Agree here. Much as I have admired this show for years now, the tone of the Mike/Frankie stuff with Brick was just nasty and mean-spirited.

It gets markedly better AFTER Season 2, and stays that way for the rest of its remarkable seven-season run.

Midlife Crustacean, My Pretty Seahorse and Ripped Pants are the pinnacle of SpongeBob for me.

I didn't think the slapstick basketball sequence was "earned" (man, AV Club critics just love that term). In fact, it was completely uncharacteristic of the established tone of the show. The school play side of the episode was some of the funniest stuff this series has done so far, and it was offset by the cartoonish…

But that is the way life goes. Your friends your senior year in high school can be a whole different group from when you start middle school.

Sue and Brad getting stuck on top of the cow with no way to get down while commemorating their senior year was absolutely a sequel scene to Axl, Darren and Sean getting stuck atop the water tower while contemplating their senior year a couple of seasons ago. No series does callbacks with any more care & precision than…

He WAS discovered to have been the murderer of Monk's wife in the final episode of that series.

I figured with much of this crowd the snark would be heavy on this one, but "Coach" could be a damn funny series in the kind of direct, unironic way that may not resonate with audiences who hadn't been born yet when it premiered.
Does it need a reboot or a sequel? I'd say no. But it also doesn't merit the broad-based…

But by the time NEWSRADIO hit the air in 1995, SEINFELD had begun a serious creative descent. As innovative and hilarious as the 1991-1993 SEINFIELD episodes are, 1996-1998 SEINFIELD is damn near unwatchable. I am wondering if, for obvious reasons, the final season of NEWSRADIO was also difficult to watch. I loved the…

"Vivian's First Funeral" is a classic and clearly the basis for the "Five Iron" episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm at the Funkhauser funeral. By Season 5, Maude was less concerned with beating you over the head with relevance every week, and there's nothing topical about this episode. It's just funny.

Just recently saw a Maude spoof on an episode of The Carol Burnett Show ("And Then There's Broad") where they lampooned Carol's absentee son ("Carol, why don't you go check on that son of yours who we never see.")
Phillip was seen and referred to even less than the three Barone children on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Two episodes worth seeking out not for their social relevance or topicality, but just because they're damn funny: 1) Maude & Vivian attempt to take a broach that belongs to one of them off a corpse at a wake (the exact same plot was appropriated by Larry David for the "Five Iron" episode of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM). 2)…

Barney was Jewish.

As Nick Yemana would say, "Very well put."

And Dietrich says, "That's funny, we have a city with that name in this country, too."

They should have definitely stuck with the smoggy opening credits. It was a far better reflection of the show's tenor than the cloudless skyline opening they switched to in Season 2.

Dietrich. Not even close.

"Barney Miller" was one of the most consistently superb sitcoms of all-time, and yet it sadly has been largely forgotten today.

You're not an outlier. Jane Curtin was my favorite update anchor also.

But this still doesn't explain Murphy's can't-wait-to-get-off-the-stage 73-second appearance with nary a joke told after Chris Rock's glowing introduction of him. That had nothing to do with the Jeopardy sketch. Or did it?