Not So Funny Anymore

As both RB and KS reminded me, Family Guy returns to the air this Sunday night, in a much-hyped return to Fox. To be honest, I'm pretty psyched to see it, which is relatively rare by today's network TV, at least on the comedy side. Seth MacFarlane is on the cutting-edge right now, about where The Simpsons was in 1993 or so. Even then, he's running a cartoon, rather than a live-action show.

Name a great non-animated comedy series on network TV that's arrived on the air in the last decade or so. Is there one? Somebody will bring up Everybody Loves Raymond, but I've rarely watched the show. I think it's reasonably funny, but back in the 80's, that show would not have been held up as the example of terrific sitcom TV. It would have ranked somewhere around... I don't know, behind Family Ties and just ahead of Night Court and Who's The Boss.

But with even this show leaving the air, what's left? I love Arrested Development, but it's not must-see TV for me, and it might get cancelled for low ratings anyway. Somebody told me that the top-rated comedy is Two-and-A-Half Men, which would have trouble being the fourth-rated comedy in the 1990's... on Thursday night. If that's not #1, and I sincerely hope it isn't, then what is? The gawdawful one-joke Will and Grace?

It's time for someone to save sitcom TV again. Bill Cosby's probably not going to do it this time, as he did in the 1980's. I hope someone does, because seeing the laugh track disappear would be a tragedy.