Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday, on a Tuesday! This week, I’ve got another Q&A entry, where I answer questions submitted by readers. Thanks to everyone who sent in something — if you don’t see your “Q” here, I just may “A” it next time. (And keep them coming — any related topic on which you want my opinion and/or a little research? Just let me know!)

Stephen La Serra wants to know… What kind of sitcoms do you like the best?

I like sitcoms that are adept at using their situations both in episodic story and for the pursuit of regular laugh-out-loud comedy, which is always the implied objective of this genre. In terms of style, I guess I prefer multi-cams — because a theatrical staging typically demands a greater unity of time, place, and action in narrative, which limits flashy plot maneuvers and tends to push the characters and their interactions to the fore, making it easier for them, as primary elements of a situation, to be centralized and thus well-developed. And I love a live studio audience because it’s an ever-present incentive to deliver material that is laugh-out-loud funny. As for structure, I think MTM’s low-concept dual work-and-home format with a strong ensemble anchored around a star tends to be a reliable venue for character, and I enjoy a lot of shows that employ this design. However, that structure alone does not guarantee success; care must still be taken when crafting well-defined, easily utilizable regulars. That’s what I like best.

Eric asks… Is there any actor or actress that you think would have been great in a sitcom but never got the chance?

Many, I’m sure. But off the top of my head, I wish Judy Holliday, after having conquered stage and screen, had lived long enough to make her way in series television, and especially with a sitcom. She was a unique, one-of-a-kind performer — so funny — and a multi-cam shot before a live audience would have been so well-suited to her natural skillset.

Stefan wrote in after rereading my Taxi lists… I have to say I do enjoy ‘Simka’s Monthlies’ a lot and would probably put it in my top 10 of the season. Granted, I’m a big Andy Kaufman fan and enjoy the episodes where he gets to shine, but I just wanted to ask, since you don’t go into your thoughts on ‘Simka’s Monthlies’ in the season 5 review, what your opinion was on that episode.

Well, my coverage of Taxi is almost ten years old, so without doing a full rewatch, I’m not sure what I’d think now about the final season and where all its episodes stand in relation to each other. But after having revisited “Simka’s Monthlies” for this question, I can say that I think it’s a better showcase for Carol Kane as a comic performer than Simka as a character (not to mention Andy Kaufman’s Latka), for the whole idea of Simka acting irrational because she’s PMSing is a jokey but Very Special Episode-like topical notion predicated on the circumstantial outrageousness of her behavior and not anything well-rooted in the continuity of her regular depiction. (The excuse that her cultural background allows for this unawareness of PMS is acceptable but not truly well-attached to her character, because this form of naiveté doesn’t involve anything actually cultural.) Also, because it’s not an entry that showcases the other leads well, and thus the situation as a whole isn’t well-featured either, I can’t say it’s a favorite. Again, I don’t know if it would definitively elude my Top Ten list today, but I’m still not enthused. (And I think there are plenty of better Latka/Simka outings out there — even from that season!)

David W Farmer asks… Do you know if by chance episodes exist of the Goodtime Girls short-lived series? 

Yes, they all exist and you can see one of them here: https://jacksonupperco.com/2019/03/13/goodtime-girls-not-so-good/

Issa Kelly is curious… How many years do you think a sitcom should stay on air so as to avoid a steep decline in quality?

That’s tough. Quality is relative to each series — they don’t start at the same value, rise at the same rate, peak at the same time, decline at the same rate, end at the same value, or even have the same average value when all’s said and done. And even a general answer to this question that averages a large but defined sample (say, all past Sitcom Tuesday shows) is difficult to provide because the steepness of a decline — or even a decline at all — sometimes isn’t the definitive sign that a show is no longer enjoyable and should go off the air. However, I do think all series create their own expectations — including expectations of quality — with seasonal hierarchies forming based on how successfully their episodes reliably meet those expectations. So, I think I can satisfy the basic premise of your question by tweaking it to be: when do most long-running shows fail to meet their own established expectations enough for this decline to have an obviously negative impact on our enjoyment? To do so, we must first allow for the fact that every show is different while also finding a not-terrible metric for averaging a singular conclusion. And since we’re talking opinions, I can only go off my own. With that in mind, I can try to get some answers by ranking seasons from the many series covered here, based on my view of their quality, but focusing on the top half — meaning, the seasons that are above each show’s own median. This isn’t perfect — it doesn’t account for how steep the qualitative difference is between every slot or how any one show’s basic quality compares to others’. Additionally, it falsely assumes that half is a key distinction when it probably isn’t. (That is, maybe fewer than half of a show’s seasons are actually good. Or maybe more than half are good.) But it’s a standard that can apply to anything because it works with any show that ran more than three years, and it recognizes the universal truth of rankings: perceived quality indeed declines the further we get from the top slot. All long-running shows therefore do have seasons we could call above average and seasons we could call below average. And “below average” is the closest thing I can standardize that’s similar to “below expectations” (as I perceive them).

So, after quickly applying this framework to all Sitcom Tuesday shows that ran more than three seasons (and I didn’t deliberate too much — gut reactions mostly), I come away noticing that it’s very unlikely for any series to be in good enough shape after seven seasons to still produce collections that I would rank in the top half of its overall output. (And I rounded up for shows with an odd number of seasons.) The only exceptions I find are Burns And Allen and The Danny Thomas Show, both of which deserve asterisks because we don’t have complete access to their early years for a full ranking, and also, in shrinking the size of their samples, we make dubious and/or moot this potential claim. Now, perhaps you could make the case for the eighth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm being that series’ sixth best showing overall, and Friends’ eighth season maybe being its fifth best showing, but those are both uncertain adjudications with which I’m not fully comfortable (and I’d also asterisk Curb for its abbreviated seasons, anyway; it’s not the same). Meanwhile, although having a seventh season in a series’ top half is less likely compared to the first six, if a show actually manages to run eight or more, I can confidently say it’s no longer rare (a few examples: Wings, Seinfeld, Frasier, Raymond). And that’s NOT the case with a Season Eight for shows that lasted the same or longer. So, to give you something of an answer — I’d say that, in general, a sitcom becomes extremely unlikely to satisfy its previously established expectations about quality in a way that I would consider “above average” after a seventh season. Again, this doesn’t speak to varying levels of individual quality, or directly address the concept of steep declines, but since it’s obviously better to be above average than not, drawing a line here makes sense to me when determining the likelihood of basic seasonal success. I hope this kinda sorta satisfies your original question!

Have a question for me? Submit it at the “Ask Jackson (Q&A)” link.

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