Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes from I Love Lucy to Community

by Saul Austerlitz

Overview

The form is so elemental, so basic, that we have difficulty imagining a time before it existed: a single set, fixed cameras, canned laughter, zany sidekicks, quirky family antics. Obsessively watched and critically ignored, sitcoms were a distraction, a gentle lullaby of a kinder, gentler America—until suddenly the artificial boundary between the world and television entertainment collapsed.

            In this book we can watch the growth of the sitcom, following the path that leads from Lucy to The Phil Silvers Show; from The Dick Van Dyke Show to The Mary Tyler Moore Show; from M*A*S*H to Taxi; from Cheers to Roseanne; from Seinfeld to Curb Your Enthusiasm; and from The Larry Sanders Show to 30 Rock.

            In twenty-four episodes, Sitcom surveys the history of the form, and functions as both a TV mixtape of fondly remembered shows that will guide us to notable series and larger trends, and a carefully curated guided tour through the history of one of our most treasured art forms. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613743843
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	03/01/2014
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Saul Austerlitz is the author of Another Fine Mess: A History of the American Film Comedy, named by Booklist as one of the ten best arts books of 2010, and Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes. His work has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Slate, and elsewhere.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 I Love Lucy: "Lucy Does a TV Commercial" 7

2 The Honeymooners: "Better Living Through TV" 25

3 The Phil Silvers Show: "Doberman's Sister" 39

4 Leave It to Beaver: "Beaver Gets 'Spelled" 53

5 The Dick Van Dyke Show: "Forty-Four Tickets" 67

6 Gilligan's Island: "St. Gilligan and the Dragon" 79

7 The Mary Tyler Moore Show: "Chuckles Bites the Dust" 95

8 All in the Family: "The First and Last Supper" 113

9 M*A*S*H: "Yankee Doodle Doctor" 129

10 Taxi: "Latka the Playboy" 143

11 Cheers: "Strange Bedfellows, Pt. 2" 159

12 The Cosby Show: "Pilot" 175

13 Roseanne: "Terms of Estrangement, Part 1" 191

14 The Simpsons: "22 Short Films About Springfield" 207

15 Seinfeld: "The Pitch" 225

16 The Larry Sanders Show: "The Mr. Sharon Stone Show" 243

17 Friends: "The One with the Embryos" 259

18 Sex and the City: "My Motherboard, My Self" 273

19 Freaks and Geeks: "Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers" 291

20 Curb Your Enthusiasm: "Seinfeld" 309

21 Arrested Development. "S.O.B.s" 325

22 The Office: "Casino Night" 341

23 30 Rock: "Rosemary's Baby" 355

24 Community: "Modern Warfare" 369

Acknowledgments 385

Bibliography 387

Index 391

Editorial Reviews

Astute and bursting with information—an entertaining treat for sitcom fans and a valuable contribution to TV history.” —Kirkus Reviews


"A compulsively readable and often laugh-out-loud funny study of the American sitcom." —Starred review, Library Journal

“[...] Austerlitz ingeniously and persuasively uses the genre of situation comedy as an American Rosetta stone, showing it to be capable of decoding itself (thanks to its endless self-references) and of making intelligible an entire social archaeology, [...]  Bottomless in its depth of research but as light in touch as the best of its subjects, Sitcom belongs in any home that has a sofa and a TV set.” —Stuart Klawans, the Nation


"[Austerliz] is capable of delightfully mischievous prose." —The New Republic


"[A] smart new book" —The New Yorker

“Austerlitz writes with a direct and punchy style… that makes for compelling reading.” —Paste

From the Publisher

2013-11-18
Sitcoms reveal America's changing reality, writes the author in this enthusiastic overview of an enduring genre. Movie and TV critic Austerlitz (Another Fine Mess: A History of American Film Comedy, 2010, etc.) brings his keen analysis of American culture to sitcoms, long the staple of prime time. Each chapter focuses on a single episode of a popular show, which launches the author's investigation into the evolution of comedy; the talents of stars, producers and writers; and the changing expectations of viewers. As the author sees it, sitcoms emerged in the 1950s as "field guides to the new postwar consensus, an effort to simultaneously reflect the lives of their audiences and subtly steer their behavior." The shows celebrated family life and domesticity, even when their subjects were sparring, childless couples, such as Ralph and Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. Most early sitcoms featured middle-class white families with stay-at-home mothers, children who invariably got into and out of mischief in half an hour, and fathers who did not always know best. Those sitcoms, writes the author, "promised comfort and familiarity, the certainty of an eternal present free of all but the most fleeting concerns." In evaluating the genre, Austerlitz sets the bar high: I Love Lucy was brilliant, while Leave it to Beaver was repetitive and only occasionally funny. Some of his discoveries may surprise readers: The long-running, award-winning The Dick Van Dyke Show and Cheers were almost cancelled after their first seasons; Carl Reiner envisioned Johnny Carson for Van Dyke's role; the creator of the racist Archie Bunker was "a card-carrying liberal humanist." Roseanne, writes the author, disrupted the idea of sitcom as middle-class comfort zone; Friends offered viewers "a replacement family" in the form of a group of confidants; Seinfeld began a trend in which sitcoms spoofed television itself, "undercutting its medium, ridiculing its traditions and its unspoken assumptions." Astute and bursting with information--an entertaining treat for sitcom fans and a valuable contribution to TV history.

Kirkus Reviews