The short answer:

They aren’t smart enough.

The long answer:

I am not afraid to admit that I am a sitcom snob. Show me a good sitcom, and I will want to watch it repeatedly; show me a bad sitcom, and I will want to stab it repeatedly. You may be surprised that I even watch sitcoms: as you may recall, my preferred style of comedy is pretty dry, and most sitcoms are, after all, more renowned for their outlandish situations and wacky antics than for their ability to not appear funny.

To give you a sense of which sitcoms I think are good, here are my favorites: Seinfeld, The Office (both British and American), Arrested Development, Frasier, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, Cheers, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, and The Larry Sanders Show. There are a number of others that I will also watch and many others on which I am not fit to pass judgment, but generally I feel that most other sitcoms are bad. Even within my favorites, there are some episodes or seasons that I almost can’t bear to watch. Like I said, I’m a snob.

There has been a lot of talk for the last decade about “the death of the sitcom.” I’m fairly young, so I can’t really compare today’s sitcoms with those during any Golden Age or Renaissance, but typically the argument is that the public is tired of listening to six characters repeating setups, punchlines, and clichés on a living room couch with an audience laugh track for twenty-one minutes. Since reality shows are exciting and cheaper to produce, they have therefore been taking over television lineups.

I’m pretty sure that, to use one of those detested clichés, reports of the death of the sitcom are greatly exaggerated. However, I would certainly agree that sitcoms have some work to do before they can hope to win back the hearts, laughs, and minds of America. The solution I propose may seem absurd or foolish, but I think it may bear more credence than you might expect.

Make sitcoms smarter.

I even feel ridiculous writing that. America doesn’t want to watch smart television shows; if they did, there wouldn’t be any need for PBS telethons, and there would be even more CSPANs than there are now. If anything, America wants stupider shows, right? (As evidence, I submit Deal or No Deal, a show in which a contestant takes an hour to pick random suitcases and push a button when a number on a screen is big.) But shows can only get stupider for so long, and eventually people will want something smarter. I just hope it happens before season 27, Survivor: Podunk, Indiana.

I consider all of my favorite sitcoms to be smart. A smart sitcom is not necessarily one that has smart characters or takes place in a smart environment, but it should have intelligent dialogue, intriguing situations, interesting characters, and intricate plots. In other words, it should take some thought to enjoy. I want my sitcom writers to show me that they are smarter than I am. Sometimes I like to keep a tally: whenever something happens in a sitcom as I expect, I get a point, and whenever something happens that I did not expect, they get a point. If I ever win, it means that the writers are not doing their jobs. (I would normally say, “Either that or I watch too many sitcoms,” but, nah.)

Being smart does not preclude a sitcom from being ridiculous. On Seinfeld, every plotline is ridiculous, but it is undeniably smart. (Find me another show that can consistently weave four funny plotlines together in one episode.) Some of the most memorable episodes of Frasier are its farces, in which an event (typically a dinner party) carefully escalates from normal to utterly ridiculous within ten minutes. Arrested Development is completely unrealistic, and yet it is so full of wit, plot twists, and obscure references that you cannot watch it without feeling like you are missing out on something.

On the other end of the spectrum, being smart does not preclude a sitcom from being realistic or heartwarming. The humor in The Office thrives because of its realistic awkwardness, and the underlying love story (especially in the British version) is one of the most bittersweet that I have seen on any show. The first five seasons of Cheers were the best largely because of the dynamic between Sam and Diane and the new facets of their relationship revealed each season. Even How I Met Your Mother, which is not widely seen on lists of great sitcoms, makes my list above (the first two seasons at least) not only because their method of storytelling is meant to keep the viewer on edge but also because they know how to balance drama with comedy.

In some ways, the old sitcom formula is dying. People want to see something new and different, and this is the reason that single-camera comedies without laugh tracks are becoming increasingly popular. But really, it takes more than just a change in format. People want to see something different, and so, for all you sitcom writers, I dare you to be different. I dare you to be smarter than your viewers, to write a show where there is not a joke every fifteen seconds, to write jokes that are hard to catch or understand on one viewing, to write story arcs that don’t resolve every half hour, to explore your characters’ psyches, to make profound statements, to be true to life or else satirically false, to intentionally confuse and delight your audience. I dare you to try to write a work of art. Nay, I double dare you.

Because I’ll be watching.

Cheers,
-qm