Perhaps the form is completely worn out. Or perhaps, as with the action hours, the megacorporate heads are too afraid to look at America 2008 to do a sitcom that would relate to our lives.

Although it had its troubles, Roseanne showed that the middle class was not surviving well...certainly not as well as the Huxtables on The Cosby Show. If a sitcom was just as honest about the middle class today, it'd make Breaking Bad look sunny by comparison.

People crush out cigarettes on themselves.

Ms. Havrilesky asks:

How can something so stupid, vile and juvenile make me laugh?

Answer:

Because it's so stupid, vile ...

I watched the first two episodes of "Gavin and Stacy" last night and thought it was just fine. A focus on the two chubby sidekicks wouldn't work. We need them to offset the true-love goo of the two main characters. I thought the couple playing Gavin's parents were also terrific. It occurs to me that what makes this work is that it risks sentimentality. Some of my favorite shows of the last five years have all been on BBC--because of that interesting mix of sweet and sour they seem able to pull off. "Life on Mars" springs to mind as a drama that does this extremely well (and I'm not at all planning to watch the decaffeinated US version).

Most American sitcoms seem to be all tart or all sweet. It's tough in this cynical nation, it seems, to live comfortably in a grayer range, which the Brits seem able to do again and again in their programs.

replaying 'Babylon 5' on network TV, where it should have been all along!

"The Heinlein Movie of the Month", a weekly two-hour episode of the film adaptation of one of the Great Master's epic works.....except that 'Stranger In A Strange Land' is still too controversial for most people, except that 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress' is too violent for most, except that 'Starship Troopers' is full of thought-provoking soliloquies that will bore half of the dullards who watch TV, except that 'I Will Fear No Evil' would be condemned by every conservative on Earth

on second thought, TV is a wasteland; except for the occasional viewing of The Weather Channel, turn it off and read a book!

Can do a lot of things, another sign of the times, and might I add some of us aging baby boomers. Is that CBS hit or miss depending on which way you fall towards everything 70's is sure to stir up some consternation. For those that fall to the liberal side, it is pretty salicious, for those that fall towards the conservative side, well the people that participated in so called "key parties" were crazy. I was born and raised right through that period and can never get enough 70's born t.v. shows, what ever it is. If it's "All In The Family", to "Sanford and Sun". I would only hope that what ever it was that enveloped the 70's in the sense of broad liberal ideals never dies. The 70's has always held a aura of amazing tribute to soldiers, ideals, with stood the unconventional ideas of testing the marriage vows, with "lets live together" propaganda. This country has suffered more for the loss of gloss, for marriage,and the ideal for sinful lifestyle and lets try it before you buy it. So now the idea of burning your bra, via 70's esque Gloria Stieniem's of the day, to doing your own thing, but both sides have great parady and reproach. Today women are no longer proud housewives, but are in reproach for trying to get a guy to walk down the isle. Versus, the other way around, when women were married, but now decided that marraige was confining, and that extra-marital affairs were maybe not so bad. They were wrongful, in last nights great episode, "Swing Town" the young vibrant couple, that always initiate the get "key parties". Got a little surprise of their own, she found out she was expecting, but she confided to her close friend that she was going to take care of "it". Meaning that she was going to have an abortion, her friend spoke briefly to her. Asking her if her husband knew, she said "no". With this, the other women asked, why? Why haven't you talked about this with your husband, afterall isn't that why you got married in the first place. Well, what happened after that was just classic, she sits her husband down, and tells him. She also tells him what she intends to do, but before that, she confides in him, "that something is changing in her". When she continues further, to say that she is going to "take care of it", (very ambiguous)he replys, is that what you want. Well, she replys, isn't that what you would want? Not really, she looks slightly surprised, thinking that children were really not part of their scene. The show changes scenes with couples leaving, then in their bedrooms, with her husband sleeping peacefully with his head on her belly. It made for great resonate, and reassurance that as art imitates life, it is refreshing to see when certain instances happen, they are held as mirrors to look back at where we have come from, and as well as values and beliefs that will never change, because those things make us better.