Books, Arts & Manners: Black, Brown, and Beige

Situation comedies are the stock exchange of American desire. When breadwinning and housewifery were up, television gave us Leave It to Beaver and My Three Sons. As Americans gradually abandoned the crumbling ideal of the nuclear family and began to look for emotional satisfaction in the surrogate womb of the workplace, new shows like Barney Miller and M*A*S*H began to dominate the sitcom scene. Even Mary Tyler Moore, who cheerfully kept house for Dick Van Dyke in the forgotten days of the New Frontier, worked for a Minneapolis TV station and discreetly slept with handsome young men throughout the reign of Richard Nixon. It wasn’t Mary’s fault. It wasn’t even Nixon’s fault. The Nielsens made her do it.

Now that the toddlers of the Eisenhower era have finally grasped the levers of demographic power, what are today’s sitcoms telling us about their desires and priorities? Not quite what you’d expect. No one, for example, ever makes jokes about power breakfasts on television. (Ambition is no laughing matter for baby-boomers.) And Hometown, CBS’s attempt to cash in on the Big Chill mystique, was a major disaster. Who cares about aging revolutionaries in search of an extended family? What people really want to see on television these days are attractive young couples who have figured out how to make two jobs and three kids a viable proposition. That’s why the most successful program on television today is NBC’s The Cosby Show, a traditional family sitcom whose plots are straight out of Father Knows Best by Julia.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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Situation comedies are the stock exchange of American desire. When breadwinning and housewifery were up, television gave us Leave It to Beaver and My Three Sons. As Americans gradually abandoned the crumbling ideal of the nuclear family and began to look for emotional satisfaction in the surrogate womb of the workplace, new shows like Barney Miller and M*A*S*H began to dominate the sitcom scene. Even Mary Tyler Moore, who cheerfully kept house for Dick Van Dyke in the forgotten days of the New Frontier, worked for a Minneapolis TV station and discreetly slept with handsome young men throughout the reign of Richard Nixon. It wasn’t Mary’s fault. It wasn’t even Nixon’s fault. The Nielsens made her do it.

Now that the toddlers of the Eisenhower era have finally grasped the levers of demographic power, what are today’s sitcoms telling us about their desires and priorities? Not quite what you’d expect. No one, for example, ever makes jokes about power breakfasts on television. (Ambition is no laughing matter for baby-boomers.) And Hometown, CBS’s attempt to cash in on the Big Chill mystique, was a major disaster. Who cares about aging revolutionaries in search of an extended family? What people really want to see on television these days are attractive young couples who have figured out how to make two jobs and three kids a viable proposition. That’s why the most successful program on television today is NBC’s The Cosby Show, a traditional family sitcom whose plots are straight out of Father Knows Best by Julia.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.