Entertaining TV 1950-1998, RIP. End of an era.

When Seinfeld leaves the air in a couple weeks, I will be left, for the first time ever, without a single entertainment program to watch in prime time. I never have watched drama, westerns or mysteries. And the last watchable sitcom will be gone and no replacement is in sight. I think I have sampled all the contenders. The only program that even comes close to watchable is the Drew Carey show. But it is too uneven to make me devote a half hour in the hopes of a few good minutes.

I estimate there are about 210 half hour prime-time slots a week for about five networks. And not a single watchable entertainment program. What a sad commentary on our culture.

I think its ironic that the very best comedy show ever was the last. Kind of a crescendo. And it was followed by an absolute void.

Try the new show Carey hosts, the U.S. version of the improv "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" It got higher ratings than his own show, and ABC has just ordered 13 more episodes. (Now if they could only import Josie Lawrence from England to join the cast!)

Seinfeld leaves a void because shows weakly similar to his came after instead of before him. His was already the perfected version of the format, rather than coming later and improving on something already solid. Drew Carey is brilliant, but he is still an afterglow of the more brilliant Dillbert comic strip which came before him. Prime time slots are really even fewer. Prime time sitcom territory is basically weekdays from 8 to 10pm. With five decent (I'm being very generous here) networks, that's 20 half-hour slots times 5 nights for a total of 100 slots. However, even most of these slots are not used for sitcoms. Instead they are more often cluttered (at least on the West Coast) with pieces of junk like America's Funniest Videos, Bloopers, Real Video, Cops, Stories of the CHP, Jerry Springer, etc. And rather than develop new shows, the networks threaten us with returns of old saws like the "new" Mary Tyler Moore Show and the "new" Cosby show, which weren't even all that great the first time around, anyway. It's a sad comment that for shows even near the caliber of Seinfeld, we are often referred by fans to productions in Australia and England and Canada, instead of our own shores.

aww come on, there's always Frasier. I find all of the characters hilarious. Just shoot me is pretty good too.

It's not like NBC's prime-time sucks.

-Cygnus
.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-._.-.
Anthony J. Biacco                           Network Administrator/Engineer
[email]                        Intergrafix Internet Services

There is a British comedy called Bottom which is every bit as good as Seinfeld. It's not on anywhere in NYC, but some cable systems and PBS stations do show it. Although completely different from Seinfeld, when I have watched it I kept wanting more, and there are lines I would use in every day conversations. I really wish it will be shown here. My point is that there are other sitcoms out there, they just need to be uncovered.

In article , [email] (R124c4u2) wrote:

sitcom

hopes of

about five

Kind of a