8-23-04

There’s an interesting (well, not exactly interesting, but at least noteworthy) trend in today’s sitcoms. I don’t mean “sucking really badly,” because just about every sitcom today sucks really badly. I’m talking about the trend in which the main character is a fat, boorish white guy, and one of the supporting characters is his wife, who is really thin and hot. Hot enough that no fat guy, despite his charms or unnatural wiener size, could ever get someone like that to marry him. Hot enough that the women would most likely prefer to spend her life locked in a closet with nothing but the dust mites to keep her company than to procreate with the ape-man she is portrayed as being married to. And yet, in so many shows, this is the case.

Want some examples? It’s quite easy. Still Standing. According to Jim. Quintuplets. The King of Queens. The Drew Carry Show. Yes, Dear. And I’m sure there are more that I’m missing. All awful sitcoms, all featuring a fat guy married to a woman so far out of his league that if such a thing were to happen in real life, the universe would collapse due to the cosmic imbalance. This trend is unsettling and ubiquitous, but despite my earlier statement, it is not new.

Thinking about it, I realized that no man in a sitcom has ever been married to a woman in his league, with the possible exception of Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy, mainly because Lucy was really stupid and annoying and most of us couldn’t put up with her anyway. But think, good friends, think; what is the Prime Sitcom, the sitcom all other sitcoms are based on? That’s right: The Honeymooners. Can any of us say for a second that Alice Kramden was anywhere within Ralph’s reach if they were in real life? Of course not. He was a big, fat, ugly, loud, obnoxious guy, while Alice was intelligent and at least decently hot. A union like that could only happen on TV. The Honeymooners set the stage for a host of other fat oafs and their hot wives, and all I can say in response is, “Damn you, Jackie Gleason. Damn your flea-bitten, alcoholic, hide.”

John Owen Skinner