Word: sitcomming
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...ever decided what television is really supposed to be for. Is the wondrous box meant to entertain? To elevate? To instruct? To anesthetize? The medium, in its sheer unknowable possibilities, seems to arouse extreme reactions: contempt for its banal condition as the ghetto of the sitcom, or else grandiose metaphysical ambitions for a global village. The tube is Caliban and Prospero, cretin and magician. "What makes television so frightening," writes Critic Jeff Greenfield, "is that it performs all the functions that used to be scattered among different sources of information and entertainment." Television could, if we let it, electronically consolidate...
Kaufman's most familiar incarnation is also his most comforting, a benign extension of Foreign Man tailored for situation comedy and appearing weekly, under the name Latka Gravas, on ABC's smash sitcom Taxi. But Latka fans who sought out Kaufman at his frequent unscheduled appearances at comedy clubs or who checked out his recent concert at Manhattan's Carnegie Hall got something of a shock. Lovable Latka is there all right, but reduced to supporting status; his cute malapropisms ("America is a tough town") are cut entirely; only his accent, and the loony-tune vocabulary, remain...
...VIOLENCE. Potentially interesting subjects, especially when you're talking about television. Robert Wood, one-time president of CBS, for example, vetoes a script for The Waltons because it describes (in lurid and graphic detail) Mary Ellen's "confused reaction to her first menstrual period." Lee Grant--Phyllis to sitcom junkies-- asks her daughter whether she lost her virginity on a ski weekend with a group of teenagers. "The subject matter was simply unacceptable for Family Viewing. It dealt too directly with sex." CBS editors jokingly called the episode--which the writer titled "Bess, Is You a Woman Now,"--"Did Bess...
Stuck back in Washington during the war, she is just a bit player here. That is dis appointing, but maybe ABC will reunite her, Ike and Kay some day in a sitcom spin-off-a sort of Three's Company Goes to Washington. Next to The Ropers, it would be hot stuff...
...those of any cable operator that for the moment they can loftily ignore cable. Nonetheless, predicts HBO's Levin, as cable presents better programming, "it will be harder for the networks to aggregate the kind of audiences they are accustomed to." In other words, the hot new network sitcom of, say, 1985 may draw a few million fewer viewers than the 50 million who now watch Mork & Mindy, and the networks may have to charge less for each minute of prime commercial time...