Jason

It'll certainly go on the "worst sitcom ideas" list.

The trailer made it look like The Wonder Years, including odd foreshadowing regarding his father's death. It doesn't look slapdash or like a quick cash grab. I think it's going to be well written and acted, but wholly inappropriate for the character and will not compliment the original material in any way.

mcnabb

I loved Three's Company when I was growing (I probably shouldn't have been allowed to watch it as an 8 year old kid but the sex jokes went right over my head).

I still watch the reruns but I wonder if it doesn't hold up to new generations? This was a top 5 show throughout most of its run but it's never mentioned these days when they talk about classic comedies.

GoldenJCJ

Agreed! I hear people use this explanation a lot when defending why they watched 2BG and if it was some nudity filled HBO or Showtime comedy I might understand but it wasn't even "tiddies" it was just cleavage! Who the hell woukd sit through that dreck for a little bit of cleavage?!

One I haven't seen mentioned is That 80s Show. One of the few "worst" sitcoms I gave a chance. It is the only sitcom I've ever seen that didn't have any jokes. It was simply "hey, remember this from the 80s" without any punchlines. I'm not even sure the show had writers, just producers who vaguely remembered pop culture from the 80s.

robin2099

It actually did air in syndication on the USA network for three years but that was it. It was pulled from USA before it's final season ever made it to syndication. I think the biggest reason no one else picked it up is the original was still so popular, most other networks just wanted that and not the inferior version.

Honestly, I'm surprised that those old TNBC shows haven't shown up on HULU yet. All of them are owned by NBC/Universal and I could see a lot of interest in those being re-watched. Saved by the Bell and The College Years is on there, why not California Dreams, City Guys and Hang Time?

I think Family Matters(at least the first five seasons) holds up really well. Urkel saved that show. So does Step By Step mostly. Of the TGIF shows Full House is the only one I can't watch because it's so cornball.

Honestly I don't think it's that, as much as in this PC era the premise of it being scandalous to have two guys and a girl living together with one of them pretending to be gay would be attacked endlessly by the social justice warriors. It's still a really funny show though and John Ritter's performance should be remembered.

I second everything said about Two broke girls btw. I've watched a handful of episodes since I work thirds and oftentimes can't sleep and I've never laughed once. Normally the only thing that I enjoy from it is Stiffler's Mom.

writer106

I now kind of remember California Dreams being aired on USA for awhile too. There has been a recent boost in 90s nostalgia and maybe Hulu would pick those up those shows.

LiquidSky

PC has nothing at all to do with it for me. Just my opinion: the show is horrible with bad writing and overacting (including Ritter).

Michael Corvin

I've only seen a handful of episodes over the years (it was before my time), and this is was my take away as well.

DthRdrX

Ritter was a good sport about it!

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The Infidel

I would have just said "it's gonna suck", but I get where you're coming from.

james2025a

Most US Sitcoms. Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, Modern Family....the list is almost endless. The UK has its fair share as well. Hi-de-hi, Are You Being Served, It Aint Arf Half Mum, Last of the Summer Wine, Allo Allo, Sorry.....and thats just the tip of the iceberg.

I tend to hate comedies that have idiot, sorry i mean Laugh tracks added to them. Moronic comedy for the moron who needs prodding to know when to laugh.

Jay G.

Surely you understand that there's a distinction between "bad" and "worst of all time" though, right? Even if you think 90% of all sitcoms are bad, 90% of all shows can't be the "worst of all time." There's some that are worse than others.

Of the US sitcoms you mentioned, none have laugh tracks. Two and a Half Men, Everybody Loves Raymond, and King of Queens were all recorded in front of a live studio audience, so the laughter was there when the show was recorded, not added later.

Michael Corvin

And of course Modern Family doesn't have an audience or laugh track.

hdnmickey

I also don't think most people care if it's a live audience, a pure laugh track, or a combo of the two. The point is that any sit-com is that much worse when you got what people generically call "the laugh track" bringing down every episode. And I agree with them. So many great comedies never had any of it, and it really makes even the better shows that do, really stick out as some what worse because of them.

Jay G.

I personally care, because I don't think a live audience necessarily "brings down" a show. Are late night talk shows brought down by a live audience? Is Saturday Night Live? How about the live episodes of 30 Rock?

Live audiences in comedy traces back to radio, where they did the same, back further to vaudeville. Even movies originally weren't without audience laughter; that was provided spontaneously by everyone in the movie theater. It wasn't until theatrical comedies were shown on TV that people experienced comedies without audience laughter.

There are some really smart, clever shows that make good use of audience laughter and the 3 camera setup. I enjoy a good amount of single camera, laughter free shows too, and I do abhor an inserted laugh track, but I feel that dismissing all audible laughter in sitcoms, whether real or fake, is a bit snobbish.

Goat3001

A lot of great sitcoms never had them, true, but the ones widely considered the best sitcoms of all time did have them.

Seinfeld, Cheers, Friends, Frasier and Married With Children to name a few.

It may be an antiquated practice to use a laugh track/live audience these days but I'm hard pressed to agree that the shows I mentioned above were made any worse by having it.

My opinion on laugh tracks has always been that if a show is good enough, you won't realize that it's there. It's the shows that aren't funny that make the laugh track unbearable.

Jay G.

Well, some canned laugh tracks can call attention to themselves, especially when they repeat the same canned laugh throughout the episode, not even going with a wide variety of canned laughs. You start noticing the same laugh being used over and over. Like on this clip from the Flintstones:

hdnmickey

To be more specific, is that I think that over time more awesome shows went without it became how clear how much it sticks out when they are there. I didn't post that I don't enjoy the classics that have them, but I certainly would like them better if they were gone. And that's the point. Now that it's obvious that they are not needed, they are not wanted.

hdnmickey

This comparison deserves a laugh track.

Rex Fenestrarum

Or the one guy who literally "yuks" in the Brady Bunch laugh track. Once you hear it, you can help but notice it every single joke.

I'll also defend Mama's Family. Back in the 70s\early 80s, it was common for a home to have one "good TV", usually in the living room. As the dad got raises and promotions, a new (bigger) TV would replace the living room TV, and the now "second-best TV" would get moved to the parent's bedroom, and their existing bedroom TV would be moved to the basement, guest room, garage, or - if you were lucky - one of the kid's rooms. And a lot of kids weren't allowed in their parent's room or the guest room. Point is, a lot of homes only had one decent TV, and since you were a kid, you watched what your parents wanted to watch. My mom was a huge Carol Burnett fan, and, by extension, loved Mama's Family. It was amusing for its time, hardly the worst sitcom of all time. Has it aged well? I haven't seen it in 30+ years, but my guess would be "certainly not". But I think a lot of people under 30 don't get that, growing up in the 70s, if your parents wanted to watch Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons and Mama's Family, your choice, as a kid, was to watch those shows too, or just do something else. And even if you didn't like Little House, it wasn't like you could just flip the channel to Better Call Saul or Fargo... the other two networks weren't much better. Even cable TV wasn't that great in the late 70s: mostly ancient reruns or "that same fucking movie HBO has already run 200 times this month".

mcnabb

I have no problem if you didn't like it, but it was intentionally written to be stupid and John Ritter's characters was supposed to be over the top, along with Suzanne Somers being a total ditz (she got dumber each new season). In a sense, Three's Company was the first show about nothing (before Seinfeld coined the phrase in 1992). It was a far fetched premise with a far fetched plot every week that revolved around all of the characters totally misunderstanding the situation they were in by walking in at the wrong moment. Either you got it and loved it like me, or didn't get it and didn't find it remotely funny like yourself.

hdnmickey

There were also far fewer options, so many people watched crap like Mama's Family simply because it might have been the best option that night, in that time slot.

fumanstan

Strongly agree, it was always weird to me how that seems to be a common complaint these days when it wasn't a problem before.

Jay G.

The word you're looking for is "farce."

rw2516

When I was a kid there was a color tv in the livingroom, and a black and white portable in parent's bedroom.
After supper the kids would hit the livingroom to watch tv, the parents the bedroom. At 9pm(8 central) we were shuffled off to bed and the parents took over the livingroom tv.
On Friday and Saturday nights the parents always went out and the kids had the livingroom tv all night.

Jay G.

Your parents were way too accommodating. When my parents wanted to watch TV, they did so in the living room; the kids were relegated to the basement with the older color TV with channel knobs that would have to "warm up" before it showed an image (and you'd sometimes have to press the reset button on the back to jumpkick it).

When we were older, we had the luxury of a "portable" 13" B&W that we could wheel between bedrooms. I believe I first watched Citizen Kane on that TV at something like 3 am in the morning.