Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.
Influenced by the opinion of my girl, she and I began watching the full series of Will & Grace. I knew of the show way back when, had watched a handful, but I was never a fan. Not for any real reason other than I didn’t tend to take to sitcoms back then (still, really don’t).
I used to love T.V. love sitcoms back in the days of Taxi and before that, classics like the Mary Tyler Moore Show and Bob Newhart. These were must-see viewing with my family on Saturday nights, along with The Carol Burnett show airing a little later the same night. Jesus, TV was so great back then! Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Mike and Molly, and King of Queens, most of what has passed as sitcoms for the past few decades though have left me kind of wanting when I peak in. Save for Will and Grace, which I am really digging now…and I think I know why.
And conversely, I think I also know why most recent sitcoms leave me cold.
For my examples here I will lead with Big Bang Theory and Modern Family. These are two sitcoms I have come to in their syndication runs. I didn’t catch them in their initial broadcasts (save for Modern Family which I caught during the show’s last season) but given what is my sad state of affairs of current TV viewing—Netflix, Amazon, and Max pretty much boring me to tears save for a very few exceptions—and the big three broadcast networks showing anything interesting to me, Modern Family and Big Bang Theory, are kind of my go-to’s now.
But, I wish they weren’t.
Why?
I find a good many of the characters on these shows rather repellant.
Across BBT, MF, and even Everybody Loves Raymond (and believe me, not everybody loves Raymond, I can attest to this) there are mean, emasculating, competitive characters of near sociopath compacity, they might even be downright pathological. From “Sheldon Cooper” and “Bernadette Rosetenkowski” (and is it only me, but does anybody else find Melissa Rauch’s “Bernadette” high-squeak-of-a-voice simply unintelligible lots of the time?) of Big Bang Theory, to the completely unlikeable, should-never-have-had-kids “Claire Pritchett” played Julie Bowen on Modern Family to Raymond’s wife-mommy “Debra Barone” played by Patricia Heaton on Everybody Loves Raymond, and his character’s actual mommy horror-show matriarch played by the usually wonderful Doris May Roberts.
And although it only lasted a season (thank God) if you saw Mary McCormack playing wife and mom “Peggy Cleary,” on ABC’s The Kids Are Alright you might have puked. She was so manipulative of her family I couldn’t watch more than two or three episodes until I had to list this show amongst my “I’m not watching this even if my life depends on it!”
These characters and so many more, are really ugly people. Dominating their loved ones. Marching headfirst in what they want all the time, to the exclusion of the feelings of those around them, and never truly learning even when they face a comeuppance. Yes, I realize that the extreme in these characters creates the tension, the ‘situations’ if you will. But these characters are so unlikeable to me, time and again, the queer the episode for me, even of the rest of the episode is funny.
I won’t even step across the minefield of examples of the sorry-excuse-for-the-American-dad my buddy Tom and I expound on all the time. From Family Guy’s “Peter Griffin,” “Raymond” above, and so many other examples, we find so few men to look up to these days. But this is an argument for another day.
Let me get back to Will & Grace, as this show started this all….
Yes, here are extreme and wacky characters. And surely Megan Mullally’s “Karen Walker” can throw her voice around to a grating degree just like Raunch (never as bad though). But the saving grace here (if you will allow me) is that there is a sweetness to this show. The characters truly care about each other, even in the face of some sharp ribbing. Almost always the damage a character does is to themselves and if they do indeed try to get one-over on another, they face the consequences of their action with a sure contriteness.
So, thank you Will & Grace for reminding me what I sometimes do like about sitcoms, also for showing some of the most masculine men I have ever seen on T.V. (and gay men at that, talk about spinning a ‘woke’ idea, huh?) and reminding me, yet again, what I don’t usually like about our American sitcoms, but what I can when the sitcom presents real, funny, complex, but likable people.
Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.
Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com
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