Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! Coverage of My Name Is Earl will begin next week. In the meantime, I’m excited to set the figurative table by resurrecting an entry from this blog’s eleven-year run. Here’s how it works: I’ll provide a link to a piece that I first published several seasons ago, and then I’ll offer a bit of updated commentary, relevant to today…

So, let’s revisit… The Ten Best WILL & GRACE Episodes of Season Eight: https://jacksonupperco.com/2019/12/31/the-ten-best-will-grace-episodes-of-season-eight/

As we close out 2024 by looking at two sitcoms that debuted in 2005 — My Name Is Earl and The Office (which actually premiered earlier, in the spring) — I thought it appropriate to rerun a series that also existed in the 2005-2006 season. Only this one wasn’t a fresh, exciting newbie, but a tired veteran on its way out — representing the last wave of late 1990s megahits that still defined the early half of the 2000s, before they finally got pushed out by this decade’s own classics, Arrested Development, The Office, and (for a brief period) My Name Is Earl among them. It’s an interesting era in that regard, for the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and even the 1990s generally faded out their previous decade’s ethos-defining titles in favor of their aesthetic ambassadors earlier than the 2000s were able to do, and this makes the 2000s, as a ten-year framework, more innately dichotomous, for as we can see, even by 2005, the midpoint, it’s still humoring late ’90s hits that were once top contenders (Will & Grace, That ’70s Show, The King Of Queens), because there had yet to be as many equally terrific replacements. Fortunately, the tides would start to turn around 2005, for the rest of the 2000s is indeed all “2000s,” thanks to shows like Earl and The Office, along with forthcoming entries — such as 30 Rock and Parks And Rec — many of which tend to represent this period in our collective conscious, symbolizing the great transition that sitcoms observed in the new millennium. And I don’t just mean the move away from multi-cams towards single-cams, but more broadly, towards a more basically cinematic sensibility in accordance with the encroaching phenomenon of “prestige TV” amidst cable’s creative ascent. A show like Will & Grace looks totally ancient compared to the new sitcoms of 2005 and later — well, most of the great ones anyway. Oh, there were also modern multi-cams, yes — Two And A Half Men and several more we’ll be studying soon — but the presentational, theatrical style of Will & Grace was no longer undergirding the best and funniest comedies, and as always, this contrast between the old and the new naturally made the new look cleverer and more interesting. I think it’s helpful to keep this contrast in mind as we step into this all-new era.

Come back next week for My Name Is Earl! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!