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I watched the first two installments and was very disappointed, it only skimmed the surface when it could have dug deeper. A casual viewer of classic TV would not come away learning anything new from this. The "Rural Purge" was briefly mentioned when it easily could have been the topic of an entire episode. They mentioned that Ann and Donald on That Girl had to have a chaste relationship but failed to mention that in the original pilot Donald was Ann's agent which made test audiences uncomfortable as they equated it with him being her pimp! Despite being "woke" they failed to address anti-Semitism which could have been covered in the portion about That Girl: Harold Gould played Ann's father in the pilot but ABC thought he was "too New York" (code for "too Jewish") and insisted the part be recast.
Overall, I got the impression this was produced by millennials for millennials. If you have never watched a TV series produced prior to 2000 you might learn something from this but anyone else should skip it.
Overall, I got the impression this was produced by millennials for millennials. If you have never watched a TV series produced prior to 2000 you might learn something from this but anyone else should skip it.
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That is certainly disappointing. I was looking forward to seeing this series.
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What else would you expect from CNN?
As soon as I saw the poster and realized Roseanne is not in it, I knew what kind of woke trash this is.....
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So basically, it's more about the sitcoms of the 2000s (now) than anything else, I take it?
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It covers classic sitcoms but in the most superficial way possible: Did you know that Happy Days was set in the 1950s? Or that all of the main cast members on What's Happening!! were Black? If you've been in a coma for the past 70 years or just arrived on Earth from an alien planet you'll find it informative, otherwise there is nothing new here - absolutely nothing.
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It definitely is woke. Completely, insufferably woke.
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The minute I saw this was broken into theme episodes ("Facing Race", "Sex & The Sitcom") -- rather than a chronological history of the genre -- I lost all interest. That not only guaranteed this project would be agenda driven, but that they clearly wanted to avoid spending too much time on those pesky older shows which would have been unavoidable if they had gone decade-by-decade.
Hard pass.
Hard pass.
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Then why would they call it History of the Sitcom, if it wasn't all that much of one?
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Baiting the audience with the title?
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They probably had a staff meeting where they discussed ideas for shows: they wanted something cheap that used existing footage. Someone suggested a show about classic sitcoms. They approved the idea and turned it over to a team of producers. The producers decided they would use the show as a means to dismantle the patriarchy, disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure and embrace equity and diversity.
FX did a series called Pride that claimed to be about the LGBT community and its fight for civil rights. I gave up after a couple of episodes once I realized the show was focused primarily on trans women of color.
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I'm not doubting you, but how do you know "too New York" was code for "too Jewish?"
Harold Gould would later appear in a recurring role on "Rhoda," in which the main characters were Jewish.
Again, I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious about it, and how one sitcom can't be too ethnic, but another one can.
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Maybe I'm just now noticing something that everyone already knew, but this "woke" generation seems to think no societal struggles occurred until they were born--i.e. acting as if their pet causes like gay rights, environmentalism, and civil rights were not being fought for until they came along to "invent" them. It's really annoying to see them dismiss anyone else's efforts previous to theirs as if they did not matter.
But....like someone said before me (see what I did there?), it's CNN, so it's pretty much expected.
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"Too New York" was apparently one of several phrases used in "polite company" instead of terms that were openly anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, etc. That Girl and Rhoda may have only been 8 years apart but television changed quite a but within that time: All In The Family and M*A*S*H proved that a TV series could be socially conscious and still get good ratings. That Girl was a new series with new characters while Rhoda was a spin-off featuring a very popular character; Valerie Harper won three Emmy Awards for her performance on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (she would win a fourth for Rhoda). Rhoda's Jewishness was already established so her family also being Jewish was a foregone conclusion.
There was still plenty of anti-Semitism in the mid 70s: Bridget Loves Bernie depicted a marriage between a Jewish man and an Irish Catholic woman, it was the 5th highest rated show for the 1972-73 season. Despite its high ratings, CBS cancelled Bridget Loves Bernie after receiving viewer complaints about the depiction of an inter-faith marriage.
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Not a sitcom, but I recall a situation similar to this on Another World in the late 1970s. Mac Cory had always coddled and spoiled his daughter Iris, even as an adult. She, in turn, was a bitch on wheels to everyone in town and unable to hold onto a husband due to her fondness (some would say obsession) with being the center of Mac's life. Mac accidentally revealed to Iris that she was adopted, which sent her on a quest to find her birth mother. Her real mother was a Jewish lady named Sylvie Kosloff, though the show never mentioned/depicted her religious background. One could infer her heritage by the name and her characterization by the actress hired for the role. A vocal minority of fans took issue with WASPy Iris having a mother who was "ethnic" (that awful euphemism) but the Head Writer justified the casting by saying Iris needed her birth mother to be the kind of person Iris would normally shun, or at least not interact with in her social circle. It sounds silly now, but people were actually shocked by this, and the Head Writer enjoyed watching people stew over it.
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I had never heard of the show so I did a quick Wikipedia search, and for what it's worth, according to Wikipedia the outcries came from Orthodox Jews. I'm not saying there wasn’t and isn't antisemitism,but I don't think that would count here. At least, based on this information.
Jackie Mason had a short-lived sitcom with a similar premise, believe called Chicken Soul, Lynne Redgrave was the costar. I don't know why it didn't last.
This idea that viewers wouldn't accept "ethnic" characters always puzzled me because there have been precedents already set which showed viewers would. I read that CBS was leery of having a Cuban-American as the husband on I Love Lucy, but Lucille Ball insisted. Obviously, their fears were unfounded. The Jeffersons was a "Black" sitcom that broke boundaries just in that respect,but also by having an interracial couple. That show was a hit, and a long running one at that.
I wonder sometimes if the bigwigs in Hollywood are more racist and intolerant than the viewers.
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You’re close! It was actually called Chicken Soup. As to why it didn’t last, there were apparently a number of reasons. Jackie was under fire from some of the Jewish organizations around the country for the stereotypes he portrayed on the show. And then he got in some hot water for alleged racial remarks he made about NYC Mayor David Dinkins during his campaign, comments he claimed were taken out of context. The show was considered a decent hit up to that point, but the ratings weren’t what ABC had hoped for, especially considering it was in the time slot right after ROSEANNE. And after Jackie’s controversial remarks the ratings got even worse so they pulled the plug after only seven episodes.
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Odd coincidence: Jackie Mason died today.
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He voiced Krusty's father in the Simpsons.
And in a Roseanne connection, Krusty's voice actor served as her lead out at times when he appeared in Sibs, which flopped so badly it was pulled halfway and the remaining episodes never aired (it ended up on Sky One/Sky Two in Britain though later on, because of The Simpsons connection).
Sibs was basically what partially happened to the soap opera Eldorado here in the UK a year later. ABC saw the success of The Tracey Ullman Show, and thought it would work again. Hence most of the Ullman show writers and producers working on it, Gracie Films as the production company, Dan Castellaneta's casting (because of the success of Julie Kavner with Rhoda) and George Clinton singing the theme.
Don't know if it was a factor besides timeslot, but did the whole Ullman thing put people off watching Sibs in the end regardless of the likes of Jami Gertz and Marsha Mason?
Barely a year later after Sibs died, Fox had Stand By Your Man, a American adaptation of Birds of A Feather with Melissa Gilbert, Miriam Flynn and Rosie O'Donnell in the Sharon, Tracey and Dorien roles. Allan McKeown was EP on this like he was on the original, his WitzEnd production company made it and Sam McMurray was in the cast. Given the connections between McKeown and McMurray, that went down the gurgler, not to mention not being as remembered as Birds of A Feather was.
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