Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday and more of our second annual RERUN series, designed to give yours truly a chance to get further ahead in coverage of our last few ’90s comedies. Regular programming will resume soon, but in the meantime, I’m excited to resurrect and re-examine some of my favorite Sitcom posts from this blog’s nearly six year run!
As with last year’s series (begun here), my intention is to provide a link to each original piece and then offer a tiny bit of updated commentary, either on episode picks I’d call differently now (like in my famous “Regrets” post) or on something broader, like evolving thoughts on the year/series as a whole. I’ve picked a few goodies, so I hope you’re as excited as I am about revisiting our favorites… But please be gentle! Many of the posts you’ll see were written a while ago. The standards here have changed as I’ve changed. (There are plenty of typos, juvenile “hot takes,” and places where more information would now be appreciated.)
This week, I’m rerunning… The Ten Best MARRIED… WITH CHILDREN Episodes of Season Five. Check it out here: http://jacksonupperco.com/2016/12/27/the-ten-best-married-with-children-episodes-of-season-five/
It should be obvious by now that MVE decisions haunt me the most, for while Sitcom Tuesday is designed to highlight ten episodes per season, selecting an MVE requires that I undermine the blog’s core philosophical tenet — that selecting so large an episodic sample is how I get the most honest, nuanced, and well-rounded look at a year’s best — because one, and only one, can be labeled the “most valuable.” It’s a necessary distinction to make (and I’m glad I do it), but sometimes there’s no easy answer. With Married… With Children‘s fifth season — one of my favorites — I purposely avoided choosing the obvious pick (“Married… With Aliens” — which I find too atypical and not as character-based as this series could be during its peak era). Instead, I opted to celebrate a solid excursion that always makes me laugh-out-loud (“Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”)… Honestly, I knew at the time that I was probably selecting the wrong MVE, but my gut was sure that my favorite wasn’t “Married …With Aliens,” and so picking another really good episode — any really good episode — felt like enough of a statement… Frankly, I should have done more comparative shopping, for “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” is fun, but it’s simply NOT the year’s best. Today, I’d choose a better alternative that deserves to be a classic: “We’ll Follow The Sun,” which is similarly underrated, but matches the year’s known gems laugh-for-laugh and is built so low-concept that all the characters shine… Yep, that’d likely be my MVE if I were deciding it today… So, check out the post above again, and feel free to share your thoughts on the series and its trajectory in the comments below!
Come back next week for another Sitcom Tuesday rerun! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard Wednesday!