Word: sitcoms
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...course where you have to keep going even though you don’t know what you’re doing and that’s psychologically easier for men.” Proof of this statement can be found in the inevitable episode of every CBS sitcom in which the married couple is driving in the countryside and gets lost and the wife wants to stop and ask for directions but the husband wants to keep going even though he doesn’t know where he is. It’s psychologically easier...
Today's pop culture, he writes, builds on rules established by earlier pop culture (as, say, The Simpsons complicated the sitcom genre). And new formats such as dvds make audiences more receptive to complex creations that reward repeat viewing or playing. A traditionalist could say that new media are simply good at teaching kids to use new media, but Johnson argues persuasively that they also force kids "to think like grownups: analyzing complex social networks, managing resources, tracking subtle narrative intertwinings, recognizing long-term patterns...
...Smoking Room (BBC America, Saturdays, 9 P.M. E.T.) The BBC's The Office introduced us to the uncomfortable pleasures of working. This sitcom introduces us to the uncomfortable pleasures of not working. Each episode, set in an office break room, follows the meandering conversations of office malcontents as they puff cancer sticks, stave off boredom and consider such weighty matters as how the theme song to Little House on the Prairie went. It's a worthwhile way to kill half an hour--without the risk of secondhand smoke...
...American Dad” is also a sitcom-esque animated comedy with enough obscure pop-culture references and cringe-inducing ethnic jokes to give “Family Guy” a run for its money. MacFarlane provides the voices for both Peter Griffin, the loveable, overweight father-figure in the older series, and Stan Smith, the paranoid, flag-wavingly patriotic father (and, again, the inspiration for the show’s name) in “American Dad,” as well as a number of major supporting characters in both shows...
...What would you do to reinvigorate the sitcom? I'd get rid of the laugh track, 'cause the writers don't write as funny, the actors don't act as funny...