Robert David Sullivan

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 40: "Pilot," Arrested Development

40. "Pilot," Arrested Development (2003)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for 2012. Each episode will get a separate blog post, counting backward toward No. 1.  A list of the programs revealed so far is here (and on Pinterest), and an introduction to the project is here.

Lucille: If you're saying I play favorites, you're wrong! I love all my children equally.
(cut to scene earlier that day)
Lucille: I don't care for Gob.

I'd put that joke next to Archie Bunker's first racial epithet in terms of its influence on TV comedy. Here we have:

1.) The introduction of a character so self-absorbed and cartoonish that she makes Seinfeld gang look like the Waltons.

2.) A discrepency between a character's spelling (Gob, for George Oscar Bluth Jr.) and pronounciation (Job) that non-fans are sure to find confusing and that adds to the show's science-fiction-like cult status.

3.) A joke that depends on editing and that couldn't be accomplished on a traditional three-camera sitcom.

Stop blaming the victims for loneliness "epidemic"

The theme has become something of a joke after the publicity given to the Atlantic's "Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?" article, but yesterday NPR offered another suspect for the death of civility. It asked, with a possibly winking headline, "As Headphones Invade The Office, Are We Lonelier?"

Headphones or earbuds are becoming common in the workplace. Not just for listening to music on a break, they allow people to tune out their co-workers all day long. But in many cases, those same co-workers are still communicating — online. ...

"We're getting used to a new way of being alone together," says Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She's concerned that all these snippets of information, texts and posts are connections, not conversations. She says technology is letting us hide from one another.

The horrified fascination with loneliness — when will Washington declare war on it? — goes back to the 2000 book Bowling Alone and has intensified with the greater use of smartphones, hook-up sites, iPads, Twitter, etc.

I'm not convinced that loneliness is on the rise. I suspect that it's always been pervasive in free societies (as opposed to places with arranged marriages and the like) and that we're just disappointed that we haven't figured out a way to eliminate it.

Lively debate on Boston nightlife typically takes place on Sunday afternoon

The debate over Boston's dull nightlife, and the possibility of improving it, has flared up again in recent weeks. The spark was the launch of the Future Boston Alliance, a group that advocates for a "loosened-up" city; it was unsurprisingly brushed off by the 19-year-old Menino adminstration. (Note to blog followers primarily interested in my Top 100 Sitcom Episodes countdown: This is not off-topic, as the depiction of community-building is one thing that interests me about sitcoms.)

This morning, on the Sunday of a long weekend when just about everyone with the means has fled Boston, the Globe's Dante Ramos weighed with an indictment of the "Boston bar buzz-kill":

Nightlife — the bars, clubs, and restaurants where people hang out after hours — is a major part of the image a city presents to the world, or at least to a crucial sliver of entrepreneurial, highly mobile workers who are prone to comparison-shopping among cities. Yet Boston’s anti-fun image isn’t just bad publicity; it’s written into the law. Happy-hour drink promotions are banned statewide under a Dukakis-era state measure meant to curb drunk driving. Another state law requires bars to obtain a specific license before they allow patrons to dance. Boston’s entertainment license application asks venues to quantify their dartboards and wide-screen TVs. The rules are enforced. At a February concert at the House of Blues, Boston police broke up a mosh pit they deemed insufficiently supervised.

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 41: "Louie Goes Too Far," Taxi

41. "Louie Goes Too Far," Taxi (1981)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for 2012. Each episode will get a separate blog post, counting backward toward No. 1.  A list of the programs revealed so far is here (and on Pinterest), and an introduction to the project is here.

Taxi's Louie De Palma raises the question of whether despicable TV characters are supposed to be consistently despicable throughout a show's run. "Louie Goes Too Far," in which the title character talks about his personal appearance in a most embarrassing way, argues for some flexibility on the issue.

Making the token asshole seem more symphathetic (or "humanizing" him) runs the risk that a series will be accused of selling out. Some viewers were not pleased with the mellowing of Archie Bunker and NYPD Blue's Andy Sipowicz, for example, and the entire run of the just-completed House was accompanied by fans' concerns that the title character would get less misanthropic. Then there are characters like Mary Tyler Moore's Ted Baxter, and both Michael and Dwight on The Office, who seemed to lurch in and out of decency according to plot demands.

Not that consistent assholery has such a good record. M*A*S*H finally had to get rid of Frank Burns because his horribleness was so one-note (and because supposedly good-guy characters were being so sadistic toward him). And I don't think many people are complaining that Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson did not remain the jerk he was in the pilot episode.

Victory margins in presidential elections: Nevada, 1864-2008

Best buds with New Mexico, as long as they don't talk about what happened in 2000.

Victory margins in presidential elections: Utah, 1868-2008

We're ready to make a projection: Utah goes Republican in 2012. And 2016. And 2020...

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 42: "Off to Florida," I Love Lucy

42. "Off to Florida," I Love Lucy (1956)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for 2012. Each episode will get a separate blog post, counting backward toward No. 1.  A list of the programs revealed so far is here (and on Pinterest), and an introduction to the project is here.

"Off to Florida" made my list partly for personal reasons (it's a favorite of a longtime friend) and partly because it's just a well-written and well-executed example of a classic sitcom plot. This is the episode where Lucy and Ethel hitch a ride to Florida with an eccentric, watercress-sandwich-loving woman who they eventually suspect of being an "hatchet murderess."

She's played by Elsa Lanchester (the original Bride of Frankenstein) in one of the great sitcom guest shots of all time. Most well-known film actors who guested on I Love Lucy played themselves, but Lanchester is so much more fun creating a new character. Her "Mrs. Grundy" manages to come off as both a fluttery-voiced ditz and a terrifying drill-sergeant type.