Robert David Sullivan

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 88: "Greenzo," 30 Rock

88. "Greenzo," 30 Rock (2007)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for winter 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 an introduction to the project is here.

Looking at this episode nearly five years after it first aired, I'm struck by how funny Kenneth is when he's genuinely angry, as opposed to grinning like an idiot even when he tells his friends that the world is ending and they're all going to hell. I don't know why the 30 Rock writers seem so reluctant to bring back Pissed Off Kenneth when he was in one of the show's best episodes.

"Greenzo" has a lot of stuff that I normally don't care for in sitcoms. It's got three unconnected storylines (which all happen to be good), stunt casting (all clever, including David Schwimmer basically telling Today Show host Meredith Viera to shut up), and a bunch of gratuituous cutaway gags (but who can resist a campaign ad warning of Hillary Clinton's plan for an "all-homosexual" army?). Even the jazzy incidental music, so often a stand-in for a laugh track on single-camera sitcoms, actually works to build comic momentum in "Greenzo," especially in the run-up to Kenneth's disastrous party.

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 89: "Big Brother," Yes, Minister

89. "Big Brother," Yes, Minister (1980)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for winter 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 an introduction to the project is here.

Yes, Minister is one reason I was never wild about the far more idealistic American drama The West Wing. The British satire, which pits well-meaning but rather cowardly cabinet minister Jim Hacker against red tape and bureaucracy, can be enjoyed by those on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson would see it as proof that the government is a bloated, slow-moving creature whose only purpose is to suck up more and more money. But to Leslie Knope, the lesson of the sitcom would be that government needs energetic reformers (like herself) to shake the old boys' network out of its torpor.

In an echo of the previous episode on this list ("Daphne's Room"), "Big Brother" deals, at least tangentally, with privacy issues. Hacker, new to the cabinet, is saddled with the implementation of a "national database" with details on every citizen — much like Facebook without the cat avatars. He's flummoxed when a TV interviewer inquires about safeguards against the leaking of personal information (quotes from TV.com):

Jim: I'm glad you asked me that question, because... It's a question a lot of people are asking. And why? Because a lot of people want to know the answer to it... and let's be quite clear about this, without beating about the bush, the plain fact of the matter is... that it's a very important question indeed and people have a right to know.
Interviewer: Minister, we haven't yet had the answer.  
Jim: I'm sorry, what was the question?

Blogging update: Sitcoms, politics, and anything else you're interested in

My blog posts may be shorter this week, since I have deadlines for the freelance work that actually provides me with an income (writing and editing on public policy matters). But I welcome new readers and will try to keep the Top 100 Sitcom Episodes countdown proceeding on schedule.

Older readers of the blog may wonder what happened to posts on politics, urban life, Boston, and the like. There will be some more political posts as we get closer to the fall (like my 100-year charts and my piece on "What Each State Does Best in Presidential Politics"). Other stuff depends on my work schedule and my success rate at finding interesting experiences.

Please comment or e-mail if you have suggestions, questions, rebuttals, etc. Thanks for reading!

 

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 90: "Daphne's Room," Frasier

90. "Daphne's Room," Frasier (1995)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for winter 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 an introduction to the project is here. NOTE: Thanks to the A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff for tweeting about the project!

At least half of all sitcoms are primarily concerned with how people share households without "driving each other crazy." In the 1950s, this was kind of boring, since most sitcoms were about married couples, usually with young kids, and writers couldn't have the characters go at each other's throats because Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? hadn't been written yet and couldn't be parodied. And even Edward Albee didn't put child actors in his play.

Plot possibilities grew enormously as more and more sitcoms featured grown children still living at home (like Steptoe/Sanford and Son and All in the Family) and, then, completely unrelated adults (like The Odd Couple). There was more comic tension because the characters could threaten to move out, and the very survival of the household was at stake in many episodes. And as sitcoms got more risque (from Three's Company to Friends), writers could add all kinds of plots involving sexual tension and jealousy. Funnily enough, America has evolved to become more like the modern sitcom, with more and more households that include adults of different generations.

 

Another vote for multi-camera sitcoms

The groundswell for a return to decently written multi-camera sitcoms continues with the A.V. Club's Joel Keller, who contributed to a forum on "magic pop-culture wishes":

When a show like Frasier or Everybody Loves Raymond comes along, the comedy seems so natural and effortless that it’s easy to forget the show is being done in front of an audience. Thanks to CBS, TV Land, and—surprisingly—Disney and Nick, the format is far from dead. But with more writers coming up who were “raised” on web shorts, Adult Swim, and single-camera shows like The Office, the legions who were students of the multi-camera form are starting to disappear.

Sadly, President Obama completely ignored the shortage of good multi-camera sitcom writers in his State of the Union address.

Top 100 sitcom episodes of all time, No. 91: "The New Car," The Odd Couple

91. "The New Car," The Odd Couple (1973)

Welcome to the “100 Best Sitcom Episodes of All Time,” a countdown for winter 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 an introduction to the project is here. 

"The New Car" is what I call a Twonky episode, named after the 1953 schlock film about a new TV set that terrorizes its owner (see clip at bottom of post). In our last post, we learned from sitcoms that changing one's appearance is a bad idea. This time, the lesson is that adding any object bigger than a breadbox to one's household is a bad idea, and the object must be banished by the end of the episode.

It's happened with a motorcycle on The Dick Van Dyke Show, "Barney's First Car" on The Andy Griffith Show, a fish tank on Everybody Loves Raymond, and a piano on Will & Grace. It even happened with a $2,000 toilet on Raising Hope. (I thought the Chance Family deserved to keep that one; it's not like it messed up the set design of the show.)