The American Sitcom, Part 3 (final part)

The Themes of America

Let me list what I believe are the most important ones:

-Preoccupation with sports

-Strong anti-intellectual bias

-Emphasis on distinctions of social class

-Negative social interaction: put-downs, one-upmanship, and sniping at others

-Worship of wealth and power

-Very little sense of self; a superficial society

-Narcissism, radical individualism

-Pseudo-community (no real emotional connections)

-Violence: America is a violent society

Of course, many of these themes are characteristic of other countries and cultures as well, but they would seem to be strongly present in the US. Taken together in a “synergistic” way, they suggest a society that is unique: negative American “exceptionalism,” as it were.

I’d like to take several of these items and trace each of them as a possible thread through most of these shows, beginning with Cheers. But first, let me start with a brief discussion of my personal experience of the theme of social interaction, by way of introduction.

I live down the street, in Mexico City, from a panadería, a store that sells all kinds of breads, cakes, pies, and other pastries. It’s not really a café, but it is larger than just a shop. It also serves drinks of various kinds, and it’s typical for its customers to order some variety of coffee and a doughnut, or whatever, and then sit on the benches outside and socialize with the other customers.

One social group I belong to meets there every day except Sunday at 9:30 a.m. We jokingly call ourselves the cartel, or group of criminals. (Normally it just means a poster.) We talk about everything, although politics and religion are generally avoided. We also laugh a lot. One thing I noticed is that unlike the groups depicted in our five American sitcoms, there is no pattern of put-downs or one-upmanship. As I shall show below, systemic ridicule or denigration is sewn into the interaction of most of these sitcoms. This is not part of Mexican social life, at least as I have experienced it. In my cartel, no one is trying to stand out, impress the group. No one is trying to show that they are special—which would be seen as being in poor taste—or putting down someone else in the group, making them look small or inadequate, so that you can be seen as more knowledgeable or superior. My experience of socializing in the US is that groups carry a lot of tension, and one can see this in our five sitcoms. People in American groups tend to be wary of one another. In contrast, the feel of my 9:30 group is one of relaxation. While we don’t deliberately support each other, there is no taking of anyone down. The fact of the group itself is our mutual support; this is a given. I recall, at one point, trying to explain the American pattern to one member of the group, and he looked a bit puzzled. What I was describing about American interactions struck him as bizarre; he couldn’t imagine it.

Note that our word “idiot” is derived from the ancient Greek word idiotes, which meant a very private or non-interactive person; someone who can’t, or won’t, relate to others. From an ontological perspective, i.e., one that is about being in the world, Americans are seriously defective, and this is often true of its intellectual class. High-IQ Idiots, is how we might refer to them. Let’s start (again) with Cheers.

Actually, Cheers might not be the best example of all this. It may not, for example, really constitute a pseudo-community There is a lot of warmth here, and not a lot of put-downs. There are three exceptions to this: Carla attacks everyone, but she is emotionally disturbed. Cliff is ridiculed by nearly everyone, but his know-it-all attitude sets him up as a target. Diane ridicules Sam, but this is part of their sexual drama. In a nonexplicit way, the people are occasionally supportive of one another. And most of the episodes are very funny, consisting of ridiculous, and not really believable, hijinks.

However, there are a number of themes present here from the above list: sports, anti-intellectualism, class distinctions, the pursuit of wealth, and little sense of self. In the case of this last item, we can see this in Cliff’s constant display of invented knowledge; Norm’s alcoholism; Sam’s womanizing; Rebecca’s pursuit of love and money; and Diane’s pseudo-intellectualism (seeing herself as superior to everyone). Emotionally and spiritually speaking, these folks would seem to be lightweights.

We see the pursuit of wealth when the now-poor Robin Colcord (Roger Rees) plants the (false) idea that he hid six million dollars somewhere in the bar. The regulars then proceed to tear up the bar, looking for it. Robin returns to survey the damage, and to shame them—rightly so—for betraying themselves and each other, caring for nothing except money.

As for class distinctions, the relationship of Woody Boyd and Kelly Gaines revolves around this. Woody asks her father permission to date Kelly, but he doesn’t approve of Woody's lower-class status. At her birthday party, while her relatives give her wildly expensive gifts, like luxury cars, all he can offer her is a song he wrote, expressing his love. But she doesn’t realize that this is his present to her; she keeps waiting for his expensive gift. They simply live in separate worlds, of rich vs. poor.

Frasier and Lilith are cultural snobs, endlessly pretentious. In Season 7, Carla has a son named Ludlow, who shows an interest in opera. So they take him to one (sans Carla), which he very much enjoys. But the next day, when they take him to a fancy restaurant, all he wants is a hamburger. A struggle of wills ensues, when they try to get him to order a “sophisticated” dish.

If we consider anti-intellectualism, it’s all over the place. The regulars (Frasier excepted) never read a book, and have only scorn for that aspect of life. A classic example is when Diane comes into the bar, glowing from a weekend marathon of Indian movies that she attended, starts to tell the gang about it, and they change the subject to something else, something trivial. She winds up screaming in desperation.

And yet the final scene—which strikes me as very un-American—is quite moving, and turns the whole thing on its head. Suddenly, the regulars—Sam, Norm, Carla, Cliff, Frasier, and Woody—do seem to be deeply connected, and anything but superficial. They sit around discussing what might be the purpose of life. This goes on for about ten minutes, after which they all file out, leaving Sam by himself. But Norm returns, and tells Sam that the purpose of life is love, and that one always returns to what one loves. Sam asks what that would be, and Norm says, “Think about it.” Because for Sam, it’s the bar, specifically the life of the bar—that community. He turns off the lights, and walks deeper into the bar, into the dark.

Does this really reflect the usual American bar experience? It seems to me that Cheers offers vicarious community. In other words, the show was very successful because it demonstrated what was lacking in American society, what many or most Americans might like to have in their own lives, and never will. Community, profundity, soul-searching: this is not what America is all about. Just the opposite, one might reasonably argue.

Let’s move on to Seinfeld. As in the case of Cheers, it is one of the greatest sitcoms ever made. It is extremely funny, and filled with a long string of absurd, impossible adventures. The talent here is very strong, Kramer (Michael Richards) being one of the most creative slapstick comedians since Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. And the four actors have great chemistry; they work together very well. Episodes such as “The Puffy Shirt” and “The Contest” (abstinence from masturbation) will go down in television history. (The shirt was subsequently donated to the Smithsonian, where it remains.)

But as for illustrating the items on our negative-theme list, it seems to me that only two things qualify. Anti-intellectualism is really non-intellectualism: no one on Seinfeld is very interested in books, although George does leave a small collection with his girlfriend Marlene, when they break up, and wants to get them back. Jerry contends that the popular preoccupation with owning books makes no sense. In the episode called “The Couch,” George joins a book club to impress his girlfriend, but doesn’t want to read the assigned text (Breakfast at Tiffany’s), so tries to rent the movie. His excuse is that unless a text is about sports, he is unable to concentrate on it.

Second, the gang at Seinfeld doesn’t really constitute a community. They are basically a bunch of self-centered, superficial people more or less randomly thrown together; deep emotional ties seem to be lacking. Each of them pursues their own individual goals, whatever they may be, and the ending of the show couldn’t be more opposite than the ending of Cheers. Jerry et al. are pretty callous; the suffering of others is of no concern to them, and when a rather obese young man is carjacked in the final episode, they just stand around and laugh. This leads to their arrest under the (purported) new “Good Samaritan Law,” and the subsequent trial, at which everyone they ever treated badly shows up to incriminate them. The list, in fact, is huge, and the judge is amazed at the pattern of “criminal indifference” that it reveals. So he sentences them to a year in jail, to contemplate the insensitive way in which they have lived; but the fact is that they don’t really care. There is no remorse, no self-awareness, and any possible emotional growth seems very unlikely. Jerry just does a stand-up gig in the jail, and that’s the end of it. Welcome to America!

Turning to Friends, this was a show that ran for ten seasons, and was wildly popular. This popularity, I believe, was also due to the program’s ability to serve as vicarious community. Friends hovered somewhere between real community and pseudo-community; i.e., there was enough genuine community present to make it appealing. The romance of Ross and Rachel, already discussed, was also a major draw; plus, intellectually speaking, it was pretty lightweight, and this would be something an American audience could easily relate to—fluff, in a word, very little in it to challenge the viewer. Ross was the only one with serious intellectual interests, and is repeatedly attacked and ridiculed for it. (He was also the only one who had larger interests beyond himself.) There was also a very keen interest in sports, at least on the part of the guys; a lot of individual self-seeking, or attempted self-promotion; and a very large number of put-downs and ridicule sewn throughout the ten seasons, which served as the basis of much of the humor—at others’ expense. We might add that dishonesty—lying to each other, covering up—was a frequent part of the group’s interactions, both inside and outside of the group.

The show, in short, is a rather mixed bag. There are moments of real relationship, and the friends do seem to pull together, at least momentarily, in the final episode. At the same time, as just indicated, it contains a wealth of negative characteristics, ones which, I believe, are also characteristic of American society and culture at large. Outstanding in this regard—which is also the case with Seinfeld—is that people are there to be used. It often seems like these are, in Martin Buber’s famous phrase, I-Thou relationships, but on closer examination, I-It relationships tend to lie at the heart of the interactions (if often well-disguised). In some ways, Friends is the perfect mirror of the United States, which is soaking in the instrumental use of other people.

We see this right off the bat, in the very first episode. Monica Geller (Courteney Cox) falls for a guy named Paul, who tells her that his bad divorce of two years ago rendered him impotent. She gets excited about the possibility of restoring his manhood, only (after sleeping with him) to run into a woman to whom he had given the same story. All he wanted from Monica, which he got, was a one-night stand.

In the second episode, Rachel, who left her fiancé, Barry, at the altar, expects him to be heartbroken, only to learn that he simply plugged her maid-of-honor, Mindy, into the empty slot and went off on his honeymoon with her. The two of them subsequently get engaged, although Rachel and Barry resume their sexual relationship behind Mindy’s back. (People are fungible in America.) A bit later, Rachel agrees to be maid-of-honor at the wedding of Mindy and Barry, although she learns that Barry had slandered her behind her back, telling everyone that she had run out on their wedding because she had syphilis, and was mentally ill.

In Season 3, Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) is hired to teach a soap opera acting class. It turns out that one of his students (unbeknownst to the student) is up against Joey for the same role (a boxer) in a soap opera. Joey then tries to sabotage the student's chances by telling him he should audition for the part playing the boxer as gay—a serious bit of backstabbing. Ironically enough, the student takes his teacher’s advice, does the audition as a gay boxer, and gets the part instead of Joey.

A second instance of betrayal occurs in Season 3 when one of the group, Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow), has her signature song, “Smelly Cat,” stolen from her by her ex-singing partner, Leslie (Elizabeth Daily). Leslie wants to sell the song as a jingle; Phoebe says she is not in it for the money. Leslie then goes behind Phoebe's back and sells the song to an ad agency, after which it becomes part of an ad for kitty litter. Not much Phoebe can do about it, except write a song that goes: “Jingle bitch screwed me over. Go to Hell jingle whore.”

A good example of anti-intellectualism occurs in Season 5, when Phoebe decides to take a literature class at the New School (since she never graduated high school). Rachel decides to go with her, just for fun; she has no interest in literature as such. She hasn’t read the assigned text—Wuthering Heights—so just before the class, she asks Phoebe what it is about. Phoebe gives Rachel her own interpretation of the novel, and just then the instructor calls on Rachel, who proceeds to trot out Phoebe’s interpretation as her own. She thus becomes the star of the class. When the teacher then calls on Phoebe, she has nothing to say, is embarrassed, and is furious at Rachel. The reading for the next class is Jane Eyre, which, again, Rachel hasn’t read. When she asks Phoebe for a summary, Phoebe tells her that Jane Eyre is a cyborg. The teacher then calls on his star pupil, who replies that the book is about robots, thus managing to look like a complete fool. (Rachel does, at one point, read Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, and also an erotic novel, about which Joey and Ross tease her mercilessly. E.g., “Can you heat this coffee up for me with your burning loins?”)

On the same theme, we might skip ahead to Season 9, in which the gang goes to Barbados to (supposedly) hear Ross give the keynote address at a paleontology convention. Of course, they have no interest in paleontology or any other kind of science; throughout the series, they ridicule Ross or shout him down when he brings up any issues of substance. In this particular situation, Rachel and Joey are sitting next to each other, in the audience; Joey cracks up at the phrase “homo erectus,” thinking it refers to an erection, while Rachel laughs at “homo,” thinking it’s about someone gay. Two more stupid people it would be hard to imagine.

Deception and white lies are a big part of these interactions. In Season 6, for example, Rachel buys an apothecary table from Pottery Barn, only to learn from Monica that Phoebe hates Pottery Barn because the merchandise is all mass-produced. So Rachel tells Phoebe that it’s an antique, which she picked up at a flea market, and subsequently does the same thing with a number of other Pottery Barn items. Phoebe eventually realizes she’s been had.

A second example: Rachel has a gift certificate for a massage at a chain massage center. Phoebe doesn’t want her to use it, because again, it’s corporate, “mass produced,” and takes away business from independent masseuses (like herself). Rachel goes there anyway, only to discover, quite by accident, that Phoebe works there. She confronts Phoebe, who admits she sold out for the cash, and is ashamed. (Which does not stop her from continuing to work there.)

Example No. 3: Chandler (Matthew Perry) and Monica agree to make each other Valentine’s Day gifts. Forgetting that his ex-girlfriend Janice (Maggie Wheeler) once gave him a mixtape as a gift, he passes it on to Monica. She is all gaga over it, puts it in a tape deck, and then goes into a fit of rage when Janice’s voice, singing, shows up on the tape. No sex for you, pal!

Regarding put-downs and one-upmanship, this is a pretty constant theme in Friends. A lot of it is generated by Chandler, who uses humor as a defense mechanism, and can never seem to pass up an opportunity to make a joke at someone else’s expense. While it never rises to outright hostility (as compared to The Sopranos, or The Big Bang Theory), it does act as a substitute for honest dialogue, and eventually is something of a drag.

So as I said above, Friends is the perfect mirror of the United States, a pretty faithful reflection of American culture. But when we turn our attention to The Sopranos, we are not just talking about a mirror; this is America in neon, a society rapacious to the point of incandescence. And as a microcosm of the nation, deadly accurate, sad to say. It includes most of the themes listed above, with violence being No. 1 on the hit parade. A real tour de force, one might conclude.

I have, up to now, been dealing with these sitcoms in chronological order (year of first episode). However, given the extreme nature of The Sopranos, it might be useful to leave that show for last, and discuss The Big Bang Theory first.

A sitcom about science nerds? Give me a break. And yet, TBBT ran for twelve seasons, and 18 million people tuned in for the final episode. One attraction, previously mentioned, was the arc of romance between Leonard and Penny, which made the show flow, but which would be very unlikely in real life. Add to this that the series was quite humorous, the characters very sympathetic—they are children, really (their basic reading material consists of comic books)—and that it contained some form of community, despite the endless put-downs and attacks on each other. Somehow, the creators of the show found the magic formula. Let’s take a closer look.

The unlikely key to TBBT was to have the show revolve around one particular character, Sheldon Cooper, who might actually be clinically insane. In the real world, no one would put up with such a person. He is critical of everyone around him, while being unstinting in his praise of himself. To call him anally compulsive, or a control freak, would be the understatement of the year. No one is allowed to sit in “his” spot on the couch; everyone has to conform to his various schedules (bathroom included). He loves to ridicule the other members of the group, even cruelly. For example, he is forever reminding Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) that he is a “lowly” engineer, doesn’t have a Ph.D., and went to an “inferior” university (MIT—!). In effect, he is constantly telling his victim (among others), “You are nothing, I am everything.” And everything has to be done his way; he has to win every argument. If this is a community, it is clearly a super-neurotic one. Except that it is all somehow redeemed when Sheldon and Amy win the Nobel Prize in physics at the end, and for one surprising moment, at the award ceremony, Sheldon publicly acknowledges his debt to the group.

Does TBBT provide a picture, or X-ray, of America? In real life, no one would tolerate someone like Sheldon, who would be carted off to the nearest funny farm. Then too, most groups would not generate Nobel Prize-winners from their midst. But certain themes do echo American behavior: narcissism, self-centeredness, ego-and-career-drivenness, the mocking of perceived or actual weaknesses, and so on. In addition, there is a common American tendency to fuss over trivia, to make mountains out of molehills. All of this is present, but if the show is a mirror of the US, it is nevertheless a distorting one. Cheers, Seinfeld, and Friends are a lot closer to the mark.

And right on the mark, bullseye city, is The Sopranos. As stated earlier, I believe that the writer, David Chase, fully intended the show to be a microcosm, if not epitome, of the American way of life. Money, to these mafiosos, is everything; there are no limits to their avarice. Violence, including murder, can be casual, and occasionally extends to innocent bystanders if they should accidentally get in the way (and sometimes, even if they don’t). There is certainly a strong sense of community, as they are bound by ties of family, hierarchy, loyalty, and omertà, until, towards the end, they wind up killing each other off, and have nothing to show for their tragically misguided lives. The whole venture proves to be empty, destructive and self-destructive, and in this the show certainly provides an X-ray of the United States in its era of decline, if to an extreme degree. “Sociopathic” doesn’t begin to cover it. But the exaggeration serves a useful purpose, of suggesting that our own lives may not be so very different, when you get right down to it. Tony adores Dick Cheney, but in retrospect, Donald Trump would have been a more fitting object of worship. For that, we have the Epilogue.

Epilogue: Trump Is US

Across all of our sitcoms, we have seen X-rays or reflections of America to varying degrees. And I believe that with The Sopranos, we hit rock bottom, and see, if in exaggerated tones, who we really are. In his essay in The Nation (7 November 2024), Elie Mystal didn’t mince words. Donald Trump, he asserts, is not a fluke; rather, he is the very embodiment of America. (As George Carlin once put it, “Where do you think our leaders come from? Mars?”):

“We, as a nation, have proven ourselves to be a fetid, violent people, and

we deserve a leader who embodies the worst of us….America willed

Trump into existence. He was created from our greed, our insecurities,

and our selfishness. We have summoned him from the depths of our

own bile and neediness, and he has answered….[T]he most fundamental

truth about Trump’s reelection is that Trump was right about us. He will

be president again because he, and perhaps he alone, saw us for how truly

base, depraved, and uninformed we are as a country….The president of

the United States is the singular figure who is supposed to represent all

Americans, and Trump reflects us more accurately than perhaps any

president ever has….Trump is not our ‘retribution.’ He is our reckoning.”

Thom Hartmann, on his TV program, quoted from this article in extenso, and then concluded that Mystal was wrong, that this was not the true America. There is a name for this reaction: whistling in the dark. I am amazed at how brainwashed Americans are, even the very smart ones. We are simply unable to see through the myth of “the city upon a hill,” to recognize how tarnished that city truly is.

Whether the American public saw beneath the humor of our sitcoms to the underlying social reality is not clear. It’s possible that for most, for example, The Sopranos was little more than a kind of cops-and-robbers show, or a window onto an “alien” lifestyle. It’s hard to know, although it seems unlikely that these shows would have been so popular if the negative undercurrents had been right on the surface; if the message had been that the US was an ongoing train wreck. But then, such a failure of recognition would illustrate what is probably the most outstanding characteristic of American life: cluelessness.

©Morris Berman, 2024