Word: sitcoms
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Flash forward to the year 2000. Seinfeld, the NBC sitcom starring Jerry Seinfeld as one of a quartet of angst-ridden New Yorkers, is finally going off the air after 10 acclaimed seasons. For the gala final episode, Julia Louis- Dreyfus makes a return appearance as Elaine (the movie career didn't work out) and meets her successor in the cast, Melanie Mayron. In a typically Seinfeldian life-imitates-art riff, George (Jason Alexander), now head of network programming, tells Jerry his sitcom is being canceled. Kramer (Michael Richards), elected to Congress in the eighth season, finds himself involved...
Unlike the well-made, two-act structure of Cheers, Seinfeld episodes are freewheeling, anecdotal and -- paradoxically, for a show based on stand-up material -- almost devoid of typical sitcom one-liners. Here is George, for example, complaining that his new job as a comedy writer is going to waste: "Can you believe my luck? The first time in my life I have a good answer to the question 'What do you do?' and I have a girlfriend. I mean, you don't need a girlfriend when you can answer that question. That's what you say in order...
...BOTTOM LINE: Never mind the macho grunts; TV's new No. 1 sitcom manages to straddle the gender gap expertly...
...fitting, for Home Improvement is one of those shows that don't inspire a lot of verbalizing. Murphy Brown is more trendily topical; Roseanne has more behind-the-scenes intrigue; Seinfeld appeals more to the thirtysomething opinion makers. All Home Improvement does is draw the biggest crowds. The ABC sitcom debuted last season to solid ratings (helped by a surefire time slot, between Full House and Roseanne). But this season, moved to Wednesday nights, it has powered its way to a new level. For five of the past six weeks, Home Improvement has been TV's highest-rated weekly series...
...side to Roseanne Arnold's beleaguered-housewife rants -- with traditional family-show sentimentality. It caters to the baby-boom audience while poking gentle fun at it (the kids are puzzled when Mom, played by Patricia Richardson, mentions such names as Edgar Bergen and Ed Sullivan). It toys with the sitcom format in ways both inventive (the little flourishes of animation that divide scenes) and annoying (the episode outtakes that run under the closing credits...