Word: sitchcom
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...absurd turned into the theater of cruelty, homosexuality became the matinee audience's concept of the in-joke, and Neil Simon went for meaning in the third act. The Beatles ran out of put-ons, and John Lennon took to bed. In accordance with Aubrey's Law, sitchcom has swamped or drowned television's handful of comic talents. Some Like It Hot shuddered into M*A*S*H, and the situation of cinematic comedy became a question of semantics. Debating topic: Is Catch-22 a "funny" film or a demonstration of cataplexy all by itself...
Aside from such timing gimmickry, the most promising innovation this season will come from NBC: My World and Welcome to It, a sitchcom about a cartoonist (William Windom) who daydreams. NBC promises that the show will include animated cartoons in James Thurber style...
...Then Came Bronson, with a peripatetic adventurer in love with his motorcycle; and ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which a widower with three sons marries a widow with three daughters. If that sounds like overpopulated plagiarism of My Three Sons, Fred MacMurray, the world's champion sitchcom widower, is getting married this season now that the boys are grown...
...early to write off 1968-69 as the silly season. Phyllis Diller, who bombed in an ABC sitchcom two years ago, will try a variety hour for NBC titled The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show. The format includes a twist: in one segment each week, she will interview a celebrity. But the real get-the-guest free-for-all should be ABC's Don Rickles Show. Rickles, the insult comic, will knock off a guest or two per weekly half-hour. ABC will also try TV's first weekly book musical, That's Life. For continuity...
...where the decision-makers blame their audiences' tastes rather than their own for what gets on the air, Dozier produced not only Batman but also two other series that contributed to TV's debasement during that period-Green Hornet and The Tammy Grimes Show. Tammy, an implausible sitchcom about a mindless heiress, lasted only four weeks and was, as Dozier himself admitted to his class, "the most conspicuous failure ever on television." Now that he is back in movies, Dozier feels free to lecture his longtime TV colleagues. "There hasn't been a meaningful show since...