If You Will Permit a Thought on TV
Throughout the nineties and for the first half of the past decade, there were two dominant strains of sitcom: the blue-collar/white-collar family sitcom (Roseanne, Everybody Loves Raymond, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Frasier, etc.), and the five-or-so-friends-hanging-out-in-a-city sitcom (Seinfeld, Friends, Cheers, etc.). The former culminated and withered with the end of Everybody Loves Raymond–now most often reiterated ironically by The Simpsons (which was far ahead of its time in that respect) and Family Guy–while the latter still persists in a way, only disguised or retooled as the workplace sitcom (30 Rock, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Party Down), a formula which began in part with Murphy Brown and, in its current mode, with Scrubs and the British Office.