Here are some sitcom-related posts on other sites worth your attention. Bold emphasis added by me.
• This is why you should read reviews of bad sitcoms you don't like: TV critics often get tired of just running down the show's flaws, so they include good insights about the broader world of TV. Here's the A.V. Club's Todd VanDerWerff on 2 Broke Girls:
In some ways, I think the push toward more and more jokes, rather than more and more character moments was what broke comedy in the late ‘90s and created a rut the genre is still crawling its way out of. If you’re just going to overload on jokes, the jokes have to be funny as shit, and that’s a pace no set of comedy writers can keep up. Even 30 Rock, the most joke-heavy show of the current glut of good comedies, has a strong central relationship at its core, one the show can fall back on whenever the gags just aren’t working.
• Salon's Ron Rosenbaum suspects that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie developed his "fusion of fat and authenticity" from watching The Honeymooners:
If you watch Gleason, aka “the Great One,” you inevitably feel that Chris Christie has styled his loudmouth lard-ass shtick on Gleason’s Ralph Kramden, a blustery blue-collar bus driver who served up a twofer of prole street cred and fat-guy authenticity.
• Tapped's Amanda Marcotte is not happy with Parks and Recreation's Leslie Knope becoming less of a dynamo and more of a "damsel in distress" (but Marcotte does not address the question of whether April's constantly saving Andy from himself is an anti-male theme):
For some reason ... the writers decided that hooking Leslie up with Ben, a nerdy assistant city manager played by Adam Scott, meant returning to tedious Hollywood clichés about how women can’t have both their careers and their love lives. To drive the knife in, throughout season four, Leslie stops being the hero of her own story and spends much of her time being rescued by her new boyfriend.
• Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet affirms Ken Levine's post about the reasons good actors are turned down for sitcom roles, especially "guys are not going to want to fuck her." Stonestreet writes:
I honestly lost count of how many jobs I didn't get through the years because no one thought anyone would ever wanna fuck me. [...] [Now] I'm enjoying the ride because I know one day it will all be over and then no one will wanna fuck me again.
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