Author: Unknown
•2:20 PM
By Dwight Mccoy

Seinfeld is always regarded as the most innovative, and perhaps most important, television series of the nineties, but as far as sitcoms go, The Drew Carey Show certainly deserves to be listed right alongside Seinfeld. Most people don't remember the show quite as clearly as Seinfeld, but it really did make a lot of changes to how people regard the modern sitcom, and definitely deserves to go on the list next time you login to the movie download service of your choice.

It could have just been another formulaic sitcom. Many comedians, they get a TV deal so the first thing they do is create just another family sitcom. The blue collar dad, the football widow wife, the kids (usually a daughter and a son) and the wacky neighbor. The Drew Carey Show, while still being more or less based on the comedian's act, also took the sitcom in a new direction.

Like Seinfeld, the show abandoned the idea of formulaic plots to take things in its own direction, focusing on a man who is always on the verge of a mid-life crisis and who experiences real existential dread at his situation in life, what it all means and whether or not he'd be happier if he'd just leap off a bridge and end it all already.

Like Seinfeld, the show never really delved into the same formulaic plots about Superbowl parties and so on, and really went in a whole new direction creating its own, new concepts for great TV stories. It's about the existential dread, the fear you feel when you're anywhere between thirty and fifty and wondering why your life didn't shape up the way you wanted it to. It's really interesting, and a little deeper than the usual Football Widow jokes you see in most sitcoms.

By the end of the series, Carey was making something like a million dollars an episode but, sadly, the ratings were starting to drop and the show had to be canceled, even though it did garner a loyal following who would always make sure that they were at home after work in time to watch it.

The most refreshing thing about the show really was that its focus wasn't on the same thing as every other show. No football widow jokes, no stories about the son borrowing the car without asking. The characters are easier to relate to because they don't feel like generic television characters.

The show also feels refreshing in that it acknowledges that mom, dad and the kids are not, in fact, the only form a family can take, nor are mom, dad and the kids the only people in the US who matter. The show is, again, focused on single people, and the result is a show that really validates you no matter who you are in life and what you've accomplished so far.

And of course, Lewis and Oswald are two of the funniest sitcom characters of all time. It's always funny when a show that's already a comedy has comic relief characters.

About the Author:

|
This entry was posted on 2:20 PM and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

0 nhận xét: