And all along I thought it was just poor writing.

At any point in color TV history wouldn’t it be true to say that there is only a handful of good sitcoms at any one time?

Today we have a handful of good sitcoms – Big Bang, Office, Earl, 2 1/2 Men – maybe a coupla more. Seems like a SOP sitcom slice of TV viewing history to me.

The sitcom is alive and well. Have you seen “The Big Bang Theory”, “How I Met Your Mother”, “Two and Half Men”, “30 Rock”…? None of those are Seinfeld or Cheers, but still great shows.

And any writer worth his/her salt should be able to come up with a plethora of situations (comedic ones) that are caused by all of the new technology.

Let’s talk about something else. Baseball anyone?

but still there are lost connections, no signal areas, batteries etc that can throw a wrench in every now and then. Just because there have been technological advances, I don’t give a pass to poor writing and plot lines.

There are plenty of situations where you can use technology for humor etc. Technology as great as it is at times can be an even greater headache at other times.

Because everyone has a cell phone.
And it’s with them at all times.
And they answer their cell phone whenever you call them.
And the batteries are never dead.
And they never forget to un-silence them.
And they’re never in a location with poor or no cell coverage.
And once you do reach them on their cell phone, there are no further opportunities for miscommunication with our perfect mind-meld-through-cell-connection technology.

You’re right. Game, set, match! So long sitcom!

but did you steal this bit? My friend brings this up every three years like it’s a new joke – and he does it in such a way that I think he saw some stand up comic do the bit and adopted it as his own.

“No episode of Seinfeld would have happened if they had cell phones.” What’s worse is that it’s not even true. How does a cell phone help Kramer getting arrested?

I have no idea why this post and all the comments make me laugh so much, but i’m like in tears.

Everyone knows the Bubble Boy and parking garage episodes would have still played out the same due to poor cell coverage (or “dead zones”) in both of those areas.

things aren’t worse, they’re just different. Look at the office as the counter to Seinfeld. When they covered GPS, Michael wound up driving his car into a pond. How many cell phone gags have there been? Jim and Pam on bluetooth all day when she was in NY, Jim messing with Dwight’s phone about ten different ways (like hooking it up to his bluetooth, Jim putting Andy’s cell phone in the ceiling.

And the best counterexample, Michael and Dwight staking out the CFO’s house all day and night and just not answering their phones even though the rest of the office was trying to tell them that the office wasn’t shutting down after all.

Every time I see those Seinfeld episodes, though, I do think, boy things have changed with cell phones. Particularly the Parking Garage, Chinese Restaurant (where George needs to use the pay phone to call his girlfriend and people cut in front of him), and the one where George repeatedly calls a girl’s answering machine while she’s out of town. That last plot couldn’t have happened without a different explanation now.

would’ve worked with different plots. Look how well Larry David adapted with ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’. Of course having it on HBO helps.

who couldn’t stand “Seinfeld”?

That and “Friends” have to be the worst shows that were immensely popular in the last 20 years. Couldn’t watch either one of them.

Watching the DVD extras of that lemon of a film, one of the writers mentioned that originally they conceived the movie in present day, but just realized that it wouldn’t work b/c of cell phones. Thus, they shifted the setting to the early 80’s.

. . . is because Arrested Development went over the heads of too many FOX viewers.

Speaking of which, you should post more AD stuff, Adam.

In case you scrolled right past the giant CSI post up there (which I recommend, I didn’t mean for it to be huge) and missed the video link, here it is. Guaranteed to make you laugh really hard or get really angry.

This and this, too.

For all intents and purposes, CSI: Miami, to me, is a sitcom.

This video has both.

The one with the Rye Bread (and the horse that had issues – thanks to Kramer’s Beef-A-Reeno)…with a cell phone, Kramer would have been able to warn George that Susan’s parents were coming back from the Hansom Cab trip early.

I don’t watch sitcoms. Never really have. I won’t watch “reality” TV. Not only is it primarily scripted, it stresses the dysfunctional and intolerable. I catch an occasional CSI, but only really late and a rerun.

I have a cell phone.

Sample size be damned, we just proved the theory! Cell phones can kill any kind of useless television! Yay !!

http://baggypantsandbravado.blogspot.com/2008/11/two-observations-about-some-seinfeld.html

as we get older we’re just less tolerant of bad writing and bored with the usual gags and plotlines we’ve seen 10,000 times.