ensemble that always seemd to work well together. It's the kind of show I can still turn on and laugh a lot.
(Besides, totally excellent choices for parents/guest stars all around the board, especially Elliot Gould as Mr. Gellar.)
Okay, back to the map thing - are there people out there who scour various versions of maps for copyright violations? And hasn't Google Maps made this scheme somewhat obsolete? Or does Google Maps have fake streets too? My mind is blown.
<span>Oh, isaac, we have a point of agreement! Joey and Chandler were a fine duo together, Jennifer Aniston turned into a fine comedic actress there, and they had overall an excellent ensemble that always seemd to work well together. It's the kind of show I can still turn on and laugh a lot.
(Besides, totally excellent choices for parents/guest stars all around the board, especially Elliot Gould as Mr. Gellar.)</span>
I'm not one of those idiots who believes that gay men cannot play straight men on TV. But that dude on Caroline in the City absolutely was not playing a straight man.
You know, I was just thinking how well-constructed that episode about how Ross got Rachel pregnant (the one about Joeys' story that always worked) was.
I apologize for the accidental implication that you might have thought that about the character, isaac; I was merely attempting to correct a plot point.
I should add - I don't think Seinfeld was the best thing ever to be on NBC Thursdays (P&R and Community already eclipse it for me, and I'd put Friends above it as well), but I don't think the fact that it doesn't hold up is enough reason to knock it out of that spot on its own. Suffice it to say I don't think it's the best sitcom of all time - for that, I do think it has to hold up.
Friends was an excellent show that went off the rails in the last season or so. I've been re-watching the early seasons recently, and there's damned good stuff in there. If you want to see an absolutely perfectly written and performed episode of TV, watch (as I've said before) "The One with the Embryos," in which both the A and B stories work perfectly. (Yes, that's the Chanandeler Bong episode.)
Even if you can't get past David Schwimmer, take a look at all the great recurring characters - Mr. Heckels, Gunther, Janice (Janice!), Barry and Mindy, (as Finn notes) all the parents but perhaps most of all Christina Pickles and Kathleen Turner, Hank Azaria as Phoebe's boyfriend (not to mention Paul Rudd).... they did a great job of building a world there.
Any time Spacewoman and I are having a discussion and we get tripped up on details that aren't important, we end up going "fifteen ... no, sixteen ... no, FIFTEEN." And I am vehemently opposed to quoting lines from television shows.
Totally agree that Friends beats Seinfeld. Also agree that it's weird how poorly Seinfeld has held up relative to how popular (and funny) it was at the time. Also wondering whether Community and Parks & Recreation are actually funnier than Friends and Frasier, which I find impossible to believe although I watch neither show.
Yes, US Coupling is awful, but UK Coupling (written by the guy who went on to Sherlock and run the current incarnation of Doctor Who, as well as write some of the best episodes of Tennant Who) is brilliant.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Leap of Faith remains a contender for "Best Cast In An Unsuccessful Show"--Sarah Paulson, Lisa Edelstein, Ken Marino, the late Jill Clayburgh, Regina King, and Tim Meadows.
And did NewsRadio never air on Thursdays? If so, it would be Top 10 easy.
I always proofread my friends' papers between <span>Friends</span> and <span>Seinfeld</span> and between <span>Seinfeld</span> and <span>ER</span> during our Thursday night viewing parties during undergrad.
ReplyDeleteConsidering some of the truly awful shows on their (and I maintain Boston Commons was the worst of the Time SLot Of Death shows betwen Friends and Seinfeld), Single Guy and Caroline in the City are ranked too low. (Seriously, below Outsourced, Will & Grace and Madmen of the People?)
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm with the writer on my completely blanking on the existence of Daddio. Are we sure that's not a ringer to catch plaigiarsts, like fake streets on maps?
Wait, what? There are fake streets on maps to catch plagiarists?
ReplyDeleteIs it some heresy in the TV Commentariat to not list Seinfeld as No. 1 of All Time in any list like this? I realize I'm somewhere down with the Flat Earth society in support of my position that it just wasn't very funny, but it can't be the case that everyone thinks it's the best sitcom in human history, can it?
ReplyDeleteI was wondering about NewsRadio as well, Matt, especially since it was bounced around so much by NBC, but it aired only on Tuesday and Wednesday (albeit in 11 different time slots).
ReplyDeleteAnd UK Coupling is indeed brillitant. For instance, the cushion rant:
http://www.youtube.com/v/PxVHealguGs" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="170" height="140
TPE, I am relieved to hear you say this as I always feel like the odd one out in that I just wasn't a big fan of the show. Glad to know I have some company on this.
ReplyDeleteYep! Copyright traps.
ReplyDeleteYou cannot be serious about Caroline in the City being ranked too low. That was a truly horrible piece of television. I mean, there are a lot of shows on that list that should be tied for last, but Caroline in the City was one of them.
ReplyDeleteNo, I agree with you. It does not hold up very well.
ReplyDeleteLast week's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast had a segment in which each participant highlighted My Least Defensible Position. We can do that here someday.
ReplyDeleteC'mon, you can't be serious that it should be ranked down with offensive shows like Outsourced and Veronica's Closet, right? Sure it's middling, but it's not actively offensive to both taste and comic sensibilities like Will & Grace.
ReplyDelete"Does not hold up very well" is not mutually exclusive of it being the number one on this list. I loved Seinfeld at the time, and still think a few of its episodes would be in any list of best 30 minutes of TV list (The Chinese Restaurant and Master of My Domain at the two that come to mind). It was innovative and fresh and creative and funny as hell. But I cannot watch it now, with the possible exception of those two episodes - it just doesn't work for me anymore. Who knows why I can watch every episode of Scrubs a dozen times but cannot watch Seinfeld. But that doesn't mean it wasn't the best thing ever to air Thursdays on NBC.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the absence of Cheers, Night Court, and The Cosby Show from the conversation makes the list somewhat suspect.
And I'd move P&R up, Friends up, The Office down (too inconsistent) and 30 Rock down (ditto).
Marsha - It may be it was the best thing on Thursday on NBC (I don't agree - I think The Office is easily superior and am starting to dig on P&R, something I'd missed until recently). But he goes further and says it's "the best live-action sitcom of all time", right? These lists invariably put Seinfeld on top, but that always strikes me as so completely safe.
ReplyDeleteMarsha, their criteria are kind of vague, but I'm going to let the absence of Cheers, Night Court and Cosby slip by since they weren't shows that had started during the past 20 seasons. On the other hand, putting those three on their would automatically push Will & Grace down a few slots so there's that to consider.
ReplyDeleteWill & Grace was wildly scattershot and had some truly bizarre plot mechanics with Karen, but was often quite funny, though I'm not unsympathetic to the "gay minstrel show" argument about Jack's character. It also demonstrates that you can have a funny sitcom where the two leads are both basically straight men.
ReplyDeleteCaroline in the City did feature Amy Pietz being admirably crass and the amusing ongoing plot of how she was in the cast of Cats and loved it because the job was ridiculously safe and secure, even if Caroline herself may be the whiniest character ever to have a sitcom built around her.
I'm a big fan of Will & Grace (in what alternative universe of suck is Mad About You considered better than it?), but I've never seen much validity in the "gay minstrel show" argument about Jack. He's definitely more of a manchild or a clown. Very little of Jack's character involved mincing or "ooooooh, girl!" stereotyping; in a lot of ways, he's nearly asexual.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'd likely argue that Friends was better than Seinfeld. Friends at its funniest was as good as Seinfeld at its funniest; Friends was funnier longer than Seinfeld was (the last two seasons of Seinfeld were pretty painful); and not that likeability is a requirement for greatness, but the Friends characters were far more likeable than the Seinfeld characters.
ReplyDeleteTo be clear, my complaints about Will & Grace center less around Jack and more around the writing of Grace, who I always found a shrill character that I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to spend time around (that said, Debra Messing always did the best she could with it and I can't quite see why she seems to have dropped off the map).
ReplyDeleteMessing had two seasons of "Starter Wife" on USA, and is the lead on "Smash," the Broadway-centric drama that's apparently the hot pilot at NBC for the fall, and considered potential Thursday 10 PM.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing I will say in defense of American Coupling is that the one episode they did that was not a remake of a Moffat script was actually kind of decent. (I believe the A-story was about what a man can expect from a date where he pays for dinner.) Had the show started out as its own thing rather than a carbon copy - a comedy about sexual mores but one that had the sensibilities of its own American writers - maybe the reception wouldn't have been quite so savage and it would have had a chance to survive.
ReplyDeleteMaybe.
Guest was me.
ReplyDeleteI reviewed "Daddio," by the way. It existed. I believe my review included the phrase "it made me cry to my mommio to make it stop."
ReplyDeleteJJF, Caroline was one of the shows that was so bad that it actually made me mad the few times I watched it. Didn't they decide at one point that the gay cartoonist and the shrill lead were passionately in love? WTF?
ReplyDeleteYes. People give me dirty looks when I say this, but after the first year, Friends was an extremely well-written and well-acted sitcom. A couple of the characters didn't work (Phoebe and usually Ross) and the show sometimes repeated itself too much, but after that first year, it was always smarter than it was perceived, for some reason.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Messing update, Matt.
ReplyDeleteAs for Caroline, Isaac, Malcolm Gets may be openly gay but his character was always into Caroline from the beginning. I'm not trying to defend the show as actually very good but it was amusing in it's own way and nowhere near the bottom of that list.
Alan, that Daddio line might be the funniest thing that show produced.
Oh, issac, we have a point of agreement! Joey and Chandler were a fine duo together, Jennifer Aniston turned into a fine comedic actress there, and they had overall an excellent ensemble that always seemd to work well together. It's the kind of show I can still turn on and laugh a lot.
ReplyDelete(Besides, totally excellent choices for parents/guest stars all around the board, especially Elliot Gould as Mr. Gellar.)
Okay, back to the map thing - are there people out there who scour various versions of maps for copyright violations? And hasn't Google Maps made this scheme somewhat obsolete? Or does Google Maps have fake streets too? My mind is blown.
ReplyDelete<span>Oh, isaac, we have a point of agreement! Joey and Chandler were a fine duo together, Jennifer Aniston turned into a fine comedic actress there, and they had overall an excellent ensemble that always seemd to work well together. It's the kind of show I can still turn on and laugh a lot.
ReplyDelete(Besides, totally excellent choices for parents/guest stars all around the board, especially Elliot Gould as Mr. Gellar.)</span>
I'm not one of those idiots who believes that gay men cannot play straight men on TV. But that dude on Caroline in the City absolutely was not playing a straight man.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I was just thinking how well-constructed that episode about how Ross got Rachel pregnant (the one about Joeys' story that always worked) was.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for the accidental implication that you might have thought that about the character, isaac; I was merely attempting to correct a plot point.
ReplyDeleteI should add - I don't think Seinfeld was the best thing ever to be on NBC Thursdays (P&R and Community already eclipse it for me, and I'd put Friends above it as well), but I don't think the fact that it doesn't hold up is enough reason to knock it out of that spot on its own. Suffice it to say I don't think it's the best sitcom of all time - for that, I do think it has to hold up.
ReplyDeleteFriends was an excellent show that went off the rails in the last season or so. I've been re-watching the early seasons recently, and there's damned good stuff in there. If you want to see an absolutely perfectly written and performed episode of TV, watch (as I've said before) "The One with the Embryos," in which both the A and B stories work perfectly. (Yes, that's the Chanandeler Bong episode.)
Even if you can't get past David Schwimmer, take a look at all the great recurring characters - Mr. Heckels, Gunther, Janice (Janice!), Barry and Mindy, (as Finn notes) all the parents but perhaps most of all Christina Pickles and Kathleen Turner, Hank Azaria as Phoebe's boyfriend (not to mention Paul Rudd).... they did a great job of building a world there.
Plus we're all still quoting Friends, and it's still funny. "It's a moo point. You know, like when a cow says something."
ReplyDeleteAny time Spacewoman and I are having a discussion and we get tripped up on details that aren't important, we end up going "fifteen ... no, sixteen ... no, FIFTEEN." And I am vehemently opposed to quoting lines from television shows.
ReplyDeletePIVOT!!!! PIIIIIIIIVVVVVVVOOOOOTTTTT!!!!
ReplyDelete(And Spacewoman - it's a moo point - "like a cow's opinion. It's moo.")
Totally agree that Friends beats Seinfeld. Also agree that it's weird how poorly Seinfeld has held up relative to how popular (and funny) it was at the time. Also wondering whether Community and Parks & Recreation are actually funnier than Friends and Frasier, which I find impossible to believe although I watch neither show.
ReplyDelete