Welcome to a new Sitcom Tuesday! This week, I’m continuing my rerun series celebrating the 25th anniversary of the 2000-2001 season, counting down my picks for its ten best sitcoms. Up for consideration is every comedy that I’ve ever covered from that particular TV year, both on Sitcom Tuesdays and Wildcard Wednesdays. My ranking is based on a direct comparison of each show’s 2000-2001 output. But I’m also factoring in how each season fares in the trajectory of their own individual series, along with how each show’s ultimate, overall (and average) quality compares to the others. That is, I’m mostly looking at what was produced in 2000-2001, but I’m not ignoring the broader intra-series and inter-series implications of such a list.
#10. BECKER (Season Three)
#9. FRASIER (Season Eight)
#8. CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (Season One)
#7. THE KING OF QUEENS (Season Three)
For this post — #6 on the list — I have selected Season Three of WILL & GRACE, which I first wrote about here: https://jacksonupperco.com/2019/11/26/the-ten-best-will-grace-episodes-of-season-three/
The best season of Will & Grace is its second. That’s when the show is at its funniest because the novelty of its premise has not yet waned, and yet scripts have warmed themselves up and know the main characters much better than they did the year prior. Unsurprisingly, I’d say the series’ second-best season is the one following, this year, its third. Oh, things aren’t quite as fresh as they were in Two, but Three’s still-rising understanding of the leads helps compensate. Similarly, although this year evidences some of the troubling trends that will dog the series throughout the remainder of its run — like an increasing reliance on guest stars and gimmicks — Three has enough of its central characters’ anchoring relationship as a focus that most episodes still feel rooted in the situation, enough to be laudable as an example of situation comedy. And heck, the show is — as always — a hilarious joke-a-minute romp that certainly elevates its appeal through sheer humor, especially for an art form that literally depends on laugh-out-loud comedy as a barometer of success. Accordingly, Will & Grace remains one of the best sitcoms of the 2000-2001 season. Titles like Frasier and Curb may be better overall, but not in this particular era. And as for what’s coming ahead, we’ve got a mix of uniformly stronger sitcoms and several sitcoms that are simply stronger here in 2000-2001, which is why Will & Grace falls near this list’s middle-of-the-pack, at a respectable sixth place. Incidentally, I’ve never wavered from this area as its deserving spot — it was never going to be higher than five or lower than, say, seven — but it’s objectively funnier than the nevertheless more positively poised (in terms of trajectory) King Of Queens, while not as uniquely commendable in 2000-2001 as everything else that comes ahead. On that note, stay tuned next week for #5…
Notable Episodes: “Lows In The Mid-Eighties” (I & II) and “Coffee And Commitment”
Come back next week for #5 on my countdown! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard!