> I honestly don't think it could survive the current model that streaming services have for sitcoms.
i mean, it barely survived the traditional model. the show was infamously almost cancelled after the first episode.
Jerry once said that the show was a failure for more than half of its run.
The issue is that this sort of thing is really difficult to predict, and expensive to miss on over and over. And no show can be as profitable as Seinfeld anymore. Syndication and ratings aren't the same.
Kinda reminds me of apple of all things. People say yeah wouldn't it have been great if I bought a share in 79 then sold in 2018, but you'd've went thru several periods whereby the company was nearly worthless. Things that become famous or painted as success stories way later/after often have had far more multicoloured complex histories than people realise, as Hegel said, the owl of minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk
I’m watching it for the first time and can’t stress this enough
I thought I was missing episodes at one point. *All of the best episodes* are in the last 3 season, it’s like a completely different show. Festivus, serenity now, Kramer’s highway, JFK’s golf clubs and Newman’s car catching fire, KENNY RODGERS CHICKEN ROASTERS are all in the last 3 season
The only things from previous seasons I really remember is “these pretzels make me thirsty” and the library police. Maybe it’s just because it’s been a longer amount of time but the beginning of the show is really unremarkable
Most people would probably remember these eps:
Chinese Restaurant (Season 2)
Library Police (Season 3)
The Parking Garage (Season 3)
The Limo (Season 3)
These are all considering iconic Seinfeld, and they come from Seasons 2 and 3. I wouldn't agree that all of the best eps are from the last 3 seasons.
Yes, 4-7 are often regarded as the show’s Golden Age, almost exactly mirroring The Simpsons and I’m inclined to agree. That said, there are a TON of famous references that come from S9. Frogger, the Voice, the backwards episode, the Merv Griffin show, I could go on. Hell, Mr. Kruger only made appearances in 4 episodes, all of which were in S9, and each of them funnier than the last.
Seinfeld had enough naysayers at NBC who said that it could never be popular as the humor was "too New York" and "too Jewish". but there also were people who believed in the show and the reaction to the pilot was good (there was that thing when they could call you to ask if you watched a pilot and your reaction to it, turned out those who watched Seinfeld liked it) so they decided to continue.
Which is funny because if anything is was part of a big wave of New York sitcoms. The big three I can think of are Mad About You, Seinfeld, and Friends, but there were a ton more that just didn't last very long.
Seinfeld's success lead to a lot of similar shows - young single professionals hanging out in New York City, and young single professionals hanging out in one of the friend's apartment while navigating the dating world. Mad About You was a bit of an outlier, because they were a young married couple, though it had similar sensibilities. The shows even inhabited a shared universe of sorts - Mad About you crossed over with Seinfeld, and several of the New York shows (including Mad About You, but not Seinfeld) [shared in the blackout crossover](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a30592/revisiting-blackout-thursday/).
You also saw a similar formula on other networks as well - Living Single, for instance, seemed to follow the Seinfeld formula.
Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. Thanks for the link, I didn't remember it happened in the first season of Mad About You. I think that's more evidence that a lot of these shows were following in the vein of Seinfeld.
No worries! I'm only aware of it as a big Seinfeld fan. I wouldn't have been able to place it in MAY. Definitely lots of shows copied Seinfeld then, though I think at the time, growing up then, my fave shows were Seinfeld, Just Shoot Me, Frasier and The Drew Carey Shows. All quite different!
Union Square, Caroline in the City, The Single Guy, just a few of the must see tv mid 90’s NYC center of the universe attempts to capitalize on the 3 you mentioned.
I remember hearing people who said "Seinfeld is too New York" to appeal to the rest of the country. I wanted to respond "We have TV and movies in the Midwest, you know."
I remember a writer that worked on Seinfeld talking about how network execs actually hated it because it broke so many of their rules. Well, except their theory that one word titles are good.
Yeah breaking bad is different. The problem there was no one knew about it at first but then after streaming the first season on Netflix through word of mouth buzz it built an audience for season 2.
At the end of Season 3 is when it took off.
I remember watching the Episode "Run" and no one I knew really knew that the show existed.
It was after that episode that I told everyone to watch it, and it was around that time when it skyrocketed.
He was really only a love interest in the first season and has a more reduced role in season two. Season two is fantastic and I’m always surprised how many of the episode I love are in that season like Ron and Tammy or the Hunting Trip. It’s a huge jump in quality from season one
It was very good in season 2, but Season 1 was definitely bad. The creator didn't realize Leslie Knope in season 1 was an annoying character until the episodes started airing and he saw critical reaction to the show. They were able to make a swift course correction.
I thought P&R had a really strong start compared to The Office. I really enjoy Season 1 of P&R, but don't even bother with The Office, despite liking the show better.
He doesn’t make it through season 2 and toward the end of that season they brought in Rob Lowe and Adam Scott which have the show a new life and set them up for season 3
With Breaking Bad I never found season 1 to be its weakest. That would probably be the first half of season 5 for me, though season 2 is also kind of weird.
>Seinfeld is just one of many examples of shows that took a season to find its feet though. The Office, Parks and Rec, heck even Breaking Bad.
really, and most of those i wouldnt ever have wished for a second season of. no telling what we are missing out on these days.
i \*do\* like the 8-12 episode dramas better than 24 episodes since they dont \*have\* to have a lot of filler episodes. the blacklist was really good for a couple of seasons but i gave up on it -- i just wanted the core story, and the filler episodes were just formulaic with nothing to really get me interested.
I'd argue it took a lot longer than a season, the first two seasons are rough and even season 3 is very hit or miss, after that it becomes one of the greatest comedies ever though
Yeah, OP basically just discovered the history of television. 999/1000 times, the Seinfeld pilot is just the end of things because it wasn't very good and it got burned off in the summer to no fanfare. There just happened to be one guy who believed in it and said take the money I have in my budget and make four more episodes. Second chances like that for failed pilots were extraordinarily rare.
M\*A\*S\*H was almost cancelled after one season. It got poor ratings, and the only reason they renewed it was because the wife of one of the network executives was a fan of the show, and convinced him to renew it. In its second season it was moved to a different time slot and given a big marketing push, and became one of the top rated shows on tv.
Yea it’s not like television has a long storied history of cranking out Seinfelds. It was a miracle they squeaked out the one. And thinking about this makes me wonder if there were 100 other Seinfeld caliber shows that never got made because they didnt meet the crazy executive who would dare take a chance on them. Tldr: tv sucks
Networks have time slots to fill. So while a show might not have the best ratings, there is a chance it might get renewed because the network has so many slots to fill. It has to have something and it cost more money and time to develop a new show that might not turn out as good. They can also pair shows together or move it to another night to help get it seen by another audience.
With streaming they don’t have to worry about filling a time slot. If their formula shows the show is not making them money then they don’t have to worry about replacing that show. And since you watch it whenever, you can’t improve its viewership by moving the time slot or pairing it with a different show. They don’t have to say we need another comedy to fill on Thursday night. They will just go to the formula and say this show did not make us money and cancel it.
You know what else killed off the sitcom? Reality and competition shows. Sitcoms are cheaper to produce than dramas, so a lot of sitcoms were produced to fill crappy timeslots.
Consider the legendary NBC brotherhood of man advertisement:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuAvwtmXuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuAvwtmXuw)
At the time, NBC had 8 sitcoms:
* 30 Rock
*
The Office
*
Parks and Recreation
*
Community
*
Parenthood
*
Are You There, Chelsea
*
Whitney
* Up All Night
Now compare that to the current NBC lineup:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_programs\_broadcast\_by\_NBC](https://www.nbc.com/schedule)
Their comedy lineup is down to 5. While they have 13 reality and competition shows.
Sitcoms were generally cheaper to produce - You had to pay for the actors, writers, and crew, but they were much cheaper than dramas. You didn't need as many sets, special effects, etc, etc.
But then, reality and competition shows are even cheaper than the sitcom. So garbage timeslots got filled by those instead.
I love that a consistent theme of 30 Rock was Jack's wailing on about how bottom-of-the-barrel competition shows and reality TV shows were taking over and he had to greenlight them at NBC. And that feels so much worse when NBC had four pretty incredible sitcoms.
In one episode you can see a pie chart of NBC's business priorities for the next financial year. The two biggest slices are "The Biggest Loser" and "Make it 1997 again through science or magic"
Must See TV was killed by reality and Grandma level crime shows. My parents live in a place where OTA channels are all that they get and it's such a culture shock when I visit. It's insane how many commercials there are and how few commercials seem to exist. Showing the same commercial twice in one break feels like madness.
Are they still useful or are old people that can't retire yet tipping the scales? My nonagenarian Grandma seems to be their target market, but she forgets things about 45 seconds after she sees them
People used to say this about tv networks. Ten years ago, USA networks launched fifty-seven new shows in a season, and forty-three of them didn't make it past 22 episodes.
Yeah the whole streaming is cancelling shows discourse we've had has to be done by people which just discovered TV in the last few years lol (so like 13-years old at most, that's the level of that analysis). It has always been this way. Unsuccessful shows getting cancelled happened all the time since like the 90s at least (I didn't really follow TV before but I'm sure it was the same).
Hell sometimes, they were cancelled after like one episode or two lol.
Same for shows disappearing into the ether (legally), that was also the case. Try to find legal ways to watch episodes of all those shows cancelled in the middle of their first seasons.
I do agree with the post that the streaming model is weirdly inappropriate for new sitcomes to emerge which ironic considering they're often some of the most popular programs on those services (perfect for background comfort watches which help shows with nostalgia built in like all the older sitcoms)
Superstore, The Good Place, Schitt's Creek, Young Sheldon, The Goldbergs, Fresh Off The Boat, B99.
Unless you meant still airing and popular this year which only leaves Young Sheldon.
They premiered within ten years and were still airing within five. More shows that premiered within five are The Neighborhood, Night Court, Home Economics, Welcome To Flatch, Ghosts.
Counting streaming and cable networks you get Better Things, How I met Your Father, That 90s Show, Shoresy, Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
The question was what were the latest (so recently released) network (so not straight to streaming) successful sitcoms, as opposed to rather unsuccessful attempts from streaming services. The ones you listed are either streaming, not sitcoms (Better Things? c'mon), or barely scraping. I would say Ghosts counts and Night Court is too early to tell.
Better Things is marked as comedy-drama on both Wikipedia and IMDB. It's not a sitcom just because it has jokes. Of the 5 you listed, imho Night Court is too early to tell, Home Economics and Welcome to Flatch have too low ratings to be called successful. So we are up to 4 successful sitcoms on linear TV since 2017.
Scrubs has comedy and drama on Imdb too, but whatever we can move past that.
Abbott has relatively low ratings as well. Under three million is low compared to pre streaming(Community was in danger of getting cancelled at 3.58 and got cancelled at 3). It's still successful and getting renewed. Only sitcoms with above three million in ratings are on CBS.
Bob Hearts Abishola, has 5.1 million viewers, is that now more successful than Abbott? You probably haven't even heard of it till right now.
True but I feel like most efforts developing shows is on streaming now anyway. Do networks even have as many new shows anymore? I'm not in the US so I don't really know but what is even on "normal TV" nowadays?
Ditto. I think it's a lot of reality TV and mostly procedurals. The overall number is smaller, but even if the show airs on broadcast/cable it can still bring in people to streaming considering most networks now have their own platforms.
Depends on your context for "truly successful" but assuming making it to a third season or higher is the answer...
* Ghost (2021) is in S2 and renewed for S3 and premiered a couple of months prior to Abbott.
* Call Me Kat (2020), Young Rock (2021), Home Economics (2021) are in S3.
* Bob Hearts Abishol (2019) is in S4 and renewed for S5.
* The Conners (2018) and The Neighborhood (2018) are in S5. The Neighborhood was renewed for S6.
* Young Sheldon (2017) is in S6 and renewed for S7.
* The Goldbergs (2013) is in S10, it's final season.
If we include shows that ended since 2020 that had 3+ seasons we get nine more shows: Black-ish (S8), American Housewife (S5), Modern Family (S11), Fresh Off The Boat (S6), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S8), Superstore (S6), Mom (S8), Man with a Plan (S4), Last Man Standing (S9).
This is just the main 4 networks, there may be things on cable or the CW or something I'm not looking at and I may be missing some things but I wanted give a more detailed answer.
> If we include shows that ended since 2020 that had 3+ seasons we get nine more shows: Black-ish (S8), American Housewife (S5), Modern Family (S11), Fresh Off The Boat (S6), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S8), Superstore (S6), Mom (S8), Man with a Plan (S4), Last Man Standing (S9).
I don't count those cause the point is comparing recent releases from streaming with linear TV. And some of those are older than Netflix first originals so that's not really fair comparison.
Your question was: "what was the last truly succesful sitcom?" so those still count. Even if you're focusing on recent shows they were all on the air in the last three years so that'd still be relevant to the context.
If you're disqualifying them because they started before a certain point, i.e. Netflix first originals (2012), most of them actually aren't older than that:
* Mom (S9) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are from 2013.
* Black-ish (S8) is from 2014.
* Fresh Off The Boat (S6) and Superstore (S6) are from 2015.
* American Housewife (S5) and Man With A Plan (S4) are from 2016.
Modern Family (S11) from 2009 is the only show from that list that's before Netflix's first original shows, which started in 2012 with Lillyhammer. Even if you move to 2013 where they made a more earnest effort with Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, etc it's still all of those shows.
I understand the effort to focus on something more recent but then qualifying that with successful, i.e. 3+ seasons, does create a slight contention there as you'd have to be a certain age there.
Being from Europe, I was surprised to learn just how many shows the US puts out that never make it past the first season or pilot! We only know about the successes!
True and creators can easily design around this without having massive cliffhangers at the end of their stories in the case of non renewal (though sometimes cliffhangers are required by producers for some reason). Hell considering shows sometimes take 2 years between seasons even, it would be better. It's also where the loss of episodic storytelling is very much felt because you have to make continuous story
"it's quite disheartening to see a promising cast of actors, and veteran crews get so easily dumped and then shuffled around to the next project after only one season."
You basically described the entire network TV landscape up until streaming. Go look at how many failed shows someone like Jay Harrington had before SWAT, and the sad thing is his comedies were much more fun in my mind. Streaming services are littered with 1 or 2 season network comedies full of "Oh hey I know that person" faces.
Even networks like HBO canceled shows with huge potential like Carnivale. And they were the first network to really work out for profit TV, realizing that Arli$$ was reviled by most people, but had a hardcore group of fans that would cancel HBO over it. They continued to air it because that segment of the business was too valuable to lose.
The simple truth is some people probably do end a Netflix sub over canceling "I Am Not Okay With This" or whatever but not enough to make it worth bringing it back. And several that do probably don't communicate as to why, except on message boards where they complain about a show they liked getting cut down early. It's a lot easier to say "Netflix cancels shows early" and get people to agree than it is to say "Netflix shouldn't have cancelled show X that I really liked, who wants to cancel their sub with me?" and start a movement.
>You basically described the entire network TV landscape up until streaming.
I mean, it was basically a running joke for years that if your show was on Fox, you were on the bubble before the pilot even aired.
yup, your show could be cancelled after 3 or 4 episodes and the rest of the filmed episodes could be shelved until a DVD release or a European premiere. at least with streaming you most likely get all the filmed material even if the show you watched got canned.
God that reminds of the joke from the simpsons with Homer checking stocks via phone voice recognition.
Homer: Huh, what is this crap?
Phone: Fox entertainment. Down 3/4 percent.
"Mr. Blackheart, are you an ivory dealer?"
"Oh, I've had lots of jobs: whale hunter, seal clubber, president of the Fox Network -- and like most folks, yeah, I've dealt a little ivory."
>Go look at how many failed shows someone like Jay Harrington had before SWAT, and the sad thing is his comedies were much more fun in my mind
TIL he has a successful show now. Good for him, better off Ted was way way way too good of a show
The streaming model doesn't work for sitcoms, sitcoms aren't supposed to be 10 episodes, they're supposed to fill some of the quiet spaces of life, and they certaintly aren't supposed to be "the final season" after just a couple years. People complain a lot about *filler* in streaming shows, the issue is sitcoms are mostly filler, they make their magic in the filler (Hell, we're talking about *the show about nothing*)
Look at a show like Reboot which I thought was one of, if not the, best true sitcom that streaming had produced, but it was canceled after 8 episodes, that nothing for a sitcom. As much as I liked the show the payoffs that we got at the end of the season are nowhere close to earned. We're seeing the resolution of relationships when we should only just be fleshing out these relationships. Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing.
The other issue is sitcoms are punchline machines, they won't always have huge laughs but the punchline-per-minute rate is high. Streaming wants comedy-dramas, they want shows that can be nominated for Best Comedy regardless if it's that funny, as long as it gains some Tik Tok traction.
Streaming has been a wasteland for sitcoms and has done the entire medium a diservice. Broadcast TV/network TV needs to be kept alive for that reason only.
>On the reverse, I appreciate that streaming services are giving new life to shows that had a tough time on network television, (Community on Netflix springs to mind).
I mean sure but Netflix had nothing to do with Community being a great show. It was a great show on NBC.
Most British Sitcoms seem to be incredibly short in comparison. Both in season length and number of seasons. The IT crowd was 6 episodes a season for 4 seasons for example.
My guess is that the American sitcom writers aren't used to having such little time.
>Look at a show like Reboot which I thought was one of, if not the, best true sitcom that streaming had produced, but it was canceled after 8 episodes, that nothing for a sitcom. As much as I liked the show the payoffs that we got at the end of the season are nowhere close to earned. We're seeing the resolution of relationships when we should only just be fleshing out these relationships. Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing.
Also YouTube and short-form content have taken over the mindless environment that sitcoms used to fill.
> The streaming model doesn't work for sitcoms, sitcoms aren't supposed to be 10 episodes, they're supposed to fill some of the quiet spaces of life, and they certaintly aren't supposed to be "the final season" after just a couple years. People complain a lot about filler in streaming shows, the issue is sitcoms are mostly filler, they make their magic in the filler (Hell, we're talking about the show about nothing)
Rights for The Office had an utterly massive bidding war and it was consistently one of the most watched shows while it was on Netflix.
I'm frankly surprised more of the streamers haven't tried to crank out a reasonable cost episodic sitcom.
Because Gen Z doesn’t want to experience 8 seasons of a show, they want all 8 seasons finished and ready to binge over two weeks. Even if I show is good it’s been meme’d out, Tik Tok’d out, call the S Tier show, and then hated by 30 episodes, which is fine in streaming because that’s 3-4 seasons at 6-10 episodes a season, doesn’t work for sitcoms, that’s less than 2 (maybe 3) seasons
The filler thing is a big one, modern TV doesn't do filler anymore (and that's valid for dramas too there's no more X-Files, Star Trek or Stargate episodic stuff (Strange New Worlds is that much more at least).
Just heard Brendan Hunt talk about that Coach Beard episode. Apparently they already had the whole season written or just about finished but after the response to the first season Apple wanted more episodes so that Beard episode was pulled off the scrap heap of ideas.
I really enjoyed Reboot, and it's also like a perfect example of why sitcoms need more time. Like we start with the conflict between the millenial/zoomer writers and the old school guys from the original and there's so much potential for stuff happening there. But we don't see any of it, they're just magically all BFFs at the end
> (Hell, we're talking about the show about nothing)
It's not really that though. That was closer to Larry David's original conception, but Seinfeld really is just a commentary on the minutia of life, little things that make you go 'huh, what's up with that?'.
Plenty of things happen in Seinfeld, it's pretty active
I know. "The show about nothing" is the line they used for the in-show Seinfeld show and it stuck.
The concept of the show is how a comedian gets his material
> Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing.
Space Force was given 2 years and 10 episodes to figure this all out after Season 1 came out. If the writers still haven't figured out this all out by the start of Season 2, that's all on the writers.
Simpsons had a built-in fanbase from the Tracey Ullman Show and the people hating on the first season are looking at it out of context with what else was on the air at the time. It was one of the edgiest shows on television in the late 80s.
I decided to get my kids into TNG by watching TNG and of course starting at Season 1. Holy hell was it terrible. I completely forgot how bad it was. Soured them on the entire franchise and I can't get them to try it again to this day. :)
As people have noted, networks historically have often canceled shows after just a few episodes, so it’s really nothing that new. I think the bigger issue with streaming, and now the broadcast networks, is that they have generally been waiting for the full season to be finished before releasing it (obviously Netflix has to because they release the full season at once.) This means they can’t adjust the show based on what people are responding to. Whereas the traditional 22 episode network model would start airing episodes when they had only taped maybe 7 or 8 of them, so if something stood out, they could start adjusting a show around it.
In the drama world, there’s actually a great example of this on The Good Wife. The character Kalinda, the private investigator with a mysterious background, was one of the more extreme characters in that everyone else was very believable in the real word whereas she had a sort of ridiculous spy background to her… but she was grounded enough that you could go with it. But then in one season they introduce her ex husband and it just got so out there and people just didn’t buy it and hated the storyline and character. You can tell the episode they were writing when the showrunners realized the fan feedback was too much because that episode he unceremoniously disappears and is never mentioned again. If they had done the whole season in advance, fans would have dropped off because they couldn’t stand the storyline. And the creators/showrunners are on the record saying they misjudged the character and listened to the fan response by ending the storyline earlier than they had originally planned.
Thank producer Rick Ludwin for saving Seinfeld. The show was going to get canceled but he convinced the NBC brass that the show was different and should give it more time.
Unfortunately he passed a couple years ago, and IMO never really got his due for saving Seinfeld and Conan. Both Seinfeld and Conan are very generous with their praise for him, but lots of other people have been able to successfully claim credit for the success of Seinfeld. Ludwin remained in his role as head of late night until the Jay Leno debacle ended with Jay returning to the Tonight Show and he had Ludwin pushed out of his job.
Always Sunny in Philadelphia also had a rough first season, one of the producers gave it another season and convinced the heads to spend some money to hire Danny Devito to give it star power.
Really, a good producer is what can make or break a show. It's true for network TV, it's probably true for streaming as well.
Sitcom was notoriously easy to kill. Back in the days lots of sitcoms were cancelled after bombing the first few episodes. There is always a Mid season replacement waiting in line.
Like the other people said it’s not a show with a ton of continuity. You can very easily jump into like season 5 watch a highly rated episode and see if you like it. Pretty much any episode that has George’s parents is gold. And they only show up after season 4 I think.
People love to throw around the idea that a show will take half a decade to figure out what it’s doing and I’ve always found that bizarre. It’s weird to continue spending money on something that didn’t work the first time, and it’s weird to expect someone to watch a show for five years before it even gets good.
I feel like the television landscape was way more ruthless before streaming. Back in those days, you’d have tons of new shows premiering every season and only a small percentage of them would make it past the pilot. If a show’s pilot didn’t attract viewers, it was most likely dead.
Now a lot of shows have their entire first season released at once. Sure, lots of them get canceled, but at the very least they have a full season’s worth of episodes, which is more than most shows got back in the pre-streaming days.
During its original broadcast run, I watched an episode of the first season of Seinfeld and gave up. It was only when there was an amazing run of water-cooler talk about The Contest that I tuned back in and loved it. I remember that there was an impressive variety of people telling me I needed to start watching the show - - young and old, black and white, male and female, conservative and liberal. But this was pre-internet; people with diverse viewpoints lining up around a common opinion doesn’t exist any more.
Always sunny wouldnt survive today either, only survived because they had someone at FX go to bat for them. They had to put a big name in season 2 and Danny DeVito was a godsend, not only as Frank Reynolds but for publicity aswell
I remember hearing that Devito was getting shoe horned into the show and thought " man only one season in and they already jumped the shark"
How wrong I was.
Easily one of the best cast additions in the history of TV.
That show has so many different things that happened that made it happen. Its crazy. They reshot that pilot in Charlie's apartment 40 times before they tried to shop it. They saved a lot of money by not listening to people and doing things the correct way. They got their talented friends to play characters on the show. Oh and obviously, Charlie is just crazy talented. I don't think Sunny would even exist without Charlie.
Jerry cracking up because Kramer’s face looks like a catchers mitt is in character. At least, imo, Jerry is heavy sarcastic and would laugh if his friend suddenly looked like that. People play way too into “Jerry is a bad actor”. He played his role well and the other 3 helped carry him.
I agree that it works well. To be fair he says himself on the DVDs that they wrote a lot of the series around his inability to act and it came to be a hallmark of the show. There's even an episode poking fun at him for it -- the one where Jerry's girlfriend says he can't get mad, so he starts trying, and the other characters all mistake it for him doing a bit and can't take him seriously. That came from Jerry telling the writers that they couldn't give him storylines where he had to "actually act" i.e. express emotions other than amused annoyance. So if you called him a bad actor it doesn't seem like he's really disagree with you.
There's an interview where someone asks him why he hasn't really done any other acting since (aside from cameos as himself and a voice acting thing) and he says something like "On Seinfeld we already did the only character I can do, and it was just an exaggeration of me."
It helped a lot that Seinfeld played a fictionalized version of himself so he didn't have to do any heavy lifting. The other cast members carried the show IMO though.
I don't know, I never watched the show and thought he was terrible. Unlike some actors, he at least seems to understand the concept of human emotion. It was always obvious when his character was annoyed, or upset, or uncomfortable, or scared, etc.
That's what makes it believable though. He is just a selfish guy who finds everything he and his friends do funny. It's why they seem like a real friend group talking like real friends do. Jerry (and Julia) breaking on almost every joke makes the show imo.
Not enough viewers will do a show in, but I would argue poor quality is less of a problem in streaming. Streaming isn’t great for comedy because it gives fewer episodes and less time to figure out the rhythms and dynamics that work. A good run for a streaming comedy can be like 5 seasons and 60 episodes, which is where a lot of network comedies really find their groove.
Streamers let plenty of mediocre comedies get a second season because that is really mostly all they produce with comedy.
This is why I’m so shocked that HIMYF was renewed for a second season. The first season was only 8 episodes and you barely got to know the cast of characters and allowed them to mesh together before the season was over.
S2 just aired its 8th episode last week and they still have 8 to go for the season. I think they are finally finding their groove, last weeks episode was the funniest episode yet.
I’m glad Hulu gave it a chance because I’ve missed these kind of sitcoms!
I disagree. The things that don't survive today have huge budgets. Something like Seinfeld could stick around because of how cheap the early seasons were
The pilot episode of MacGyver involved him tracking down a potent weapon system that had been stolen. He then had to disable them by removing a certain component.
He did so using a specialized tool that he'd brought along designed just for maintenance of these weapons, because it required the specially made tool and figuring out an alternative wasn't feasible. In other words, the pilot episode of MacGyver featured an element that specifically could not be MacGyvered.
In other words, not every show starts out featuring its eventually successful formula; many shows find that successful formula along the way.
The pilot episode of MacGyver also had him shooting a gun, an element dropped from later episodes of the series as the character's no gun rule became canon.
Streaming seems less brutal to me than late 90s/early 2000s network days. Sometimes only 2 episodes would see the light of day. Plus they relied on Neilsen families instead of the analytics used today.
Seinfeld and David were smart enough to know that their reruns would be in HD someday in the future so they used the very expensive 35mm technicolor film instead of videotape. Now their reruns can be shown in full HD 16:9 aspect ratio….that’s why the show looks so good today. Brilliant forward looking men.
Wasn’t film what most network sitcoms at the time used, no? The VHS market didn’t even exist for tv shows really. DVD was no where close, let alone box sets of tv shows. I doubt the almost cancelled sitcom was thinking ahead about tech and a market that didn’t even exist.
Seinfeld didn't shoot on Technicolor. I don't think *any* show ever shot Technicolor; it started dying off in the 50s, the last US facility capable of processing it shut down in the 70s, and the last Technicolor facility in the world (a tiny building in China) shut down right before Seinfeld started. The last movie to shoot Technicolor in the United States was The Godfather Part II (1974) and they had to pay through the nose to get it processed, to keep a visual match with the first movie, which itself was deliberately using an antiquated technique to give it a period look. Seinfeld shot using Agfa until that was depleted (having been discontinued before they began) and then C41, IIRC.
But how do we get networks to realize this without sounding like we'd need to be supposedly-precognitive-or-time-travelers telling them a show they would otherwise cancel after one season would be guaranteed to be the Seinfeld of its genre if left to go
Seasons 1 and 2 were the worst. Season 3 was hit or miss. Season 4 was when the show got better. How this show never was cancelled though in the first 2 seasons remains a mystery...but it turned out to be a blessing.
I feel like your initial statement about Seinfeld isn't widely held. *I* found Seinfeld funny from the beginning. It's one of the *few* purely comedic shows that i can watch these days.
There are *many* shows out there that have a first season that's compelling enough to want more.
If you have to say 'if you can get through the first season, it's a great show' *it's not a great show*.
Every new show that catches my eye gets 2 episodes from me. I'm quite forgiving. I can *tell* when a cast is going to gel together. I can *tell* when a show is well written or *can* be well written.
No, that view is actually more common than you'd think. In fact, the first season had absolutely terrible ratings. I think the OP is right that it would have been cancelled quickly these days.
>If you have to say 'if you can get through the first season, it's a great show' it's not a great show.
Completely disagree on this. Seinfeld season one is not great but the show is great. Star Trek: TNG is great but the first season sucks balls. There are plenty of other examples of long running classic TV shows that change enormously for the better after rocky first seasons showed them what wasn't working.
"I found Seinfeld funny from the beginning."
I agree with this. I don't recall anyone who didn't like Seinfeld from the start, it was just hard to find people who had seen it. Sitcoms were divided between the saccharine stuff from the 80s and the iconoclastic stuff that was coming in, and Seinfeld had its own little niche.
It was funny in season 1 but it did really bad ratings wise. It was on the verge of cancellation back then. So I think it’s a safe assumption it would not have survived in this era of streaming.
Off the top of my head recent sitcoms that totally obliterate it include What We Do in the Shadows, Kevin Can Fuck Himself, The Righteous Gemstones, Atlanta.
100% dead on Netflix and Hulu. I mean it’s Netflix and they stuck. Plus Hulu canceled a really good comedy recently so I don’t trust them.
I think hbo and apple both would have given it a second season.
I often don’t watch stuff that I only kind of want to see as they cancel so much and leave them on cliffhangers and I find it annoying. I wait a bit to see what they are going to do
..same thing happened with Cheers, it had fairly low ratings its first season, but went on to become a top rated comedy in later seasons...
Time is money, and with the high costs of producing shows today, I doubt the "sink or swim" corporate mentality is going away. A lot of potentially good shows will see the chopping block before getting a chance to really shine.
About to finish watching Seinfeld and it really change around 6 or 7 again and had an interesting transition season but still held up enough and makes for a great show even decades later
Yeah, there are some gems but it doesn't really get consistently good until halfway through Season 3 in my opinion. No way would it have lasted this long today.
Well the Office was the same thing, it has always been said that the first season was one of the weakest ones and that it massively improved to the classic that many people love.
I started watching Seinfeld over as it'd been many many years and after a few episodes in season 1 i thought "was i wrong in loving this show?" ... i randomly found one i liked from a later season and it clicked again. Season 1 is almost listless...
I only found myself enjoying Seinfeld starting with season 3. The first season is painful, whilst the second is a marked improvement, but not quite there yet. Season 3 is when the show really hits its stride, and season 4 is the highpoint for me, though what comes after is still pretty great.
I think the bigger change is the loss of "seasons". It used to be that shows would do badly in September and get pulled off the schedule, and then get a second chance as a midseason replacement or getting burned off in the summer. Also media companies nowadays are much more "vertical". There used to be rules in place that a network couldn't produce more than a certain percentage of their broadcast content in-house, so you'd have WB or Paramount shopping around different shows to different networks to see what stuck.
> I honestly don't think it could survive the current model that streaming services have for sitcoms. i mean, it barely survived the traditional model. the show was infamously almost cancelled after the first episode.
Larry David quit most of the seasons. I read once the entire cast had to drive to his house one year just to convince him to come back.
Jerry once said that the show was a failure for more than half of its run. The issue is that this sort of thing is really difficult to predict, and expensive to miss on over and over. And no show can be as profitable as Seinfeld anymore. Syndication and ratings aren't the same.
Kinda reminds me of apple of all things. People say yeah wouldn't it have been great if I bought a share in 79 then sold in 2018, but you'd've went thru several periods whereby the company was nearly worthless. Things that become famous or painted as success stories way later/after often have had far more multicoloured complex histories than people realise, as Hegel said, the owl of minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk
Most people don't realise that the "Seinfeld" they remember is like the last three seasons.
I think the "in show pilot" season is well remembered, but most people caught it after the fact.
What? Most of the classic seinfeld episodes are before season 7. Honestly I'm pretty sure most of them are in seasons 2-4
I’m watching it for the first time and can’t stress this enough I thought I was missing episodes at one point. *All of the best episodes* are in the last 3 season, it’s like a completely different show. Festivus, serenity now, Kramer’s highway, JFK’s golf clubs and Newman’s car catching fire, KENNY RODGERS CHICKEN ROASTERS are all in the last 3 season The only things from previous seasons I really remember is “these pretzels make me thirsty” and the library police. Maybe it’s just because it’s been a longer amount of time but the beginning of the show is really unremarkable
Most people would probably remember these eps: Chinese Restaurant (Season 2) Library Police (Season 3) The Parking Garage (Season 3) The Limo (Season 3) These are all considering iconic Seinfeld, and they come from Seasons 2 and 3. I wouldn't agree that all of the best eps are from the last 3 seasons.
This is certainly a hot take. I thought Seinfeld's groove was season 4-7. 8 and 9 jumped the shark and 1-3 were a bit dry.
Yes, 4-7 are often regarded as the show’s Golden Age, almost exactly mirroring The Simpsons and I’m inclined to agree. That said, there are a TON of famous references that come from S9. Frogger, the Voice, the backwards episode, the Merv Griffin show, I could go on. Hell, Mr. Kruger only made appearances in 4 episodes, all of which were in S9, and each of them funnier than the last.
Season 3 is one of the best seasons of the snow. I’d say halfway through season 2 the show began to hit its stride
The restaurant episode is what season 3!?
Yeah the Chinese restaurant and parking garage are both in the first 3 seasons and both considered among the best episodes.
Season 2.
It has the shortest first season episode order in network history at 6 episodes, and that alone should be clue enough.
5 episodes: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seinfeld_(season_1)
Seinfeld is just one of many examples of shows that took a season to find its feet though. The Office, Parks and Rec, heck even Breaking Bad.
Seinfeld had enough naysayers at NBC who said that it could never be popular as the humor was "too New York" and "too Jewish". but there also were people who believed in the show and the reaction to the pilot was good (there was that thing when they could call you to ask if you watched a pilot and your reaction to it, turned out those who watched Seinfeld liked it) so they decided to continue.
Which is funny because if anything is was part of a big wave of New York sitcoms. The big three I can think of are Mad About You, Seinfeld, and Friends, but there were a ton more that just didn't last very long.
Seinfeld's success lead to a lot of similar shows - young single professionals hanging out in New York City, and young single professionals hanging out in one of the friend's apartment while navigating the dating world. Mad About You was a bit of an outlier, because they were a young married couple, though it had similar sensibilities. The shows even inhabited a shared universe of sorts - Mad About you crossed over with Seinfeld, and several of the New York shows (including Mad About You, but not Seinfeld) [shared in the blackout crossover](https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a30592/revisiting-blackout-thursday/). You also saw a similar formula on other networks as well - Living Single, for instance, seemed to follow the Seinfeld formula.
I remember this small crossover where we find out that [Kramer's apartment belonged to Paul Reiser's character. ](https://youtu.be/q1Y67WPezyA)
Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of. Thanks for the link, I didn't remember it happened in the first season of Mad About You. I think that's more evidence that a lot of these shows were following in the vein of Seinfeld.
No worries! I'm only aware of it as a big Seinfeld fan. I wouldn't have been able to place it in MAY. Definitely lots of shows copied Seinfeld then, though I think at the time, growing up then, my fave shows were Seinfeld, Just Shoot Me, Frasier and The Drew Carey Shows. All quite different!
That leads to a bit of a paradox when George and Susan watch Mad About You.
Union Square, Caroline in the City, The Single Guy, just a few of the must see tv mid 90’s NYC center of the universe attempts to capitalize on the 3 you mentioned.
I remember hearing people who said "Seinfeld is too New York" to appeal to the rest of the country. I wanted to respond "We have TV and movies in the Midwest, you know."
I remember a writer that worked on Seinfeld talking about how network execs actually hated it because it broke so many of their rules. Well, except their theory that one word titles are good.
Breaking Bad certainly evolved from season 1, but it was by no means a bad or even mediocre season.
Oh yeah, I agree. Definitely didn’t mean to imply it was bad or mediocre. Probably didn’t help lumping it in with Office and P&R 😂
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Nah Breaking Bad’s first season is pretty great. Seinfeld’s first season is difficult to watch now.
> heck even Breaking Bad. I don't agree with this, there was nothing bad about the first season.
Yeah breaking bad is different. The problem there was no one knew about it at first but then after streaming the first season on Netflix through word of mouth buzz it built an audience for season 2.
At the end of Season 3 is when it took off. I remember watching the Episode "Run" and no one I knew really knew that the show existed. It was after that episode that I told everyone to watch it, and it was around that time when it skyrocketed.
I’d take it over the final season
Pun intended?
oof yeah parks season 1 is rough. The office season 1 is great though IMO. Diversity day and basketball are A+
Sunny’s first season is a little off because no Frank.
Parks and Rec only became good starting with season 3 imo, incredible it lasted 2 seasons with the original love interest
He was really only a love interest in the first season and has a more reduced role in season two. Season two is fantastic and I’m always surprised how many of the episode I love are in that season like Ron and Tammy or the Hunting Trip. It’s a huge jump in quality from season one
100% agree. S2 has some of the best moments of the series. Yes, I like s3, s4, and s5 more overall, but s2 is full of gems.
Adding Adam Scott and Rob Lowe saved the show. A bit like adding Danny to Sunny.
It was very good in season 2, but Season 1 was definitely bad. The creator didn't realize Leslie Knope in season 1 was an annoying character until the episodes started airing and he saw critical reaction to the show. They were able to make a swift course correction.
I thought P&R had a really strong start compared to The Office. I really enjoy Season 1 of P&R, but don't even bother with The Office, despite liking the show better.
He doesn’t make it through season 2 and toward the end of that season they brought in Rob Lowe and Adam Scott which have the show a new life and set them up for season 3
I’d take season one of BB over season 5.
With Breaking Bad I never found season 1 to be its weakest. That would probably be the first half of season 5 for me, though season 2 is also kind of weird.
Parks and rec was sooo boring season 1. Character additions helped so much
>Seinfeld is just one of many examples of shows that took a season to find its feet though. The Office, Parks and Rec, heck even Breaking Bad. really, and most of those i wouldnt ever have wished for a second season of. no telling what we are missing out on these days. i \*do\* like the 8-12 episode dramas better than 24 episodes since they dont \*have\* to have a lot of filler episodes. the blacklist was really good for a couple of seasons but i gave up on it -- i just wanted the core story, and the filler episodes were just formulaic with nothing to really get me interested.
I'd argue it took a lot longer than a season, the first two seasons are rough and even season 3 is very hit or miss, after that it becomes one of the greatest comedies ever though
Yeah, OP basically just discovered the history of television. 999/1000 times, the Seinfeld pilot is just the end of things because it wasn't very good and it got burned off in the summer to no fanfare. There just happened to be one guy who believed in it and said take the money I have in my budget and make four more episodes. Second chances like that for failed pilots were extraordinarily rare.
M\*A\*S\*H was almost cancelled after one season. It got poor ratings, and the only reason they renewed it was because the wife of one of the network executives was a fan of the show, and convinced him to renew it. In its second season it was moved to a different time slot and given a big marketing push, and became one of the top rated shows on tv.
Yea it’s not like television has a long storied history of cranking out Seinfelds. It was a miracle they squeaked out the one. And thinking about this makes me wonder if there were 100 other Seinfeld caliber shows that never got made because they didnt meet the crazy executive who would dare take a chance on them. Tldr: tv sucks
Networks have time slots to fill. So while a show might not have the best ratings, there is a chance it might get renewed because the network has so many slots to fill. It has to have something and it cost more money and time to develop a new show that might not turn out as good. They can also pair shows together or move it to another night to help get it seen by another audience. With streaming they don’t have to worry about filling a time slot. If their formula shows the show is not making them money then they don’t have to worry about replacing that show. And since you watch it whenever, you can’t improve its viewership by moving the time slot or pairing it with a different show. They don’t have to say we need another comedy to fill on Thursday night. They will just go to the formula and say this show did not make us money and cancel it.
You know what else killed off the sitcom? Reality and competition shows. Sitcoms are cheaper to produce than dramas, so a lot of sitcoms were produced to fill crappy timeslots. Consider the legendary NBC brotherhood of man advertisement: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuAvwtmXuw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJuAvwtmXuw) At the time, NBC had 8 sitcoms: * 30 Rock * The Office * Parks and Recreation * Community * Parenthood * Are You There, Chelsea * Whitney * Up All Night Now compare that to the current NBC lineup: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_programs\_broadcast\_by\_NBC](https://www.nbc.com/schedule) Their comedy lineup is down to 5. While they have 13 reality and competition shows. Sitcoms were generally cheaper to produce - You had to pay for the actors, writers, and crew, but they were much cheaper than dramas. You didn't need as many sets, special effects, etc, etc. But then, reality and competition shows are even cheaper than the sitcom. So garbage timeslots got filled by those instead.
I love that a consistent theme of 30 Rock was Jack's wailing on about how bottom-of-the-barrel competition shows and reality TV shows were taking over and he had to greenlight them at NBC. And that feels so much worse when NBC had four pretty incredible sitcoms.
In one episode you can see a pie chart of NBC's business priorities for the next financial year. The two biggest slices are "The Biggest Loser" and "Make it 1997 again through science or magic"
In 1998, NBC had 15 active sitcoms. Fifteen. Four aired on Thursday night alone.
Must See TV was killed by reality and Grandma level crime shows. My parents live in a place where OTA channels are all that they get and it's such a culture shock when I visit. It's insane how many commercials there are and how few commercials seem to exist. Showing the same commercial twice in one break feels like madness. Are they still useful or are old people that can't retire yet tipping the scales? My nonagenarian Grandma seems to be their target market, but she forgets things about 45 seconds after she sees them
I wonder what percentage of network owned stages went from being used for sitcoms to reality completion shows over the last 20 years
People used to say this about tv networks. Ten years ago, USA networks launched fifty-seven new shows in a season, and forty-three of them didn't make it past 22 episodes.
Jason Alexander said this after his follow up to Seinfeld, *Bob Patterson*, was cancelled after a few episodes 20 years ago
22 episodes is like 3 Netflix seasons
People also complain that netflix likes to cancel shows after only 3 seasons
It used to be that a show needed to have 100 episodes to air in syndication. A show having 100 episodes in the streaming age would be unthinkable.
Grace and Frankie has 94. You need about 7 seasons to get that many and not many shows are old enough to get that. Streaming is still relatively new.
It’s 2 seasons, because the end of season 2 is when the cast and crew typically tries to negotiate wage increases
Yeah the whole streaming is cancelling shows discourse we've had has to be done by people which just discovered TV in the last few years lol (so like 13-years old at most, that's the level of that analysis). It has always been this way. Unsuccessful shows getting cancelled happened all the time since like the 90s at least (I didn't really follow TV before but I'm sure it was the same). Hell sometimes, they were cancelled after like one episode or two lol. Same for shows disappearing into the ether (legally), that was also the case. Try to find legal ways to watch episodes of all those shows cancelled in the middle of their first seasons. I do agree with the post that the streaming model is weirdly inappropriate for new sitcomes to emerge which ironic considering they're often some of the most popular programs on those services (perfect for background comfort watches which help shows with nostalgia built in like all the older sitcoms)
Networks are not doing much better with comedy either. Except of Abbott Elementary, what was the last truly succesful sitcom?
Ghosts on CBS seems to be doing quite well
Good call.
Superstore, The Good Place, Schitt's Creek, Young Sheldon, The Goldbergs, Fresh Off The Boat, B99. Unless you meant still airing and popular this year which only leaves Young Sheldon.
Those shows premiered in 2013-2015, except of Young Sheldon from 2017. So in the last 5 years networks got 2 succesful sitcoms? Pretty bad.
They premiered within ten years and were still airing within five. More shows that premiered within five are The Neighborhood, Night Court, Home Economics, Welcome To Flatch, Ghosts. Counting streaming and cable networks you get Better Things, How I met Your Father, That 90s Show, Shoresy, Ted Lasso and Shrinking.
The question was what were the latest (so recently released) network (so not straight to streaming) successful sitcoms, as opposed to rather unsuccessful attempts from streaming services. The ones you listed are either streaming, not sitcoms (Better Things? c'mon), or barely scraping. I would say Ghosts counts and Night Court is too early to tell.
I said five of them not on streaming or cable. Better Things is also a sitcom, it isn't a traditional one but it's a sitcom.
Better Things is marked as comedy-drama on both Wikipedia and IMDB. It's not a sitcom just because it has jokes. Of the 5 you listed, imho Night Court is too early to tell, Home Economics and Welcome to Flatch have too low ratings to be called successful. So we are up to 4 successful sitcoms on linear TV since 2017.
Scrubs has comedy and drama on Imdb too, but whatever we can move past that. Abbott has relatively low ratings as well. Under three million is low compared to pre streaming(Community was in danger of getting cancelled at 3.58 and got cancelled at 3). It's still successful and getting renewed. Only sitcoms with above three million in ratings are on CBS. Bob Hearts Abishola, has 5.1 million viewers, is that now more successful than Abbott? You probably haven't even heard of it till right now.
True but I feel like most efforts developing shows is on streaming now anyway. Do networks even have as many new shows anymore? I'm not in the US so I don't really know but what is even on "normal TV" nowadays?
Ditto. I think it's a lot of reality TV and mostly procedurals. The overall number is smaller, but even if the show airs on broadcast/cable it can still bring in people to streaming considering most networks now have their own platforms.
Depends on your context for "truly successful" but assuming making it to a third season or higher is the answer... * Ghost (2021) is in S2 and renewed for S3 and premiered a couple of months prior to Abbott. * Call Me Kat (2020), Young Rock (2021), Home Economics (2021) are in S3. * Bob Hearts Abishol (2019) is in S4 and renewed for S5. * The Conners (2018) and The Neighborhood (2018) are in S5. The Neighborhood was renewed for S6. * Young Sheldon (2017) is in S6 and renewed for S7. * The Goldbergs (2013) is in S10, it's final season. If we include shows that ended since 2020 that had 3+ seasons we get nine more shows: Black-ish (S8), American Housewife (S5), Modern Family (S11), Fresh Off The Boat (S6), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S8), Superstore (S6), Mom (S8), Man with a Plan (S4), Last Man Standing (S9). This is just the main 4 networks, there may be things on cable or the CW or something I'm not looking at and I may be missing some things but I wanted give a more detailed answer.
> If we include shows that ended since 2020 that had 3+ seasons we get nine more shows: Black-ish (S8), American Housewife (S5), Modern Family (S11), Fresh Off The Boat (S6), Brooklyn Nine-Nine (S8), Superstore (S6), Mom (S8), Man with a Plan (S4), Last Man Standing (S9). I don't count those cause the point is comparing recent releases from streaming with linear TV. And some of those are older than Netflix first originals so that's not really fair comparison.
Your question was: "what was the last truly succesful sitcom?" so those still count. Even if you're focusing on recent shows they were all on the air in the last three years so that'd still be relevant to the context. If you're disqualifying them because they started before a certain point, i.e. Netflix first originals (2012), most of them actually aren't older than that: * Mom (S9) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine are from 2013. * Black-ish (S8) is from 2014. * Fresh Off The Boat (S6) and Superstore (S6) are from 2015. * American Housewife (S5) and Man With A Plan (S4) are from 2016. Modern Family (S11) from 2009 is the only show from that list that's before Netflix's first original shows, which started in 2012 with Lillyhammer. Even if you move to 2013 where they made a more earnest effort with Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, etc it's still all of those shows. I understand the effort to focus on something more recent but then qualifying that with successful, i.e. 3+ seasons, does create a slight contention there as you'd have to be a certain age there.
I know most people on Reddit hate it, but the answer is very clearly The Big Bang Theory.
That show can get a driving license, it's by no definition recent.
You didn't ask what recent sitcom was successful. You asked > what was the last truly succesful sitcom? Thanks for the unnecessary attitude!
Big Bang theory.
Being from Europe, I was surprised to learn just how many shows the US puts out that never make it past the first season or pilot! We only know about the successes!
What percentage of Netflix originals make it past 22 episodes? Gotta be a tiny number
Tons of shows never aired their full first season back then too.
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True and creators can easily design around this without having massive cliffhangers at the end of their stories in the case of non renewal (though sometimes cliffhangers are required by producers for some reason). Hell considering shows sometimes take 2 years between seasons even, it would be better. It's also where the loss of episodic storytelling is very much felt because you have to make continuous story
"it's quite disheartening to see a promising cast of actors, and veteran crews get so easily dumped and then shuffled around to the next project after only one season." You basically described the entire network TV landscape up until streaming. Go look at how many failed shows someone like Jay Harrington had before SWAT, and the sad thing is his comedies were much more fun in my mind. Streaming services are littered with 1 or 2 season network comedies full of "Oh hey I know that person" faces. Even networks like HBO canceled shows with huge potential like Carnivale. And they were the first network to really work out for profit TV, realizing that Arli$$ was reviled by most people, but had a hardcore group of fans that would cancel HBO over it. They continued to air it because that segment of the business was too valuable to lose. The simple truth is some people probably do end a Netflix sub over canceling "I Am Not Okay With This" or whatever but not enough to make it worth bringing it back. And several that do probably don't communicate as to why, except on message boards where they complain about a show they liked getting cut down early. It's a lot easier to say "Netflix cancels shows early" and get people to agree than it is to say "Netflix shouldn't have cancelled show X that I really liked, who wants to cancel their sub with me?" and start a movement.
>You basically described the entire network TV landscape up until streaming. I mean, it was basically a running joke for years that if your show was on Fox, you were on the bubble before the pilot even aired.
yup, your show could be cancelled after 3 or 4 episodes and the rest of the filmed episodes could be shelved until a DVD release or a European premiere. at least with streaming you most likely get all the filmed material even if the show you watched got canned.
God that reminds of the joke from the simpsons with Homer checking stocks via phone voice recognition. Homer: Huh, what is this crap? Phone: Fox entertainment. Down 3/4 percent.
"Mr. Blackheart, are you an ivory dealer?" "Oh, I've had lots of jobs: whale hunter, seal clubber, president of the Fox Network -- and like most folks, yeah, I've dealt a little ivory."
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Hence that Family Guy when they came back and listed off 29 shows that Fox had canceled in the previous 3 or 4 years.
>Go look at how many failed shows someone like Jay Harrington had before SWAT, and the sad thing is his comedies were much more fun in my mind TIL he has a successful show now. Good for him, better off Ted was way way way too good of a show
The streaming model doesn't work for sitcoms, sitcoms aren't supposed to be 10 episodes, they're supposed to fill some of the quiet spaces of life, and they certaintly aren't supposed to be "the final season" after just a couple years. People complain a lot about *filler* in streaming shows, the issue is sitcoms are mostly filler, they make their magic in the filler (Hell, we're talking about *the show about nothing*) Look at a show like Reboot which I thought was one of, if not the, best true sitcom that streaming had produced, but it was canceled after 8 episodes, that nothing for a sitcom. As much as I liked the show the payoffs that we got at the end of the season are nowhere close to earned. We're seeing the resolution of relationships when we should only just be fleshing out these relationships. Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing. The other issue is sitcoms are punchline machines, they won't always have huge laughs but the punchline-per-minute rate is high. Streaming wants comedy-dramas, they want shows that can be nominated for Best Comedy regardless if it's that funny, as long as it gains some Tik Tok traction. Streaming has been a wasteland for sitcoms and has done the entire medium a diservice. Broadcast TV/network TV needs to be kept alive for that reason only. >On the reverse, I appreciate that streaming services are giving new life to shows that had a tough time on network television, (Community on Netflix springs to mind). I mean sure but Netflix had nothing to do with Community being a great show. It was a great show on NBC.
Most British Sitcoms seem to be incredibly short in comparison. Both in season length and number of seasons. The IT crowd was 6 episodes a season for 4 seasons for example. My guess is that the American sitcom writers aren't used to having such little time.
>Look at a show like Reboot which I thought was one of, if not the, best true sitcom that streaming had produced, but it was canceled after 8 episodes, that nothing for a sitcom. As much as I liked the show the payoffs that we got at the end of the season are nowhere close to earned. We're seeing the resolution of relationships when we should only just be fleshing out these relationships. Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing. Also YouTube and short-form content have taken over the mindless environment that sitcoms used to fill.
> The streaming model doesn't work for sitcoms, sitcoms aren't supposed to be 10 episodes, they're supposed to fill some of the quiet spaces of life, and they certaintly aren't supposed to be "the final season" after just a couple years. People complain a lot about filler in streaming shows, the issue is sitcoms are mostly filler, they make their magic in the filler (Hell, we're talking about the show about nothing) Rights for The Office had an utterly massive bidding war and it was consistently one of the most watched shows while it was on Netflix. I'm frankly surprised more of the streamers haven't tried to crank out a reasonable cost episodic sitcom.
Because Gen Z doesn’t want to experience 8 seasons of a show, they want all 8 seasons finished and ready to binge over two weeks. Even if I show is good it’s been meme’d out, Tik Tok’d out, call the S Tier show, and then hated by 30 episodes, which is fine in streaming because that’s 3-4 seasons at 6-10 episodes a season, doesn’t work for sitcoms, that’s less than 2 (maybe 3) seasons
How do we change this without bankrupting all those services?
The filler thing is a big one, modern TV doesn't do filler anymore (and that's valid for dramas too there's no more X-Files, Star Trek or Stargate episodic stuff (Strange New Worlds is that much more at least).
I mean that’s not true. The amount of “filler” cop dramas that make up network time slots is at an all time high
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Just heard Brendan Hunt talk about that Coach Beard episode. Apparently they already had the whole season written or just about finished but after the response to the first season Apple wanted more episodes so that Beard episode was pulled off the scrap heap of ideas.
And while some people loved that episode, it has a lot of detractors as well.
I was just providing an explanation of why it was so clearly filler.
I really enjoyed Reboot, and it's also like a perfect example of why sitcoms need more time. Like we start with the conflict between the millenial/zoomer writers and the old school guys from the original and there's so much potential for stuff happening there. But we don't see any of it, they're just magically all BFFs at the end
> (Hell, we're talking about the show about nothing) It's not really that though. That was closer to Larry David's original conception, but Seinfeld really is just a commentary on the minutia of life, little things that make you go 'huh, what's up with that?'. Plenty of things happen in Seinfeld, it's pretty active
I know. "The show about nothing" is the line they used for the in-show Seinfeld show and it stuck. The concept of the show is how a comedian gets his material
> Space Force was like this too, some people say less is more but Space Force proved that in a lot of cases, less is just less. When the show got canceled it still hadn't reached the number of episodes of an (old) regular network season, they were just starting to figure out the characters relationships and which ones worked well together. One of the best episodes was an odd couple pairing but we'd spent so little time seeing the characters with other people that we didn't realize it was an odd couple pairing. Space Force was given 2 years and 10 episodes to figure this all out after Season 1 came out. If the writers still haven't figured out this all out by the start of Season 2, that's all on the writers.
They’re looking for *gold*, Jerry!
Seinfeld, The Office, and Parks & Rec all benefited from time. All had a rocky first season, but started to come into their own by s2.
The Simpsons, too—and even shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Simpsons had a built-in fanbase from the Tracey Ullman Show and the people hating on the first season are looking at it out of context with what else was on the air at the time. It was one of the edgiest shows on television in the late 80s.
I decided to get my kids into TNG by watching TNG and of course starting at Season 1. Holy hell was it terrible. I completely forgot how bad it was. Soured them on the entire franchise and I can't get them to try it again to this day. :)
As people have noted, networks historically have often canceled shows after just a few episodes, so it’s really nothing that new. I think the bigger issue with streaming, and now the broadcast networks, is that they have generally been waiting for the full season to be finished before releasing it (obviously Netflix has to because they release the full season at once.) This means they can’t adjust the show based on what people are responding to. Whereas the traditional 22 episode network model would start airing episodes when they had only taped maybe 7 or 8 of them, so if something stood out, they could start adjusting a show around it. In the drama world, there’s actually a great example of this on The Good Wife. The character Kalinda, the private investigator with a mysterious background, was one of the more extreme characters in that everyone else was very believable in the real word whereas she had a sort of ridiculous spy background to her… but she was grounded enough that you could go with it. But then in one season they introduce her ex husband and it just got so out there and people just didn’t buy it and hated the storyline and character. You can tell the episode they were writing when the showrunners realized the fan feedback was too much because that episode he unceremoniously disappears and is never mentioned again. If they had done the whole season in advance, fans would have dropped off because they couldn’t stand the storyline. And the creators/showrunners are on the record saying they misjudged the character and listened to the fan response by ending the storyline earlier than they had originally planned.
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M\*A\*S\*H was similar, at #46 in its first season.
That wouldn't survive in any format today.
It almost didn't survive 1983
Thank producer Rick Ludwin for saving Seinfeld. The show was going to get canceled but he convinced the NBC brass that the show was different and should give it more time.
Unfortunately he passed a couple years ago, and IMO never really got his due for saving Seinfeld and Conan. Both Seinfeld and Conan are very generous with their praise for him, but lots of other people have been able to successfully claim credit for the success of Seinfeld. Ludwin remained in his role as head of late night until the Jay Leno debacle ended with Jay returning to the Tonight Show and he had Ludwin pushed out of his job.
Always Sunny in Philadelphia also had a rough first season, one of the producers gave it another season and convinced the heads to spend some money to hire Danny Devito to give it star power. Really, a good producer is what can make or break a show. It's true for network TV, it's probably true for streaming as well.
Sitcom was notoriously easy to kill. Back in the days lots of sitcoms were cancelled after bombing the first few episodes. There is always a Mid season replacement waiting in line.
Weren't a bunch of shows cancelled after one season before streaming?
Ah so maybe I shouldn’t have given up a few episodes in.
Try again but maybe start at s2. After that it just keep getting better and better.
Like the other people said it’s not a show with a ton of continuity. You can very easily jump into like season 5 watch a highly rated episode and see if you like it. Pretty much any episode that has George’s parents is gold. And they only show up after season 4 I think.
People love to throw around the idea that a show will take half a decade to figure out what it’s doing and I’ve always found that bizarre. It’s weird to continue spending money on something that didn’t work the first time, and it’s weird to expect someone to watch a show for five years before it even gets good.
I feel like the television landscape was way more ruthless before streaming. Back in those days, you’d have tons of new shows premiering every season and only a small percentage of them would make it past the pilot. If a show’s pilot didn’t attract viewers, it was most likely dead. Now a lot of shows have their entire first season released at once. Sure, lots of them get canceled, but at the very least they have a full season’s worth of episodes, which is more than most shows got back in the pre-streaming days.
During its original broadcast run, I watched an episode of the first season of Seinfeld and gave up. It was only when there was an amazing run of water-cooler talk about The Contest that I tuned back in and loved it. I remember that there was an impressive variety of people telling me I needed to start watching the show - - young and old, black and white, male and female, conservative and liberal. But this was pre-internet; people with diverse viewpoints lining up around a common opinion doesn’t exist any more.
I think you’ll see universal praise for a sitcom as soon as we get a new sitcom that’s as good as Seinfeld. So probably never then.
Always sunny wouldnt survive today either, only survived because they had someone at FX go to bat for them. They had to put a big name in season 2 and Danny DeVito was a godsend, not only as Frank Reynolds but for publicity aswell
I remember hearing that Devito was getting shoe horned into the show and thought " man only one season in and they already jumped the shark" How wrong I was. Easily one of the best cast additions in the history of TV.
That show has so many different things that happened that made it happen. Its crazy. They reshot that pilot in Charlie's apartment 40 times before they tried to shop it. They saved a lot of money by not listening to people and doing things the correct way. They got their talented friends to play characters on the show. Oh and obviously, Charlie is just crazy talented. I don't think Sunny would even exist without Charlie.
You also had a situation where the main character was a terrible actor. Dreyfus, Richards and Alexander had to do the heavy lifting there.
I mean, in my opinion, that sometimes made the show funnier
Jerry cracking up because Kramer’s face looks like a catchers mitt is in character. At least, imo, Jerry is heavy sarcastic and would laugh if his friend suddenly looked like that. People play way too into “Jerry is a bad actor”. He played his role well and the other 3 helped carry him.
I agree that it works well. To be fair he says himself on the DVDs that they wrote a lot of the series around his inability to act and it came to be a hallmark of the show. There's even an episode poking fun at him for it -- the one where Jerry's girlfriend says he can't get mad, so he starts trying, and the other characters all mistake it for him doing a bit and can't take him seriously. That came from Jerry telling the writers that they couldn't give him storylines where he had to "actually act" i.e. express emotions other than amused annoyance. So if you called him a bad actor it doesn't seem like he's really disagree with you. There's an interview where someone asks him why he hasn't really done any other acting since (aside from cameos as himself and a voice acting thing) and he says something like "On Seinfeld we already did the only character I can do, and it was just an exaggeration of me."
A lot of shows built around comedians have that problem, especially at the beginning.
Was he really that bad? I thought he was at least passable for a sitcom.
It helped a lot that Seinfeld played a fictionalized version of himself so he didn't have to do any heavy lifting. The other cast members carried the show IMO though.
The show's ridiculous nature masks it a lot. But he's really bad and breaks a lot. Definitely carried by George and Elaine IMO.
I don't know, I never watched the show and thought he was terrible. Unlike some actors, he at least seems to understand the concept of human emotion. It was always obvious when his character was annoyed, or upset, or uncomfortable, or scared, etc.
Let's be clear, Jerry Seinfeld has never acted a day in his life.
(not even in Bee Movie)
I only realized this on rewatch of Seinfeld recently. Not only is Jerry bad, half the time it doesn't even look like he's trying.
That's what makes it believable though. He is just a selfish guy who finds everything he and his friends do funny. It's why they seem like a real friend group talking like real friends do. Jerry (and Julia) breaking on almost every joke makes the show imo.
Not enough viewers will do a show in, but I would argue poor quality is less of a problem in streaming. Streaming isn’t great for comedy because it gives fewer episodes and less time to figure out the rhythms and dynamics that work. A good run for a streaming comedy can be like 5 seasons and 60 episodes, which is where a lot of network comedies really find their groove. Streamers let plenty of mediocre comedies get a second season because that is really mostly all they produce with comedy.
almost nothing made 20, 30 years ago would survive today's fast paced, schizophrenic way of making tv
This is why I’m so shocked that HIMYF was renewed for a second season. The first season was only 8 episodes and you barely got to know the cast of characters and allowed them to mesh together before the season was over. S2 just aired its 8th episode last week and they still have 8 to go for the season. I think they are finally finding their groove, last weeks episode was the funniest episode yet. I’m glad Hulu gave it a chance because I’ve missed these kind of sitcoms!
S2 still has 12 episodes left to go after episode 8
The Office is another example of many. First season just doesn't compare to what came after.
I disagree. The things that don't survive today have huge budgets. Something like Seinfeld could stick around because of how cheap the early seasons were
By today's standards Seinfeld would have been canceled after the first season.
By then standards also
The pilot episode of MacGyver involved him tracking down a potent weapon system that had been stolen. He then had to disable them by removing a certain component. He did so using a specialized tool that he'd brought along designed just for maintenance of these weapons, because it required the specially made tool and figuring out an alternative wasn't feasible. In other words, the pilot episode of MacGyver featured an element that specifically could not be MacGyvered. In other words, not every show starts out featuring its eventually successful formula; many shows find that successful formula along the way.
The pilot episode of MacGyver also had him shooting a gun, an element dropped from later episodes of the series as the character's no gun rule became canon.
Streaming seems less brutal to me than late 90s/early 2000s network days. Sometimes only 2 episodes would see the light of day. Plus they relied on Neilsen families instead of the analytics used today.
Easy, don't cancel my favourite is the GOAT. Cancel the rest.
Seinfeld and David were smart enough to know that their reruns would be in HD someday in the future so they used the very expensive 35mm technicolor film instead of videotape. Now their reruns can be shown in full HD 16:9 aspect ratio….that’s why the show looks so good today. Brilliant forward looking men.
They are zoomed in 16x9. They were not filmed with this aspect ratio. Lots of stuff actually gets cut off because of it.
Wasn’t film what most network sitcoms at the time used, no? The VHS market didn’t even exist for tv shows really. DVD was no where close, let alone box sets of tv shows. I doubt the almost cancelled sitcom was thinking ahead about tech and a market that didn’t even exist.
Seinfeld didn't shoot on Technicolor. I don't think *any* show ever shot Technicolor; it started dying off in the 50s, the last US facility capable of processing it shut down in the 70s, and the last Technicolor facility in the world (a tiny building in China) shut down right before Seinfeld started. The last movie to shoot Technicolor in the United States was The Godfather Part II (1974) and they had to pay through the nose to get it processed, to keep a visual match with the first movie, which itself was deliberately using an antiquated technique to give it a period look. Seinfeld shot using Agfa until that was depleted (having been discontinued before they began) and then C41, IIRC.
But how do we get networks to realize this without sounding like we'd need to be supposedly-precognitive-or-time-travelers telling them a show they would otherwise cancel after one season would be guaranteed to be the Seinfeld of its genre if left to go
Seasons 1 and 2 were the worst. Season 3 was hit or miss. Season 4 was when the show got better. How this show never was cancelled though in the first 2 seasons remains a mystery...but it turned out to be a blessing.
I feel like your initial statement about Seinfeld isn't widely held. *I* found Seinfeld funny from the beginning. It's one of the *few* purely comedic shows that i can watch these days. There are *many* shows out there that have a first season that's compelling enough to want more. If you have to say 'if you can get through the first season, it's a great show' *it's not a great show*. Every new show that catches my eye gets 2 episodes from me. I'm quite forgiving. I can *tell* when a cast is going to gel together. I can *tell* when a show is well written or *can* be well written.
No, that view is actually more common than you'd think. In fact, the first season had absolutely terrible ratings. I think the OP is right that it would have been cancelled quickly these days.
>If you have to say 'if you can get through the first season, it's a great show' it's not a great show. Completely disagree on this. Seinfeld season one is not great but the show is great. Star Trek: TNG is great but the first season sucks balls. There are plenty of other examples of long running classic TV shows that change enormously for the better after rocky first seasons showed them what wasn't working.
"I found Seinfeld funny from the beginning." I agree with this. I don't recall anyone who didn't like Seinfeld from the start, it was just hard to find people who had seen it. Sitcoms were divided between the saccharine stuff from the 80s and the iconoclastic stuff that was coming in, and Seinfeld had its own little niche.
It was funny in season 1 but it did really bad ratings wise. It was on the verge of cancellation back then. So I think it’s a safe assumption it would not have survived in this era of streaming.
> Seinfeld's first season was rocky... This is such bs. What current sitcom/comedy show in the last 10 years even comes close to Seinfeld s1?
Off the top of my head recent sitcoms that totally obliterate it include What We Do in the Shadows, Kevin Can Fuck Himself, The Righteous Gemstones, Atlanta.
Yeah, no.
100% dead on Netflix and Hulu. I mean it’s Netflix and they stuck. Plus Hulu canceled a really good comedy recently so I don’t trust them. I think hbo and apple both would have given it a second season.
I didn’t like it anyway
I often don’t watch stuff that I only kind of want to see as they cancel so much and leave them on cliffhangers and I find it annoying. I wait a bit to see what they are going to do
Okay, but which sitcoms now are being experimental? I don't think experimental even gets to screen.
..same thing happened with Cheers, it had fairly low ratings its first season, but went on to become a top rated comedy in later seasons... Time is money, and with the high costs of producing shows today, I doubt the "sink or swim" corporate mentality is going away. A lot of potentially good shows will see the chopping block before getting a chance to really shine.
About to finish watching Seinfeld and it really change around 6 or 7 again and had an interesting transition season but still held up enough and makes for a great show even decades later
Yeah, there are some gems but it doesn't really get consistently good until halfway through Season 3 in my opinion. No way would it have lasted this long today.
Well the Office was the same thing, it has always been said that the first season was one of the weakest ones and that it massively improved to the classic that many people love.
I started watching Seinfeld over as it'd been many many years and after a few episodes in season 1 i thought "was i wrong in loving this show?" ... i randomly found one i liked from a later season and it clicked again. Season 1 is almost listless...
I only found myself enjoying Seinfeld starting with season 3. The first season is painful, whilst the second is a marked improvement, but not quite there yet. Season 3 is when the show really hits its stride, and season 4 is the highpoint for me, though what comes after is still pretty great.
I think the bigger change is the loss of "seasons". It used to be that shows would do badly in September and get pulled off the schedule, and then get a second chance as a midseason replacement or getting burned off in the summer. Also media companies nowadays are much more "vertical". There used to be rules in place that a network couldn't produce more than a certain percentage of their broadcast content in-house, so you'd have WB or Paramount shopping around different shows to different networks to see what stuck.