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.
With all that reiterated, let the record show that here’s what I’ve featured so far:
#10. BECKER (Season Three)
#9. FRASIER (Season Eight)
For this post — #8 on my list — I have selected Season One of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, which I first wrote about here: https://jacksonupperco.com/2024/05/15/the-four-best-curb-your-enthusiasm-episodes-of-season-one/
The debut season of Curb Your Enthusiasm is like a great, hilarious, rebellious, newborn taking its proverbial first steps, slowly reaching an admirable gait by the end of this initial ten-episode collection, as Larry David’s semi-improvised brand of comedy starts to coagulate into the kind of idea-driven but personality-centric storytelling that will sustain the series for the bulk of its well-regarded life. But it’s only walking from here to the coffee table. By Season Two, the show will be off and running, offering uproarious comedic notions that will posit the series as one of the most ingenious and consistently hysterical sitcoms of the 2000s decade — a Top Five contender for every following season in which it delivers new episodes, at least until 2011 (prior to its extended six-year hiatus). It’s, in short, a funny sitcom and a terrific reflection of this era. However, you probably wouldn’t know that only by looking at Season One, which doesn’t fully preview its forthcoming excellence. Its style of improvisation is a bit forced, its ideas are not yet as clever or situation-specific as they’ll become, and the show is just not as well-put-together as it will be even going into its sophomore year. So, in terms of 2000-2001, there’s a limit on how much it can be genuinely celebrated alongside the more palpably impressive, well-oiled machines at the peak of their powers here in this particular TV season. What’s more, for as great as Curb is overall when it comes to sheer hilarity, I’m always going to give a slight edge in a study of situation comedy to shows that produce a full spate of 22+ episodes a year. Not only is quality more remarkable when sustained under those terms, but it’s also better to have more episodes for the sitcom as a genre, as this is an art form predicated on the establishment of expectations via continuity and consistency. Reliability. That comes from regularity. For that reason — and the fact that this is the weakest of Curb‘s first eight seasons — there’s, again, a cap on how high I can fairly place the series on this list. Its first year deserves to be celebrated over the always mediocre Becker and the troubling eighth season of the mighty-but-fallen Frasier, and, yes, I think the next few shows coming up on this list (unlike Frasier) are weaker than Curb overall if I was purely ranking them on average. But they (namely, those at #5, #6, and #7) are more worth lauding in the context of this specific season. To find out why, well, just stay tuned…
Notable Episodes: “Beloved Aunt” and “The Group”
Come back next week for #7 on my countdown! And stay tuned tomorrow for a new Wildcard! Oh, and if you haven’t taken my latest survey on 2010s sitcoms, please do so here!