ReCOWmendations -- June 2023: Four TV Comedies To Watch Right Now

Three silly sitcoms and a dramedy that brings the laughter and the tears

Jun 13, 2023

I’ve been craving some laughs lately when it comes to my TV watching.

It’s been a heavy year so far. And a busy year. The time I used to spend in the evenings chilling out on the couch (usually with my wife and dog), watching all the latest shows on the various streaming services — HBO (now MAX), Netflix, Amazon Prime, AppleTV+, HULU, Peacock, etc. — has been cut by more than half so that I can write these Earworm and Song Loops pieces, and other writing projects I’m working on. Not a complaint, just a fact.

So when I’m able to take a break, relax and veg in front of the boob tube, I want to laugh. I want to smile at clever wordplay, roll my eyes at silly hijinks, spit up my garlic noodles because a joke is hilariously, perfectly timed.

No tension-filled dramas. At least for now.

I never did watch the highly touted prestige drama on HBO, The Last of Us. Not because I didn’t think I’d like it. But because I was tired of anything apocalyptic. Tired of anything with zombies. Tired of shows where the main characters are simply trying to survive.

I’ve been craving the reliable familiarity of the half-hour comedy. Something silly, something goofy. Something smart and dumb all rolled up in one. Something with a little bit of sweetness, where I would want to grab a beer with the characters on the screen. Even when they are perpetual fuckups.

Thankfully, four of my favorites are all airing their latest seasons right now (June 2023).

I will say it right here right now: the greatest sitcom of all time is not Seinfeld. It’s not I Love Lucy. It’s not The Office (either US or UK versions). It’s not M.A.S.H. It’s not Cheers.

It’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I know that 98 percent of you (and by you, I refer to the entire world) will likely not agree. And 95 percent of that 98 percent of you probably have never even watched the show.

Do I say this to be provocative? You bet I do.

But do I believe it to be true none-the-less? You bet I do.

IASIP (to be referred as “Sunny” from here), amazingly, is still going strong 18 years after its August 4, 2005 debut on The FX Network (Now it’s on FXX and also HULU). The show’s record-setting 16th season just began airing on June 6th. It’s the longest running live-action sitcom in television history. And it’s not ending anytime soon. It’s been renewed through at least season 18.

To put this achievement in proper perspective:

When Sunny began spreading its comedic genius on the world:

The iPhone did not exist.
Netflix did not exist. HBO was still called HBO.
George W. Bush was just starting his second term as President of the U.S.
HD TVs cost 50,000 dollars and it took three burly Best Buy workers to carry it into your house or apartment. (Don’t check me on this.)
Three weeks after the show’s premiere, Hurricane Katrina would devastate the greater New Orleans area.
Both Dan Rather and Ted Koppel would retire from their popular nightly news programs.

In a world of constant change and instability, it’s rare to find something one can rely on appearing on the TV screen every year, with the same characters, the same inane plot schemes, the same theme music and opening title sequence — 23 comforting minutes at a time. It’s like the garlic noodles at Qi Dumpling Lounge in Oakland, California. Satisfying and a bit greasy. Not an advertisement but click here to see their menu!

How would I describe Sunny to someone who knows nothing about it? Hmmm. A super un-PC white-trash Seinfeld? That doesn’t give the show enough credit for how far it truly pushes the boundaries of rude and crude. No one learns from their behavior and no one hugs it out at the end of the episode.

Here’s how it’s summed up on Wiki:

The series follows the exploits of "The Gang", a group of narcissistic and sociopathic friends who run the Irish dive bar Paddy's Pub in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but spend most of their free time drinking, scheming, arguing amongst themselves, and plotting elaborate cons against others, and at times each other, for personal benefit, financial gain, revenge, or simply out of boredom.

That feels too harsh. It doesn’t say anything about how fall-on-the-floor funny the show can be, how charming its offensiveness. You come to love each and every one of these morally bankrupt characters as if they were your own distant relatives.

There’s the dumb but sweet Charlie Kay (Charlie Day), the clueless but eternally optimistic Ronald “Mac” McDonald (Rob McElhenney), the attention-seeking “Sweet” Dee Reynolds (Kaitlin Olson), her smarmy and cocky brother Dennis Reynolds (Glenn Howerton), and finally there’s Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), father to Dee and Dennis (maybe).

I know it seems daunting to begin watching the show now, knowing that there’s 16 seasons, but with the writer’s strike happening, this might be the perfect time to use your four weeks of vacation, sign up for HULU and spend the rest of June and part of July ordering pizza delivery and laughing your ass off.

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens is one of the best comedies of the 21st century. Or at least of the last five years. When AiNFQ aired it’s first season in early 2020, Awkwafina was becoming a semi-household name due to her Golden-Globe winning/Oscar-spurned performance in the excellent film The Farewell.

That she would parlay that cinematic success into a sitcom on a network reeling from the end of the Jon Stewart-era of The Daily Show was a surprise to many.

I was not one of those many.

Like Sunny, Awkwafina is Nora From Queens is tough to describe.

Awkwafina plays Nora (her actual name), a familiar 30-something slacker TV character — jobless, aimless, living at home with her father and foul-mouthed grandmother. Roles like this seemed to be solely the domain of white male comedians like Adam Sandler or Pete Davidson or Kevin James.

To flip this trope on its head by having such a character portrayed by a 30-something Asian woman, one who’s constantly smoking pot, is horrible at math and receives no pressure from her family to succeed, is quite bold. It’s a clever rebuke to so many ingrained Asian stereotypes. But couched in that same scheming, never-learning formula that Seinfeld and Sunny so effortlessly perfected.

For what is essentially a sitcom-formula framework, the show constantly defies expectations, taking things in decidedly surreal directions.

In the latest (3rd) season, one plot line has Nora joining her cousin Edmund (Bowen Wang of current SNL fame) on a trip to Iceland after he discovers from a DNA test that he is part Icelandic. When a tour guide mentions to Nora that the Icelandic legend that invisible elves have existed “in plain sight“ for hundreds of years is real, it’s clear that this will become part of the storyline.

This sort of fantastical, surreal strangeness is part of the AiNFQ charm. Its DNA as it were. Expect forays into animation and plot detours that will veer sideways for a few episodes at a time. That the show is able to play around with convention and stereotypes and remain decidedly unafraid to be weird — and pull it off most of the time — is high praise indeed.

The Other Two, created by SNL head-writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, originally aired on Comedy Central (I believe it debuted just before or alongside Awkwafina its first season), then jumped ship over to HBO for seasons two and three. Season three is airing now and is as smartly silly-dumb as ever.

The premise of The Other Two is: a gay aspiring actor, Cary (Drew Tarver), and his sister Brooke (Heléne Yorke), a former professional dancer, try to find their place in the world while wrestling with their feelings about their 13-year-old brother Chase's sudden rise to internet fame.

It’s much more of a situational than a plot structured comedy. Like Sunny and Nora, there isn’t a lot of learning from one’s mistakes going on here. But there is a tiny bit of growth. You have to have a loose definition of growth though.

I was trying to think of which other sitcoms it reminds me of and the one that comes to mind is 30 Rock, but more for its wall-to-wall visual and linguistic gags. And the constant skewering of the film and TV industries.

The supporting cast on The Other Two features many recognizable actors, including: Wanda Sykes, Molly Shannon, Ken Marino, Richard Kind, Case Walker and Josh Segarra.

As I like to say, the show has the perfect blend of heart and fart.

You can check out all three seasons on Max.

Actor/singer Bridget Everette stars in this low-key HBO series about an 40-something woman (Sam) who returns to her small Kansas town after the death of her older sister. Her other sister (Tricia) and their parents had never left the area, and Sam struggles to adapt to life in the place where many of her old internal, un-faced demons still live. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent, especially Jeff Hiller as her old high-school friend Joel.

Season two of Somebody Somewhere just aired its final seventh episode. I friggin’ thought there were 8 episodes.

I’m sorry but 7 is not enough. I don’t think I’m being greedy when I say that. It’s a fact illustrated in the title of the great late ‘70s/early ‘80s TV series Eight is Enough. But eight isn’t enough either. I’ll take it though.

I simply want to spend more time with the incredibly real, good-hearted characters that inhabit this special show. The things they struggle with are universal. Grief. Loneliness. Finding a supportive community. Family.

These themes have been explored in many shows before, but I can’t think of any that treat them as realistically, without big messages attached, like “overcoming adversity” or “learning from one’s mistakes.”

Thankfully the show has already been renewed for a third season. MAX (or HBO or whatever they change it to next) better not renege on this renewal.

I won’t say too much about the latest season as I’ll be discussing it in detail soon in a conversation post with my friend and TV explorer extraordinaire Beth Lisogorsky, who writes the Substack newsletter Beth's Exceptional Video Playlist. Stay tuned for more info on our deep-dive discussion into this fantastic Bridget Everett dramedy.

Earworms and Song Loops

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