Mary Hartman is brilliant, but Soap is such a different show that you can't really compare the two - Soap is a high-quality, serialized wacky sitcom; MH is a soap opera that dropped acid.

Surprised there was no mention of Lorre's vanity card of Two and a Half Cans: http://www.chucklorre.com/i… .

Arguably Trapper was the #2 lead in the first three seasons (Rogers & Stevenson were second & third in the credits), as the Hawkeye/Trapper rapport was crucial early on. Who else would be the equivalent of Diane for M*A*S*H?

No comments about Lorre's "Two and a Half Cans" vanity card? http://www.chucklorre.com/i…

How would you place M*A*S*H on the scale of successfully replacing characters, with both Harry Morgan & Mike Farrell coming in during the fourth season? While certainly the show changed dramatically (literally toward drama) around that point, I still think the character shifts worked well, and many fans have more…

WTF?
Just looked at the IMDB listing - Robert Smigel is listed as one of the writers! I can only assume that he was writing in-character as Triumph…

Does Pacino in Jack & Jill trump DeNiro in the two Fockers sequels?

Who's the Boss?
Didn't Abed already convincingly prove that Angela is the boss? Catherine Tate played a character named Angela on Wild West. Mystery solved!

This comment is sponsored by Todd's pretty gift to Zack when he hits 1K.

Amazed that nobody has posted this yet: http://www.nbc.com/parks-an…

3. Contemporary American Poultry - showed what the show could do in s1
2. Conspiracy Theories - it's the ep I show to people who don't get the show to try to sell them on it.
1. Paradigms - is for die-hard fans only, but it's one of the funniest episodes of a sitcom I've ever seen.

Truly evil earworms
The most powerful earworms are truly awful songs with no merits whatsoever aside from their earwormitude. For me, two are in the Hall of Fame: "We Built This City" by Starship, and "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys. Both are horrid musical desecrations created by people who should know much better. And…

Great piece, and for those interested in the ideas of John Fiske that Noel quotes, definitely seek out his books - highly readable for non-academics & pretty much defined the field of TV studies in the 1980s/90s.

Better early options
Bananas is probably the last of the early comedies I'd recommend. Sleeper is the best for structured zaniness, Love & Death suggests depth behind the comedy, and both Take the Money & Run and Everything You Want To Know About Sex have stronger gags than Bananas. In the later periods, I'd highly…

P&R was never an Office spinoff. NBC gave Daniels & Schur a greenlight to develop a project for Amy Poehler, and it was initially conceived as an Office spinoff. But that changed in the development process.

… and that game features an improbable offensive display in the last possible minute. And neither team seems to have a defensive squad.

I saw more generic Trek references - at first glimpse of the black pilot with the funky glasses, I was sure it was Geordi LaForge.

Agreed - I kept waiting for little captions to start appearing onscreen in that scene!

But Todd - it's been well-established that you hate to laugh.

It was definitely Santana. It should have been Kurt, in keeping with Richard O'Brien having sung the original song. But that would have been too… something, in an episode that refused to be edgy (even though it was about trying to be edgy).