When I was little, I watched sitcoms like Green Acres. (Eddie Albert did a great slow burn.) Later I watched All in the Family faithfully on Friday nights. I also watched MTM sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. (Newhart's therapy group was really funny!) I watched Happy Days but always found Laverne & Shirley unfunny.
In the 1980s I watched Cheers, which holds up pretty well. (I've been watching it recently on Netflix.) I haven't watched many sitcoms in recent years. I've seen Seinfeld in short bits but never watched a whole episode from start to finish. I've never watched Friends,whose concept always struck me as deeply uninteresting, or Two and a Half Men.
Recently I've been watching some comedies on video. I took up The Simpsons, and it's brilliantly written, at least in the early seasons. I love Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, perhaps because I have Asperger's Syndrome and David's character seems to have it too. I've watched a lot of South Park, though I'll be the first to admit that it's vulgar and uneven. But its Fat Albert parody and the boy band satire are hilarious.
I miss the variety show. When I was young I enjoyed The Red Skelton Show and The Carole Burnett Show. Skelton used to do a funny pantomime as a glass blower, so I've always thought of glass blowing as funny. And Carol Burnett did these skits with Ed and Eunice and Mama where Eunice lived this petit bourgeois life of not-so-quiet despair. This premise shouldn't have been funny, but it was!
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