Comedia Verite'

If I may be serious , which I doubt strongly, I would like to take the opportunity to opine on the the last decade as concerns TV comedy.

I make no claim to be a Tom Shales, whoever he is, but I somewhat immodestly consider myself as the Omniscient Judge of What Makes People Go Ha Ha(--- hmmm, maybe I never should have quit therapy)

Anyway, if you'll indulge my delusion for a moment, I have always considered that person who looks for quality TV among the annual crop is akin to someone trawling a cesspool for diamonds.

However, thank creation, there will always be a few diamonds to be found in this otherwise fetid lagoon.

The diamonds, which began in the 90's and continued through the first four years of the new decade were Frasier, Friends , Everybody Loves Raymond and Dharma and Greg.
After they closed up shop, there was only the brilliant,and as if to prove the point, Emmy-ignored Everybody Hates Chris --but , alas that seems to be the price poor players must pay to strut and fret their half-hour upon the stage on what Jesse Jackson termed a Plantation Station...and are heard no more
(My son argued for Arrested Development which ran in some of those bleak post-1994 years, and I at first down-thumbed it as being too self-consciously, overclever for my tastes---however, I have begun giving them a second look and I believe I'm startin' to get it).

And now, as if by the hands of Providence, to fill the void left by ...Chris, comes four, count' em, four shows to rekindle the dwindling flame of hope for the future of comedy: Modern Family, The Middle, Nurse Jackie and Men of a Certain Age

All have one common denominator--- a sense of life, the real world, and real people who talk and act as real people talk and act, while discovering the natural, uncontrived and unprocessed humor which therein resides.
They're worlds away from the predictable sitcom with their inane plots and their set 'em up, knock em down joke scheme...oh, what comes to mind...TWO AND A HALF MEN!!

In future blogs I will take a closer look at each one, but in the meanwhile, check these---they do what comedy does best: makes us laugh at ourselves and our species, while imparting liberating wisdom.