[opendtv] Family !@%$#%' Ties

Family !@%$#%' Ties
The Friends have dispersed, Raymond has shed his parents, and Frasier 
has left the building. The sitcom is dead. Or is it? HBO and a 
foulmouthed Boston comedian hope to bring back the bite of Archie 
Bunker.

By Neil Swidey  |  November 27, 2005

SHE SITS ON THE EDGE OF THE BED, wearing a black leather jacket over 
her pink nurse's scrubs. She is late for work and keeps checking her 
watch. Her 4-year-old daughter is eating cereal in the next room. She 
stares at her husband. He is slumbering. She is fuming.

It's a familiar sitcom scene. We all know what's coming next. The 
set, with its obligatory swinging door to the kitchen, is 
sitcom-familiar, too, but in a retro kind of way, because it's 
raggedy and spare. The view from the kitchen window is of a hideous 
electrical transformer. And the bedroom is actually a converted 
living room. Lots of sitcom sets looked this working-class in the 
'70s, in the era of Good Times, before we were all asked to swallow 
the notion that coffee-house waitresses could afford spacious 
Greenwich Village apartments with skyline views.

But when the payoff does come, it's not what we expect. She doesn't 
just nudge her husband. She smacks him. Hard enough to make his pale 
cheek red. "Wake up, you lazy piece of crap!" she screams. Except she 
doesn't say "crap," because this sitcom will air on HBO, and no one 
on HBO says "crap" when they can get away with so much worse. (This 
is, however, The Boston Globe Magazine - so you'll have to fill in 
your own choice words as you read on.)

The show is called Lucky Louie, and it will debut next year. There's 
a lot more than swearing that sets it apart from the heaping pile of 
forgettable sitcoms on the air right now, with their hot moms and 
bumbling dads and sassy kids trading lines as watered down as the 
drinks in comedy clubs. This show's content is raw. But the biggest 
difference may be its rejection of the networks' obsession with 
making their sitcom characters likable.

After decades of being the staple of network television, the sitcom 
is dying. Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond exist only in the world 
of reruns now, and this season, only one sitcom - CBS's warmed-over 
Two and a Half Men - is among the top 20 in the ratings. The networks 
blame the sitcom's struggles on the format itself, suggesting younger 
viewers have no use for the telegraphed setups and wacky mix-ups that 
have grabbed laughs since Ralph Kramden first clenched his fist at 
Alice. With Lucky Louie, HBO is hoping to send a different message: 
The only thing dead about the traditional sitcom is the traditional 
networks' execution of it.

...

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/11/27/family__ties/



 
 
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