What's the most UNFUNNY sitcom in TV history?

Stephen Dork?

Most first-run syndicated sitcoms in the 80s were absolute garbage.

Joanie Loves Chachi.

Small Wonder

This one somehow ran for six years.

I think Seinfeld is supremely unfunny.

Unless you were 5 years old, "Gilligan's Island" was painfully unfunny.

Thread: closed!

Somehow missed r4

How did this crap fest last four seasons?!

Facts of Life really wasn't that funny.

This ripoff of "Married With Children" and "Alf" was painfully unfunny.

It lasted 5 seasons.

The Golden Girls

"Too Close for Comfort"

How one could get through even an episode is impossible to imagine.

How I Met Yo Mama

Family Guy

Ladies Man

Yes, I am old enough to remember the travesty that was My Mother, The Car.

"Encore, Encore!" (1998-99) featured Joseph Pinoni as a 'womanizing' opera singer...

Casting Nathan Lane as Pinoni, at one point literally chasing a woman around a bed to screw her, defined "suspension of disbelief"! Seeing Joan Plowright trapped in this mess of a show made things worse.

Wasn't the woman he was chasing played by Patti Lupone, R19?

In the mid-'80s, this Canadian crapfest aired in the US on Nickelodeon and in syndication.

"Lally Cadeau" Wow now that's a Canadian name!

F Troop

R10- I didn't like that CHUBBY QUEENY little boy either.

There was nothing funny about Hogan’s Heroes.

I know I'm talking heresy here but for the most part Golden Girls was sitcom AVERAGE.

Living well is the best revenge. Not only did Suzanne Somers go on to a career in cancer research, she built a billion dollar empire, won a Tony and was Oscar nominated, TWICE. Some beauty is ageless, Suzanne's is timeless. She looks like a woman in her forties!! All natural and still fertile.

Alan Hamel is 85 and SS gives him a testosterone shot in his BUTT every morning. Guess what they do all day.❤️ I've been there and it's beautiful to witness.

Suzanne is an amazing woman. TV's loss was medical science's gain. Her research led to the cure for certain forms of breast cancer. And it's non-invasive. A Nobel is not out of the question for Ms. Somers.

The Legend, at home. Palm Springs, last night.

Get Smart - NOT FUNNY

Three's Company. Critics thought it was SO BRILLIANT when Jerry Seinfeld said Seinfeld was a show about nothing but Three's Company REALLY was a show about NOTHING.

3 girls 3

Hot L Baltimore

Why did you feel compelled to post this drivel on a thread about unfunny sitcoms, R27?

Go away R28. I was two feet away from her back in 2003 and she was a shriveled up hag back then.

Full House was the greasiest turd out of Perfect Strangers, Growing Pains, Step by Step, etc. The TGIF lineup on ABC was crap TV.

I NEVER thought The Cosby Show was funny. The critics LOVED it because it portrayed an upper middle class black nuclear family blah , blah, blah- The FIRST thing that makes a sitcom good is that fact that it's funny which TCS is not.

David , hold me- One Day At A Time- NOT a funny show.

McLean Stevenson left M*A*S*H to star in the dreadful, Hello, Larry

Father Knows Best was a watchable show but it was NEVER a funny show.

Chachi I mean Charles In Charge

Boo! R11.

Boo! R26!

Suddenly, Sudan

r42 = Darfur Orphan

omg Susan. Suddenly, SUSAN

Yes! M*A*S*H was NOT funny!

Out of this World was the steamiest piece of shit on TV in the 80's.

That 80s Show. It made That 70s Show seem like Frasier by comparison.

Not the very worst, but WE GOT IT MADE was pretty bad.

What's Happening Now ! !

NEVER funny- Too Close For Comfort

9 to 5. I've only seen episodes w/ Sally Struthers, so many the Rita Moreno season was better.

Some queens may disagree- I was 13 years old when Mork And Mindy went on the air and I NEVER found it funny.

maybe not many^

NEVER funny - Barney Miller

R48- That actor Matt McCoy was good looking.

I was hot for Matt McCoy, too, R55.

Matt McCoy shills for AARP now. I was shocked because I hadn’t seen him since The Hand That Rocks The Cradle but that was most 30 years ago

R58- He got OLD

R58- He looks ten years older.

r58 He's not shilling for AARP -- he's shilling for Hartford Insurance's AARP car insurance.

Here's the list of TV shows that were cancelled after ONE AIRING. And Heather Graham's execrable sitcom, "Emily's Reasons Why Not" tops the list.

Dreadful!

The Magdalene Sisters

The big bang theory.

As unfunny as the Cosby Show was then, you have to admit it's even more unfunny now.

Friends.

[QUOTE] NEVER funny- Too Close For Comfort

Also could be disturbing. Did you ever seen the one where Monroe gets raped?

We knew even back then that Small Wonder was atrocious.

Father Knows Best was a watchable show but it was NEVER a funny show.

All that doesn't matter, because it had the one unforgettable episode where Betty (aka Princess) told the other girl at her high school, "Keep my mother's name out of your mouth or I'll slap you like you've never been slapped before." THAT was the moment when television stopped being polite and finally GOT REAL.

As Time Goes By

Actually, I'd love to see a sitcom called Suddenly Sudan!

How DARE YOU!!! R13

It's been mentioned before, but even though One Day at a Time was socially relevant for its time, it was decidedly not funny. All of the scripts sounded like they came out of a feminist playwriting workshop at a suburban community center.

Please Stand By starring Elinor Donahue

Step By Step another Suzanne Somers abortion

Catchy intro, R48!

Any Tyler Perry sitcom. Meet the Browns, House of Payne, Daddy's Ho Daughters, Sassy Mammy.

R71

AS TIME GOES BY was technically a Britcom, but struck me more as about being older. Aunt Penny was funny, and Sandy's Harry was hot.

The Nick and Disney shows of the last twenty years make Small Wonder look like high art.

According to Jim

Another vote for Out of this World. Made Small Wonder look likes Shakespeare.

Laverne & Shirley. Neither of the leads had any kind of charm or appeal. Their sidekicks didn't have any sex appeal. (Lenny & Squiggy, Carmine).

The Brady Brides

Two Broke Girls owns this thread

The Pruitts of Southampton

R30 or maybe that just means Three’s Company was genius and ahead of its time.

Yes, I think so.

80s “hit,” Alf.

Good Times.

I watched that HBO show Insecure with Issa Rae and thought it was an interesting take on the sadness of a disintegrating relationship and a woman’s battle with racism and misogyny and thought it wasn’t too bad. Then it got all these nominations as a comedy show and I was like what the fuck, that was no comedy, I didn’t laugh once, that was about pain and suffering. I could never go back and watch it again if that’s supposed to pass for comedy.

Mork and Mindy. Was it even supposed to be a sitcom?

This excrement from Canada, ca. 1970-71

Having loved Walton Goggins in Justified and Vice Principals, I tried to watch The Unicorn today. Just awful and a complete waste of Goggins’ talent, not to mention Michaela Watkins’.

R83- What planet are you on?

Eddie Mekka was THE sex symbol of the late 1970's.

Shit My Dad Says

Lottsa Luck

I tried watching an episode of that on youtube, R96. I think I made it to 10 minutes.

I’ll agree on One Day at a Time.

Painful.

Those brown and yellow era shows are hard to take now.

So is Bonnie Franklin and her aversion to bras.

R94 that’s seriously one of those #onlyonDL things.

So is Richard Kline, but I can get behind that.

I saw Eddie Mekka in Fiddler on the Roof in the 90s and threw my panties onto the stage.

Because you shit in them when you got a good look at how he aged R100?

Eddie Mekka was homely as sin.

The 70's must have been hard up for sex symbols.

I tried watching that Miranda show that the cat cafe show was based on and they both need flushed down the toilet.

The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men. Actually any Chuck Lorre sitcom, but they all seem to run for at least 5-10 years. I don't get it.

[quote] I saw Eddie Mekka in Fiddler on the Roof in the 90s and threw my panties onto the stage.

Whom did he play? Tzeitel?

In no particular order:

Big Bang Theory

Whitney

Two Broke Girls

The Cleveland Show

That Caveman Show based on the Geico commercial

8 Simple Rules (after Ritter died)

Most 80s family sitcoms

Any Disney Channel show especially from 2010s and beyond

What, in the literal fuck...

Another vote for Two Broke Girls. Horrible people constantly insulting each other. Even when the put-downs are clever it's unfunny because you don't believe it for a minute. The characters they're playing are obviously too dumb to think up the dialog they use. Bogus as well as ugly.

R15, is that the BET reboot?

But seriously, How I Met Your Mother felt like a cheap imitation of Friends, except none of the snarky characters were likeable or even occasionally amusing. Barney was an obnoxious douchebag. Friends wasn't particularly good and HIMYM was pure dreck.

Happy Endings also had snarky, over-the-top characters, yet they were often funny. That show was short-lived while HIMYM lasted 9 seasons. Go figure.

Kirk Cameron was the only funny part of Growing Pains but he had no charisma to lead a show by himself and he especially should not have creative control. His clean and wholesome Christian humor doesn't work because comedy takes risks and having some type of edge. Fuck, Veggie Tales had some self-aware subversive quality to it.

I give you... "The Trouble With Larry"! With Bronson Pinchot and Courteney Cox!

HIMYM started off strong but after a point, it just got worse with each subsequent season and all the characters became completely unlikeable. And it may have had the worst ending in sitcom history.

The sitcom based on Ferris Bueller starring pre-nose job Jennifer Aniston.

Mamas Family. Vicki Lawrence was so unfunny. I watched it only for his

I remember this show being promoted like crazy but it wasn't funny at all. I tried watching Whitney Cumming's stand-up and it didn't make me laugh. Chris D'Elia isn't funny either.

Canada isn’t particularly well known for its stellar comedies. We do a better job with dramas I think. Growing up, THE BEACHCOMBERS was considered one of our more popular comedies. It ran from 1972-1990. It wouldn’t have gone on so long if people weren’t watching. It wasn’t bad, but it’s no KIDS IN THE HALL, SCHITT’S CREEK or LETTERKENNY. Bruno Gerussi, the star of the show, was well respected. He died 5 years after the show ended from a heart attack at 67.

We have many more mediocre, at best, comedies I’ll try to dig up.

Whitney Cummings created an absolutely appalling sitcom a few years back but it's name escapes me. It might have been called Whitney. Cummings is also a writer on the vomitous 2 Broke Girls. She is grating, repulsive, and talent free but largely escapes public hate.

Reading up more on THE BEACHCOMBERS, I guess it was more of a comedy-drama than a straight comedy.

This little gem which ran in the 80s wasn’t improved even with the great Don Adams as the star.

Whoops. I see r115 beat me to it.

I don't find Schitt's creek funny. Ever, at all.

SCTV was before my time, but that SCHIT was often very funny. There are lots and lots of funny Canadians. Living in New York and L.A.

I'm going to be a bit controversial but I always thought VEEP was overrated. The humor was too over the top and lacking in subtlety. I always thought it would have been more spot on if the characters acted like genuine DC assholes (discrete, snake-like and smarmy) rather than the cursing, yelling over the top behavior that's more common in a place like Hollywood. Washington is full of sociopaths but it's sort of a quiet and sneaky sociopathy.

2 Broke Girls

Yup, Small Wonder was shit back in the '80s.

Vicky may have been a robot, but she was still a little CUNT!

This would have been the least funny sitcom in TV history, by far, but it was an unsold pilot. Absolutely painful to watch. Produced by Desi Arnaz.

I can think of 3 off the top of my head:

I Married Joan - they briefly aired reruns of this when I was a kid, and I gave it a chance, but hoo-boy, was that ever a stinker of a show. Completely unfunny from beginning to end. I couldn't believe something so bad actually existed.

A Different World - I guess it started out OK, but when it morphed into this tour-de-force of "social consciousness", it became painful, and totally unfunny. It was like every episode just HAD to be a "very special episode" that addressed some important social topic, and they forgot that their job wasn't to lecture us, it was to entertain us and make us laugh.

The Goldbergs - I made it through about 5 or 10 minutes of one episode. The tone of the thing was just so weird and off. I hated everything about it. I've never seen something try so hard to be funny and fail so miserably.

Wow, so much hate for the Broke Girls, to me it was very much like Laverne and Shirley updated.

I have to agree with all the TGIF crap. That has to be the worst group of sitcoms I can think of.

And yeah Mork and Mindy was never funny either, even to my 5 year old self. Interestingly, I think wherever I used to watch it in reruns aired it right after Popeye (the cartoon) - which of course robin williams wasn’t in but still interesting, sort of.

Wings

People have mentioned OUT OF THIS WORLD. While it did suck, it improved when dreamy Steve Burton was added to the cast. He looked like he came straight off of a California beach. At least the show had some eye candy then.

[quote]People have mentioned OUT OF THIS WORLD. While it did suck, it improved when dreamy Steve Burton was added to the cast.

But it starred DL fave Donna Pescow!

The reason the 1980s had so many first-run syndicated sitcoms is because the late 1970s had so many short-lived network sitcoms that didn’t even run long enough to syndicate.

And it looks like most of them were trying to copy a network production schedule on a smaller budget.

Did anyone in 70s even think The Brady Bunch was actually funny? I just find that very hard to believe if they did.

Generally speaking, I've grown weary of sitcoms where the characters all spew overly clever, long winded and elaborate insults back and forth. It's become just as tiring as the bland one liners in old school sitcoms. I guess I just prefer realistic situational humor and most people are not that clever.

Even though the big bang theory was absolute dogshit birthed from the minds of hedonistic writers intent on causing pain and suffering, it did give rise to this great video.

I always thought "Out of This World" was one of those "so bad it's good" shows.

My best friend and I used to watch it on Sundays while recovering from our Saturday night drunken escapades, and we would laugh our asses off at how stupid it was.

[quote] Did anyone in 70s even think The Brady Bunch was actually funny? I just find that very hard to believe if they did.

No, BB was not funny. But it was valuable for other things.

United States

The Partridge Family, starring the unfunniest teenagers in the whole world, David Cassidy and Susan Dey

[quote]Did anyone in 70s even think The Brady Bunch was actually funny? I just find that very hard to believe if they did.

When it aired in the early '70s, "The Brady Bunch" was a throwback to 1950s-style sitcoms, except that most of them were funnier.

[quote]The Partridge Family, starring the unfunniest teenagers in the whole world, David Cassidy and Susan Dey.

I refuse to comment on that.

Sitcoms are seldom funny. That's why the same ten always make all the top ten lists.

[quote] When it aired in the early '70s, "The Brady Bunch" was a throwback to 1950s-style sitcoms, except that most of them were funnier.

That show was not so much a throwback as the last show launched before TV changed dramatically.

The Partridge Family was at least kinda funny sometimes and had some adult humor in it. So it succeeds in being a situation comedy. The Brady Bunch seemed like it was written for preschoolers and irked me how the characters acted younger than their age (Cindy must have been mentally handicap). The spin-offs though (Variety Hour, Brady Brides, The Bradys etc) were at least hilariously awful and the 90s movie parodies were straight up funny and the best piece of media in the entire franchise.

Mr. Kincaid and Danny were funny (Partridge Family). The rest were not funny.

This is obscure and painfully labored and awful but I worked on this mess. The set was like a lit stick of dynamite with everyone just waiting, but not knowing, when the fuse would hit the charge. Lots of $$$$$ spent on this stinkeroo.

R144 Yes. They were the best part of the show. Great comedic chemistry.

Laura Petrie on the Dick Van Dyke Show. How she'd cry and talk at the same time. I cringed when I watched the Mary Tyler Moore show and Mary did the same thing.

R147 I was not allowed to watch MTM because her voice worked my mother’s last nerve. Only show in my house I could not watch. All my Catholic friends were forbidden to watch One Day at a Time.

Another flatulent burst from our neighbors up north!

Pretty much all of them in the 60s & 70s. The Paul Lynda Show was probably the most insane sitcom of all time. The gayest man in America portraying a conservative lawyer with a wife & kids and …… this son in law

[quote] The Partridge Family was at least kinda funny sometimes

No it wasn’t

I found the show Murphy Brown really, really unfunny and the character very shrill and annoying. I like Candice Bergen a lot, but Murphy Brown didn't do it for me.

The Ropers.

Does Saved by the Bell count? I used to hate watch it

Not a sitcom, but I was reminded recently when channel surfing of how unfunny the Carol Burnett Show was. I watched it every Saturday night when my mother forced me to babysit my baby nephew for free at my sister’s illegal apartment that was built by my aunt’s shady self-proclaimed “minister” brother in law which I believe was uninsulated, as wind blew through the walls every winter night. I only watched it in anticipation of Saturday Night Live (or cool news show “Weekend”) coming on. How many times could people want to see Tim Conway play the old man, or Harvey Korman fake-breaking-up? Or Jim Nabors singing like a punch drunk opera singer? I was wrapped up in an Afghan on the couch trying not to die of hypothermia, hoping heat from the TV would warm the room a bit, waiting for 11:30 to come as lame CBS sitcom stars guested in lame sketches on Burnett. I thought she was probably a nice lady, but she was not the least bit funny.

The Hathaways with Peggy Cass & Jack Weston as “parents” of 3 chimpanzees. Having seen chimps running around peeing and pooping at the circus, all i could think of as a kid is how smelly that set must’ve been.

[quote] The Goldbergs - I made it through about 5 or 10 minutes of one episode. The tone of the thing was just so weird and off. I hated everything about it. I've never seen something try so hard to be funny and fail so miserably.

Which Goldbergs? The original one from the 1940s-50s, is quite funny and charming. The new one is mainly just for nostalgia.

Wow - R21 might have succeeded if they had pared back that ridiculously bloated cast list.

I was a young teen when Hangin' In/R21 hit the USA Network, and I wanted David Eisner to counsel me in the ways of mansex after school.

R132- The Brady Bunch was NEVER really funny yet the show was still VERY watchable.

How did Hangin' In even work? How do you do a sitcom with only three regular characters?

R125, You are SO RIGHT about A Different World. When it first started out it was a terrific, enjoyable show. It was about kids in college and their romantic issues and growing pains as they adjusted to being away from home for the first time. Dwayne Wayne and Whitley were fun, relatable characters played with comic charm by Kadeem Hardison and Jasmine Guy. Then Debbie Allen took over the creative direction of the show and it became preachy, heavy handed, self-righteous and thoroughly UNFUNNY. I stopped watching at that point.

By the way, the same thing happened to M*A*S*H. The first 4 seasons of M*A*S*H were some of the funniest, cleverest, bawdy comedy ever on television. Once McLean Stevenson, Wayne Rogers and (the terribly underappreciated) Larry Linville left the show and were replaced by the uniformly dull, unfunny Harry Morgan, Mike Farrell and David Ogden Stiers characters, the show became sanctimonious, ham-fisted, pretentious, moralizing tripe, the adventures of super-doctor, a vanity project to Alan Alda's massive ego (he was the only one allowed to be funny) instead of being what it was best at, which was Animal House in a war zone. It's in syndication and I always stop watching after the original cast members are gone.

R162-, WRONG. I found Larry Linville EXTREMELY annoying. I much preferred his replacement Charles Emerson Winchester the Upper Class Boston snob.

That Small Wonder show was some fucked up shit, a little white girl robot that only existed to be a slave and do chores.

R164 I didn’t watch it, was she a sex slave too?

It’s always sobering to watch a show you loved as a child.

GETTING TOGETHER was a one season (‘71-‘72) spin off from THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY. Both Bobby Sherman and Wes Stern appeared on TPF beforehand in an episode. I love Bobby, but don’t recall much about the show. If the show was as bad as the theme song though, it must have been pretty awful.

R167- You're up EARLY for a Sunday morning.

r72=Darfur Orphan

MASH was very sexist in its early years, just like the movie was. Females existed to have sex with the men. They were either hysterical haters of the top 2 characters or thoroughly wow’ed by them. Hot Lips Houlihan evolved from being a crazy, uber patriotic, racist, sexual hypocrite & became Margaret, a mature, thoroughly capable nursing supervisor & army officer. It was a 1970s evolution, as women realized the contribution they made to society disappeared and had become a mocked stereotype on television when sexist network executives moved from women being parents, schoolteachers, and reliable office workers to ditzy T&A characters with fluffy hair and bouncing boobs. Nurses and women in the military demanded their contributions be recognized just as much as the male doctors contribution was idolized by the show.

As a 14 year old, I thought That 70s Show was painfully unfunny and boring. I would rather have watched 20 minutes of Fez standing there naked. I can't imagine trying to sit through that show as an adult. What is it with unfunny shows and those fucking laugh tracks?

I think a lot of what was problematic about MASH was all that happened would not have made sense in the actual time frame of the American involvement in the Korea War.

R172- In NO WAY did the characters look or act like people from ca. 1951. They all looked and acted like people from the 1970's.

The Flying Nun

Mad About You. Starring one of the least funny actresses in tv history, Helen Hunt. She always looked like she was constipated.

FRIENDS- Even the Golden Palace was funnier than Friends.

Dharma and Greg

Amanda's

Apparently Small Wonder ran in syndication in the 1990s in India, where it was very popular

In what world does Small Wonder get FOUR seasons and shows like My So-Called Life and Freaks and Geeks get ONE???

Tell us, Vicky.

[quote] a little white girl robot that only existed to be a slave and do chores.

Stupid little bitch should have just kept her mouth shut!

Small Wonder was a hit in syndication.

How can any show that has Edie McClurg on it be completely awful?

Baywatch is one of the most popular shows on earth. That doesn't mean it's a good show.

R183- Subway is one of the most popular sandwich chains on earth. That doesn't mean it's a good sandwich.

[quote] Not a sitcom, but I was reminded recently when channel surfing of how unfunny the Carol Burnett Show was.... How many times could people want to see Tim Conway play the old man, or Harvey Korman fake-breaking-up?

Agree that Tim Conway was not funny.

R184, eww. Thanks for reminding me. Here in Chicago, we have Potbellys which destroys Subway in every conceivable way. Did I mention that the tuna is probably real?

Who remembers Love, American Style? That show was plain stupid and not funny.

But it was truer than the red, white and blue, R187. Happy Fourth of July!

[QUOTE] Here in Chicago, we have Potbellys which destroys Subway in every conceivable way.

Potbelly’s are everywhere, hon. It’s not some local Chicago specialty deli.

R189, I know. But it began in Chicago. So I refer to it as a "Chicago thing" even though it is everywhere.

[quote] Did you ever seen the one where

[quote] Made Small Wonder look likes Shakespeare.

[quote] The Paul Lynda Show

Oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR!

R186- Jersey Mikes Subs are VERY good for a chain.

R192 I would caution that it depends on the location, the one near my college kept failing health inspections. I just can’t bring myself to eat from one ever since.

R192, true. They are good. And definitely better than Subway.

“My Mother the Car” was written by Jim Brooks and Allan Burns. Even in its day it was considered a nadir in network TV. People held it up as a symbol of everything that was stale and moronic about the sitcom.

It was a source of constant embarrassment for Brooks and Burns when they were developing the Mary Tyler Moore show. That show may seem tame now but in 1969-70 its premise was revolutionary, and, while it gave headaches to network executives (even a 1 point drop in ratings could mean a $20 million loss in ad sales), it was greatly appreciated by writers and actors who were helping to create the show.

So almost inevitably some actor or writer, or someone else on the staff, would contrast how special the show was going to be with “that piece of shit, ‘My Mother the Car’,” to Brooks’ and Burns’ irritation.

Then they cast Tony fucking Danza in [italic]Taxi[/italic] thus enabling his subsequent, painfully unfunny show.

[quote] [R186]- Jersey Mikes Subs are VERY good for a chain.

R192, which sub would you recommend? There's a Jersey Mike's near my house, but I've only tried it once. I think I had a turkey sub.

[quote]Small Wonder was a hit in syndication. How can any show that has Edie McClurg on it be completely awful?

They replaced her with Alice Ghostley because NBC's mildly amusing [italic]Valerie[/italic] could afford to pay Edie a higher salary and give her the coveted and/as, which on SW already belonged to the robot girl.

The 45th Presidency.

I remember there being nothing on on Friday nights at one point except Webster. Man, I hated that show. I refused to watch.

Just about anything was better than what replaced it: [italic]Full fucking House[/italic].

If it ain't his name it oughtta be. Paul Lynda.

Webster and Diff'rent Strokes are both cringe and scream some Antebellum-era white paternalism. I can see why neither are syndicated much today.

They were part of Canada's reparations for their abuse of indigenous children. That's why they cast Susan Clark and Conrad Bain as the parents, respectively. Neither have aged as well as [italic]the Facts of Life[/italic], but the fact that the US could support two concurrent shows about mixed-race families was a sign of progress.

At least neither of them promoted child mutilation like that goddamn [italic]Modern Family[/italic] which got praise for ripping them off wholesale.

The “very special episode” where they were kidnapped on Diff’rent Strokes majorly traumatized me as a child.

You mean Kimberly being kidnapped after hitchhiking? Yeah, to this day I will not hitchhike or pick up hitchhikers.

One of the main problems for me with these old sitcoms is the laugh track. I can't enjoy anything with a laugh track. Even SCTV, a brilliant show, is ruined for me.

Some of the worst shows I ever saw were one-camera shows with no laugh track. [italic]Malcolm in the Middle[/italic] was awful and I can't believe Fox actually gave a great show like [italic]Futurama[/italic] the Sunday Night Death Slot up against the sex pests on [italic]60 Minutes[/italic] to make room for it.

[quote]Webster and Diff'rent Strokes are both better than [italic]Friends[/italic] and racism (and in [italic]Webster[/italic]'s case, homophobia against Chad Allen and Henry Polic II, is why neither are syndicated much today.

Fixed.

[quote] Some of the worst shows I ever saw were one-camera shows with no laugh track

Maybe it's generational thing but I generally hate most sitcoms with laugh tracks/studio audiences especially when the jokes are clearly not funny. It always seemed like it was insulting the viewer's intelligence. Even as a kid, I thought it was dumb that The Flintstones, Josie & The Pussycats and Scooby-Doo had laugh tracks because a lot of the gags weren't funny.

^^Bizarre post and weirdly angry

Lots of “Oh, dear” moments in your post too.

^Referring to R210

It only bothered me in a situation where it was logistically impossible to have an actual studio audience, R211.

R212: Keep dodging the actual argument to focus on typos, racist, so you can get out of your racist attitudes being unpacked.

None of the Black sitcoms mentioned here were the most unfunny in history. All of them were better than that stupid fucking [italic]Friends[/italic] and all the other all-white trash that enabled its existence.

R212 Why should I need to be cued to laugh? If the joke is funny then it shouldn't rely on hearing other people's laughter. It just seems condescending. Yep, I understand the history of it because most sitcoms were originally filmed live in front of a studio audience. But it's really outdated and out of place especially in the 21st century.

R212 Sorry, LOL. I thought you were referring to me.

What the hell are you talking about, R217? I was not the author of the post that you “fixed.”

And your taste in entertainment is still rooted in white supremacist colonialist attitudes.

I'm R18. I wrote that before I saw I noticed that it wasn't referring to me.

And as for Jamie on [italic]Small Wonder[/italic], Reggie must have been a saint for putting up with his shit over the years.

The dad from Small Wonder is on The Bold & the Beautiful now.

And he's gained a pound for every year since his old show went off the air.

[quote]So almost inevitably some actor or writer, or someone else on the staff, would contrast how special the show was going to be with “that piece of shit, ‘My Mother the Car’,” to Brooks’ and Burns’ irritation.

But even "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" poked fun at "My Mother the Car." In the episode in which Sue Ann loses her "Happy Homemaker" show and is given menial jobs at the station, she's seen at one point recording an audio promo for a rerun of "My Mother the Car," saying, "The fun begins when Mom gets a lube job."

Obviously the experience on that one-season flop helped make MTM a better show.

[quote] Not a sitcom, but I was reminded recently when channel surfing of how unfunny the Carol Burnett Show was. I watched it every Saturday night when my mother forced me to babysit my baby nephew for free at my sister’s illegal apartment that was built by my aunt’s shady self-proclaimed “minister” brother in law which I believe was uninsulated, as wind blew through the walls every winter night. I only watched it in anticipation of Saturday Night Live (or cool news show “Weekend”) coming on. How many times could people want to see Tim Conway play the old man, or Harvey Korman fake-breaking-up? Or Jim Nabors singing like a punch drunk opera singer? I was wrapped up in an Afghan on the couch trying not to die of hypothermia, hoping heat from the TV would warm the room a bit, waiting for 11:30 to come as lame CBS sitcom stars guested in lame sketches on Burnett. I thought she was probably a nice lady, but she was not the least bit funny.

You couldn't simply turn the channel? You might have lessened all the PTSD you are experiencing.

Only now are the early years of [italic]The Carol Burnett Show[/italic] coming back into reruns and they still hold up despite not having most of the core characters people are familiar with today.

Yes r227, and that creature spent the night wrapped in an Afghan in the freezing apartment staring at the tube, unconcerned about the baby it was supposed to be caring for slowly turning into an ice cube.

[italic]Diff'rent Strokes[/italic] didn't get really bad until they added that little redheaded boy and his mother.

[quote] Malcolm in the Middle was awful

I always hated this show as well--especially the mom and the youngest child. The mom was so shrill to the point where it was unfunny. And the youngest child was just too weird. The character that annoyed me the most was Malcolm's best friend, the kid in the wheelchair.

R197- My favorite ( and the only one I've tried) #11 The Stickball Special- Salami , Ham, Provolone, lettuce, tomatoes , onion, oil and vinegar, sweet peppers and mayonnaise and mustard- VERY good.

[quote]The mom was so shrill to the point where it was unfunny.

If you put her, Patricia Heaton, and Patricia Richardson in the same room, no one would be able to tell them apart.

All these horrible schlocky shows with white people sitting on their kitchens. God, what a lack of culture. All in the Family really does stand out.

Other than that the Black sitcoms are really much more funny and standout. I could still watch them.

I lived Northern Exposure for the Natives. The mixed race "Ed" was the first time I had ever seen someone like me on television. He was sorta cute too.

oh, dear

Pretty much everything on CBS since Les Moonves took it over.

R235: You mean [italic]Yes Dear[/italic]? Never cared for that show.

The Cosby Show

Family Matters. Awful.

Brighton Belles, a British version of The Golden Girls. It was absolute shite.

That was payback for what you Yanks did to my show, R240.

I never liked John Cleese. And I’m not American.

R71

I really liked Malcolm in the Middle, Bryan Cranston, Frankie Muniz and Chris Masterson were great.

[italic]Breaking Bad[/italic] made me laugh more.

Anything by Chuck Lorre.

[italic]Cybill[/italic] could be very funny at times, R246. He left it pretty early on, though.

[quote] If you put her, Patricia Heaton, and Patricia Richardson in the same room, no one would be able to tell them apart.

And all that noise!!!

Didn't Yes Dear have that closeted dude in it?

Anthony Clark, R249. Big ol' mo.

Pyllis

[quote]Potbelly’s are everywhere, hon. It’s not some local Chicago specialty deli.

They're hardly "everywhere." I live in the most populous county in the US, in the most populous state in the US, and the closest location to me is over 200 miles away.

[quote]Mad About You. Starring one of the least funny actresses in tv history, Helen Hunt. She always looked like she was constipated.

She stole that look from me.

A lot of those sitcoms where the schlubby husband has a not wife were atrocious:

According to Jim

Yes, Dear

Rules of Engagement

Still Standing

'Til Death

[quote]The reason the 1980s had so many first-run syndicated sitcoms is because the late 1970s had so many short-lived network sitcoms that didn’t even run long enough to syndicate.

The real reason is that the networks were forced to give up 30 minutes of primetime (which used to begin at 7:30/6:30, and an hour earlier on Sundays) to create something called "prime access," which was supposed to promote new opportunities for local stations to create quality programming. Instead we got crap like first-run syndication sitcoms, Entertainment Tonight, etc.

The Love Boat was a horror.

One of the networks … I think CBS…. tried to sell a Gilligan’s Island reboot where people came for vacation at the Castaway’s Resort where they fell in love — a la Love Boat— run by Son of Thurston Howell and Bob Denver’s wife. It even had Tom Bosley as a guest star. It was like a worlds collide of the worst sitcoms on television.

R163, No, Frank Burns was a perfect comedic foil for Hawkeye and Trapper John, and Larry Linville was impressive in his performance; he had tremendous comic timing and he made Frank a fully rounded, if thoroughly contemptible character. Just because you preferred his (boring) replacement doesn't make me wrong. That would be like me saying you're an IDIOT just because you disagree with me. Which I would never do. Although the way you EXPRESSED your disagreement WAS idiotic.

Have to agree with Mama’a Family - I’ll never understand how it’s a favorite on here. It’s the one show on Logo where I immediately change the channel.

[quote] All these horrible schlocky shows with white people sitting on their kitchens.

??????

[quote] If you put her, Patricia Heaton, and Patricia Richardson in the same room, no one would be able to tell them apart.

I never watched that Raymond sitcom when it was originally broadcast but came across it on one of the nostalgia channels. How the fuck did that show and King of Queens stay on tv for so long? Raymond was the most annoying, screamy, whiny four-joke show I’ve ever seen.

Joke - Raymond wants sex.

Joke- Raymond’s mother wants to cook & insult her daughter in law’s cooking.

Joke - Raymond’s father wants to eat Italian food, watch tv & insult his wife.

Joke - Raymond’s brother is tall, deep voiced, bug eyed and jealous of the attention Raymond gets.

And Raymond’s wife is always running her hand through her hair and tossing her head around complaining about how stupid Raymond is, how annoying her in-laws are, how tired she is of cleaning the house & raising the kids. I hate that screamy Patricia Heaton bitch

Why has no one mentioned that Stephen Dorff was in that horrible "Dummy" show. And Shelly Berman--my God, I figured he was dead by then. Was casting based on debt bondage or some other kind of coercive thing. A really unfunny show with that cast?

I loved Shelly Berman as Larry’s father on Curb Your Enthusiasm who didn’t tell Larry his mother died because she didn’t want to bother him. “You were in New York. You were busy.” My husband and I screamed laughing at that episode as his family are crazy Jews & we could totally understand how Larry came up with that concept.

All of the "Facts of Life" backdoor pilots

Omg, speaking of sitcoms I’m watching dick van dyke show & it took me a few minutes to recognize this guest star.

R231 while I didnt find Malcolm in the middle particularly funny I respected that it was honest about what a horrid, soul destroying nightmare suburban breeder life really is. So many sitcoms and dramas gloss it over.

R209 How old were you when you watched Malcolm in the Middle? I was 13ish and I thought it was moderately funny, especially the parents. I can see an adult watching that show and absolutely despising it.

I watched Malcolm in the Middle off and on when I was a teenager. I really disliked the oldest brother's storylines. They seemed so disconnected from the rest of the show, almost like a show unto itself, and I never really understood the point. He was at some boarding school or military academy, IIRC, and everyone else was at home.

Anything produced by the CBC...unwatchable woke shit.

A lot of worthy nominees (along with the expected too-cool-for-school contrarian takes on shows like The Golden Girls, Friends, etc).

But ultimately, W*A*L*T*E*R has to take the cake here.

[italic]Friends[/italic] wasn't and isn't funny but the [italic]Golden Girls[/italic] haters are just deluding themselves if even its worst episode could become a spinoff that wasn't terrible.

r268 With stars like Victoria Jackson and Ray Buktenica, how could it miss?

And Meeno “my sister lasted twice as long as I did up against 60 Minutes” Peluce.

[quote]Friends wasn't and isn't funny but the Golden Girls haters are just deluding themselves if even its worst episode could become a spinoff that wasn't terrible.

This may come as a shock to you, but people are entitled to their own opinions, and not everyone agrees with you about either "Friends" or "The Golden Girls. Are you 6 years old?

How I Met Your Mother. Unlikable characters and not at all funny. It felt like they were trying too hard.