COLUMN: What Happened to the Great Ones?

By Tobin Barnes

If there has ever been a Golden Age of Sitcoms, we aren’t in it now. Maybe it’s because all the versions of “Father Knows Best” and its evil counterpart “Father’s an Idiot” have already been done.

As long as I’ve been around, and I’m one of those boomers who’s never known a time without TV, there’s been a classic sitcom, if not a number of them.

The roll call is impressive for the bubble-headed couch potato in all of us: “I Love Lucy” (“Lucy! You got some ‘splainin’ to do!” And remember the heart-on-satin logo?), “Leave It to Beaver” (Couldn’t wait for Eddie Haskell to come on screen), “The Andy Griffith Show” (Who couldn’t whistle the opener, right now? Oh, and Floyd the Barber may rank with Woody as history’s densest sitcom character), “All in the Family” (Wait! It’s Edith who’s the densest), “Sanford and Son” (Even Fred cringed when Aunt Esther gave him the hairy eyeball), and “M*A*S*H” (Frank Burns, the hypocritical straight arrow you loved to hate in those counter-culture times).

Man, I’m amazing even myself at how many good shows there were through the decades. I’m almost getting a little weepy, maybe going into mourning.

Even fairly recently--that is, in the haze of davenport spud years--there was “Cheers” (the greeting “Norm!” strangely never got tiring, and, being a teacher, I still sometimes remind myself of Cliff Clavin), “Frasier” (Niles is one of my two nominees for best sitcom character ever, along with Kramer), and perhaps the best of the whole bunch, “Seinfeld.”

Oh! Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?

The choices today pale in comparison, even the two, and the only two that I watch now: “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Office,” the latter being a new comedy variation called a “mockumentary sitcom.”

Larry David’s “Curb...” wins the distinction of simultaneously irritating the heck out of me and entertaining me at the same time. Tough to do, but somehow accomplished in the show’s talk, talk, talk.

“The Office” is similar in that it’s in the irritating-entertaining genre.

The supporting cast is the entertaining part.

The Dunder-Mifflin crew (Hey, I get it, now! Like dunderhead combined with publisher Houghton Mifflin) is headed by Jim Halpert played by John Krasinski who’s mastered the comedic “look” patented by the great Jack Benny. After any and all of the ludicrous office moments that would turn a tomato ripe, the camera catches Jim giving the get-a-load-a-this look. And heck, it works every time.

Dwight Shrute, played by Rainn (his parents have some ‘splainin’ to do) Wilson, takes the hypocritical apple-polisher character introduced by Frank Burns to new heights. I still haven’t gotten tired of watching him put the credit card through the paper shredder in the show’s intro, and that flipping the tie over the shoulder is a classic.

Pam, played by Jenna Fischer, makes you wonder if she’s missing a relationship gene. Finally breaking off a three-year engagement with the shipping room bump-on-a-log, she continues to pine away after Jim but can’t pull the trigger, except to continually shoot herself in the foot. It’s hurting all three of us.

And then there’s minor gems such as the ice queen Angela; the exasperated what-am-I-doing here Stanley, who serves as the red flay for the political correctness gaffes; the ditsy serial-dater Kelly Kapoor; and the seemingly sad, ultra low-key Toby, the only person in the office to whom you’d confess your darkest secrets.

All those characters I have come to enjoy. It’s Michael, played by Steve Carell, who just doesn’t work for me. Not to say he doesn’t provide some humor. He can be very funny. And if you haven’t got a quirky boss to be the viewers’ punching bag in an “office” show, you ain’t got an office show.

But here’s the problem. Michael’s way, way over the top. Too far gone sometimes to even approach humor--it’s oftentimes more a feeling of “Yuck!” Satire needs more intellectual subtlety. This character is so bizarre, in reality he couldn’t manage his way down the street.

The producers should have asked me about him. I don’t know why they didn’t. I’d have told them, “Please, tone down the Michael character.”

Then, maybe then, they might have had a sitcom deserving to walk in the footsteps of the greats.

Tobin’s weblog: http://tobin-barnes.blogspot.com/