I want to make a special call-out here for some of the worst popular programming in TV history, particularly the worst, insufferable situation comedies of all time. But worst probably isn't quite the right word. Lots of cheap, shoddy shows are made — but some of these I'm thinking of sometimes have some passing spark of wit. But any possible artistic merits are drowned out by egregious offenses against Geometry and Theology.
What I'm after here are the most actively annoying situation comedies ever, particularly ones representing special trendsetters in crappiness. These are the shows that send me into Ignatius J Reilly mode, wanting to throw empty Milk Duds boxes and popcorn at the screen, while screaming for the writers and actors to be put to the lash post haste! Who told you this crap was a legitimate show? How dare dumb down the world with these ridiculous affronts to Geometry and Theology?
In short, I hate these shows so bad that I would actively walk across the room to turn off the television rather than watch. I would not watch them while getting high. I would not watch them bye-and-bye. I would not watch them while drinking a float. I would not watch them with a goat.
I even give credit and forbearance to some fairly cheesy shows, if they have a little personality. As Jules would say, personality goes a long way. Gilligan's Island ran aground pretty quickly, but they did have some characters with a little personality. Even the dreaded Brady Bunch now looks like some kind of gay camp bourgeoisie parody. It's not high art, but it had flava. Then there are endlessly re-run shows that I'd about as soon take a beating as watch.
Without further adieu then, and in my best Comic Book Shop guy voice, here are the WORST SITCOMS EVER:
The Cosby Show
Worse than being really bad, The Cosby Show was utterly mediocre. The writing was nothing memorable. I know I have ended up watching probably half the entire run of the series, and I can't remember any of the story lines now. I broadly remember there being a couple of obvious plot points, like the son going to college. It wasn't particularly a comedy of manners like Seinfeld, delving into issues of the day like All in the Family or real family issues like Bernie Mac or even the Simpsons.
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Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Jackie
They must be bad if they make you go all Dr. Suess on us! I was partial to Arnold the Pig in Petticoat Junction, but that was my only interest in the show. On the other hand, I think The Beverly Hillbillies was a clever premise and lots of fun to watch.
2 - Michael J. West
Boo! Hiss! Boo!
I disagree, Al.
Boo!
And I have to say this, even knowing that you're a rural gentleman, even knowing that I'm from North Carolina...but it's true. The Andy Griffith Show is unwatchable sap. It belongs on this list if any show does.
3 - Duke De Mondo
Ha! An altogether wonderful screed. and is that "theology and geometry" carry-on a riff on Confedarcy Of Dunces?
4 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Great piece, Al. You only had ten worst sitcoms? Your just a young feller, there Al. I suffered through a lot more American TV than you did. "Love, American Style" comes to mind, for just a start. "Bernie Loves Brigette" about a Jewish guy marrying an Irish girl... I try not to think of the mental tortures I underwent as a prisoner of American TV. It's just too traumatic (sob). Let me get out a hankie (sob, sob!)
If Israeli TV were only better...(sob, choke)
5 - DrPat
Gee, Al - complaining about sitcoms being bland and free of ideas is kind of like complaining about pablum being flavorless and free of texture. You aren't the target market for either.
Sitcoms are designed to be inoffensive and easy to digest, requiring no maturity of taste. You don't need teeth to watch OR criticize them. Couch-potato fare, strictly, Al. You might as well complain that McDonald's fries are made with sugar, or that Chef Boy-Ar-Dee pasta is limp and doughy.
6 - Rodney Welch
Sitcoms are an easy target, and putting together a list of the worst is an easy way to show you have at least a threshold of taste. You, on the other hand, seem bent on demonstrating that you can't really tell good from bad.
7 - Rodney Welch
DrPat -- It's easy to say sitcoms "are designed to be inoffensive and easy to digest, requiring no maturity of taste," but it's not neccessarily true.
There aren't many comic novels or plays or movies that are as witty as "Cheers" or "Frasier" or "Seinfeld" or "Mary Tyler Moore" or "The Simpsons."
8 - DrPat
Sure, Rodney!
Want some Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and fries with that opinion? You appear to be in the demographic they're aiming for....
9 - Rodney Welch
I was hoping maybe you could prove me wrong.
10 - Al Barger
DrPat, I dig ya, but of course you're substantially wrong in overgeneralizing, particularly when you say "Sitcoms are designed to be inoffensive and easy to digest." Some are, some aren't. These shows managed to in fact be highly offensive to my taste. "Inoffensive and easy to digest" certainly doens't describ All in the Family or really even the Simpsons.
However, inoffensive doesn't mean bad or weak, necessarily. Andy Griffith wasn't at all cutting down their scope to be inoffensive, nor were they bland. They had a lot of character, and quiet bits of human drama woven cleverly together.
Brother West, I look forward to YOUR list of worst sitcoms where you take Andy Griffith apart. I intended the Cosby show to be a transgressive and less than obvious pick- but dissing Andy Griffith, that's transgressive. For my part, that show was not at all sappy. They fully dramatically earned pretty much every moment of sentiment on the show- and it was absolutely never cloying and manipulative in a Full House sort of way.
Indeed DrPat, I hate to be agreeing with Rodney Welch, but sitcoms have been some of the very best programming ever on a tv. The best sitcoms are about the most durable, re-watchable literature in video. I would appreciate if Rodney would grace us with a little breakdown of this last sentiment, though: "You seem bent on demonstrating that you can't really tell good from bad."
Note that this story was written for our July Blogcritics video feature on sitcoms. I knocked out this worst list relatively quickly, but I'm going to have to put more work into the best list. It'll be at least twice as long and a measure of devotion.
It's the nature of art that the good stuff tends to last, and the bad stuff fades. There were a lot of crappy shows made, but mostly the lesser ones fade and leave the stronger in our continuing memory.
One such thing that jumped out at me here, I was thinking about putting in some show to represent 50s or 60s papered over idealized family crap. But thinking it through, I barely remember most of the obvious names that are thrown around. I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen Father Knows Best, though one wants to blackmark it just for the title. Mostly, the mediocre and bland stuff has faded from memory and circulation.
But The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy will live forever. Amen.
Duke- Yes, "Geometry and Theology" is an Ignatius J Reilly riff. Among other uses, it was his firm opinion that what America needs is a good, solid king- a philosopher-king (though he didn't invoke the Platonic phrasing) with a "decent sense of Geometry and Theology."
To that end, the great book in which he took solace was a philosophical tome by a prisoner awaiting execution called The Consolation of Philosophy. I actually own a copy of this book, though I haven't quite gotten around to actually reading it.
Ruvy, I feel your pain. I vaguely remember Bernie Loves Brigette, but it didn't particularly offend me. Plus, I was looking for not just crappy, half-assed shows, but things that were archetypally bad.
Love American Style wouldn't really qualify as a sitcom, with no recurring characters or situation. Plus, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that show. It wasn't high art, but it had moments of entertainment quality. Plus, it's an interesting period piece, with some vague idea of representing changing American ideas of romance in the 70s.
Yes, Jackie, I'm really Deeply Offended when I break out the Seuss stuff. I've got to be really put off by something to not be willing to watch it even with a goat.
11 - Duke De Mondo
what was the name of the sitcom that had Hitler move next door to a jewish family? was it called Heil Honey I'm Home?? i'm not making this up, incidentally. it was cancelled after one episode, far as i know.
12 - Rodney Welch
Well, Al, you acquit yourself so well with this last post -- words I never expected to type -- that I can forgive your original list a little more easily.
My problem with it was that it seemed to go out of its way to be, as you put it, transgressive. It seemed largely created with the idea in mind of listing shows whose main sins are that they are highly praised or highly popular so that you can look like you're above the common rubble.
Sort of like when some wag lists the ten worst films ever made and starts with "Citizen Kane" or "The Third Man," or the worst records, say, and starts with "Sgt. Pepper" simply because it is everyone else's first.
In a way, I think comedies in general are kind of review-proof or opinion-proof; at least for me they are. The criteria is very simple: did you laugh or did you groan?
I have absolutely no problem saying I have laughed loud and often at your Top 5 (although "Raymond," I'm fully aware, is a pet peeve with a lot of people.) "Family Ties" had some laughs, too -- the premise got old but there were still some funny things in it.
I watch "Andy Griffith" regularly, and it's often sappy, but that matters less than its great cast of characters -- all of whom (Andy, Barney, Aunt Bea, Floyd, Gomer, Opie, Otis, Howard, et al) are more or less a part of life for a lot of people growing up in the South; so much so that I still like dropping in on them at least once a week.
They, along with Lucy and Ricky and the Honeymooners and the people at Cheers and the cast of Seinfeld, all have permanent residence on Mount Olympus of Sitcomhood.
13 - Duke De Mondo
I just feel like adding my thoughts on this particular issue, since it's been mentioned in passing; Yes, The Simpsons is most likely the most intelligent, incisive and damn funny mainstream show e'er to have skipped cross the telly.
14 - Al Barger
Rodney, thank you for your thoughtful criticism. I can appreciate your suspicion of my ideas of "transgressive" here, but let me make a general point about my choices in this kind of thing.
On the one hand, as per the slogan of my blog, I believe that sacred cows make the tastiest burgers. On the other hand though, I particularly hate the cheap unearned sense of superiority with which some folks will bash away at pop culture. I offer my continuing praise of The Beverly Hillbillies as evidence that my thinking doesn't run that way. My best sitcoms story will likely be full of rhapsodic odes to some big mainstream faves, obviously the Hillbillies and Andy Griffith for starters.
I sometimes bash away at popular icons in full expectation that this will cheese people off. Hey, sometimes people NEED to have their chains pulled. But I'm not doing so MERELY to be annoying, or to express some faux superiority to the masses.
For starters, I genuinely find the Cosby show not merely boring, but actively bad for exactly some of the aspects that other people seem to like. If Cliff Huxtable is your artistic role model for an ideal dad, I'm arguing that you should really re-consider your ideas there. What exactly makes Cliff such an exemplary model of parenthood? Dysfunctions and all, I'd ten times rather have Roseanne for a parent.
Speaking of transgressive, Duke, I'd never heard of this 1990 Heil Honey show. I'd LOVE to see this to find out what the hell they were thinking. According to Wiki, they produced as many as eight episodes, but only one ever aired.
15 - Al Barger
Looking up Heil Honey, I ran into an article on Wiki with shows that were cancelled after one episode- and some that never aired at all. Now I'm going to be seriously jonesin' to see this never released show:
One series that never made it to the air due to political pressure was Mr. Dugan, a three-week trial series set to be aired on CBS from March 11 through March 25, 1979. Starring Cleavon Little as a fledging black congressman, Mr. Dugan was yanked from CBS' schedule after several real black congressmen took umbrage after a special screening.
16 - Eric Berlin
The Heil Honey talk reminds me of the Mr. Hilter bit from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
It's really hard to get a through line on these selections. My Top 10 worst would be chock full of TGIF sludge i.e. mindless claptrap that shocks the soul into sedated submission.
Friends might be glossy and overly pretty, but it was well written (you could actually differentiate the characters from one another) and produced and was surprisingly funny from time-to-time. Arrested Development is and was brilliant, but I won't try to explain it to anyone not in the getting it camp.
17 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
"Coach" gets extra demerits because it seemed to last for 27 seasons. I don't think I was ever able to watch a whole show, but every time I came across it in changing channels, I couldn't believe it hadn't been cancelled years earlier. It isn't still on, is it?
18 - Chris Evans
I was JUST about to start blasting you for your choices...then I saw the author--and it all came together.
19 - Rodney Welch
Al, I know you like bashing sacred cows -- don't we all? -- but it can become a bit of an act, and at any rate icon-bashing is more effective when it's rooted in truth, which is where I part company with you on Cosby. Say what you will about all the positive values of the show -- that isn't why I liked it. I liked it because it was funny. Cosby's funny and so was his family, at least in the best episodes they were. It scored on the most important point, which is something Beverly Hillbillies, in my opinion, never really did, or not to the same extent.
You can agree with that or not, but if, as I said, a show is genuinely funny, then all the criticisms in the world simply don't matter. For years I watched and enjoyed "Friends," despite every supposedly hip and with-it magazine in the world preaching to me that I shouldn't. The same went for Conan O'Brien -- a show I loved and supported even when the TV critics were mounting daily death-watches. Funny trumps hip every time, and ultimately supplants it.
20 - Michael J. West
In fairness to Andy Griffith, Al, my dislike for it may be BECAUSE I'm from North Carolina. Because I'm not only from NC, but I'm from Winston-Salem, which they sometimes refer to as "the big city" on Andy Griffith. Mayberry is actually a thinly disguised Mt. Airy (note the similarities between the names), the little hamlet to Winston-Salem's northwest. (Right between them is a mountain called Pilot Mountain...ring any bells?)
But that means that AG reminds me of everything I hated about Winston-Salem: provincialism, sentimental romanticizing of southern small-town life, redneck chic, and cutesy little stores that have pictures of "Aint Bea" in the windows. I just couldn't stand the kind of place where there was only one barber shop and two policemen...the kind of place that considers WInston-Salem to be "the city."
In other words, all the things that warm people's hearts about the Andy Griffith show are the things that pushed me to get the Hell out of Winston-Salem at first opportunity. So to me the show is just a fairly stomach-turning reminder of what I escaped.
21 - Michael J. West
None of that, though, changes my other firm conviction, that Arrested Development was one of the funniest shows ever made.
22 - darkbhudda
Everytime I see ads describing domestic violence, the descriptions match up with what Deborah did to Raymond all the time on Everybody Loves Raymond.
23 - Al Barger
Brother West, I feel your pain. I used to feel similar resentments as a high school student at the time of the Dukes of Hazard. Hated them danged idiot rednecks. Then when I was away from home in New Mexico going to school, I found myself appreciating the Dukes and Lynyrd Skynyrd much more.
Brother Rodney, I just do not really see the writing or appeal of Cosby. Perhaps you could write such a thing up in more depth. Break it down for me a little more. But if Cosby and Friends do it for you, then rock and roll.
24 - Dave Nalle
This seems more like a list of overrated sitcoms than truly bad sitcoms. Most of these aren't awful, they just aren't as good as you'd expect from their ratings and popularity.
I mean, there have been sitcoms which were mentally and physically painful to watch with nothing remotely funny to them. I mean, what about The Ropers and Joanie Loves Chachi? Now those are truly awful - way beyond most of what you've listed.
Hell, Petticoat Junction was like a work of erotic art for some of us in the 60s, and Bosom Buddies was brilliantly surreal in its way.
Dave
25 - Al Barger
Bosom Buddies "brilliantly surreal"? You're kind of reaching there, Dave.
I picked some of these rather than easier targets. I hate Friends. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Corporate tools. YUCK.
Also, you could look at some of these, including Friends as being mediocre more than bad, which is sort of what you're saying. But that's worse. Would that thou were hot or cold, and all. I'd rather watch Small Wonder than Friends or Family Ties.