The situation comedy is now over seventy years old. When you look at the birth of Television as a medium, you can easily call the situation comedy the afterbirth. While the early days were retoolings of radio shows like Amos n’ Andy, the sitcom as we know it arose with what became known as the Domestic Comedy, or DomCom. These were shows like the HoneyMooners, or I Love Lucy, that centered around a family and the familiar trials and troubles they encountered, with a fresh, comedic face painted on. This fresh, comedic face quickly smeared off, however, as years passed and nothing new or vastly different arose from these familiar ’situations’. Sure, every now and then a female genie would appear, or a new setting like a television studio or bar would come into play, but the idea was basically the same.

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Friends and family going through the motions while a laugh track played in the background, so that we at home understood when something was meant to be funny. A brilliant and sometimes poignant sitcom would arise here and there, like All in the Family, or M.A.S.H., but typically it would be the same old story. The late ’80s and early ’90s were a remarkable time for the sitcom. Up until that point, nearly all families were shown as being wholesome and loving. There was a father who came home from work and put on his slippers, as his doting, stay-at-home wife brought him dinner and his plucky son told him about his day. Besides making us want to puke, these shows insulted our intelligence and had little or nothing to do with real life. In the late ’80s, shows like Married: With Children, Roseanne, and The Simpsons put a realistic and fresh spin on normal sitcom conventions. Here were shows that actually showed how a typical family can be. Dysfunctional, full of strife and constant fighting. The fact that humor was found out of this was all the more remarkable.

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This golden age didn’t last long. All of a sudden, it was in vogue to give a mediocre comedian his own sitcom, typically named after him, or if not, his character retained the comedians first name. Shows like Home Improvement, Mad About You, The Mike O’Malley Show, The Drew Carey Show, and so on and so forth were unleashed upon an unsuspecting public. Not all of these shows were bad. In fact, some were quite good. The problem was that, like sitcoms throughout the mediums history, almost interchangeable. Pick a random comedian, make him somewhat dense and give him a beautiful and smart wife who, in real life would be completely out of his league and wouldn’t even speak to him. Then give him a smart-alecky son and a teenage daughter that he has trouble relating to. There you have it, the 8:00 slot on monday night.

Maybe we just got tired of the sitcom. The new millenium ushered in the slow death of the sitcom. The last vestiges of sitcom brilliance, shows like Friends, Frasier, and Seinfeld, were either already gone or ending their run by the end of the previous millenium. Networks are notorious for pumping out formulaic shows that attempt to imitate whatever shows are the most popular at the time. It stands to reason that after 70 years, some of us might have caught on. People started looking elsewhere for entertainment, and instead of trying to create something new and different, or breathe new life into a dying artform, the networks just decided to pump out more of what we were watching. At this point, we were really getting into this thing called reality shows.

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It was a win-win situation. We were tired of sitcoms and their predictable conventions. We all were enraptured with reality shows, and the networks realized that this was actually a blessing. Sitcoms cost a lot of money. You need to hire a staff of writers, not to mention actors and directors. You need soundstages and a tight schedule. With a reality show, you don’t even need a script! There were scripts, however, because anybody with a brain knows that most of these so-called reality shows are about as real as Casey Anthony’s alibi. Regardless, many script writers WERE put out of work, and that was just icing on the cake. Even MORE money for these networks!

Hour-long dramas also started to come into vogue. Spinoff-happy shows like CSI and Law and Order kept pumping out the same ol’ song and dance. More crime dramas filled the airwaves, along with a ridiculous amount of medical-themed programming. Go figure, America loves murderers and doctors. They ought to put out a show where detectives solve crimes, and then shoot the perpetrators and rush them into the ER, where an idiosyncratic doctor can save their lives.

As of now, there are less than a dozen sitcoms on the broadcast networks, but don’t count the sitcom as dead just yet. It finally looks like this archaic three-act formula is having some life breathed back into it. Sitcoms traditionally are filmed in a soundstage with three static cameras set up. The actors rehearse their lines, call it a day, and a laugh track is put into it. Shows like Arrested Development and Titus helped to doctor this hackneyed way of doing things. They did away with the laugh tracks, and actually picked up the camera and moved it around. Malcom in the Middle also used this concept to a pretty high degree of success. These shows are all defunct now, but they are heralded for bringing something different to the table. Cable has helped to keep the life-support system going for our poor, comatose sitcom. Shows like the Sarah Silverman Program and Monk are stripping away conventions and building a better mousetrap. There is hope yet for the sitcom, but the fact of the matter is that the sitcom as we knew it has probably gone the way of the passenger pigeon. I bet you thought I was going to say dodo.

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We know who Shot Jr. and we know who framed Roger Rabbit. We know several people who shot the sheriff and I don’t think anyone cares about the deputy. But who strangled the sitcom in the mens room? I think we all did. Most of the sitcoms themselves grew lazy and didn’t even bother with rocking the boat. They just replaced Jackie Gleason with Fred Flintstone, and replaced Fred Flintsone with Jim Belushi. The networks gave up on the sitcom happily when they realized they could save precious dollars pumping out reality and game shows. We ourselves are to blame, though, for failing to notice the few brilliant diamonds in the rough that glimmered amongst the heap of Charlie Sheen vehicles and Single People in New York. Most of these gems that attempted to bring something fresh and different to the table were cast aside, and some that still exist today don’t get the recognition they deserve. Oh well, they shouldn’t put a show like that against Deal or No Deal anyways.