There is a pattern in the evolution of American sitcoms which you may or may not have noticed.
They start with some kind of distinctive flavour, taste, theme or whatever, but this becomes progressively watered down until, eventually (and usually long after the series concerned has worn out its welcome), the producers and writers give up the ghost and move onto the manufacture of some other high concept fare. So:
* When I see House MD these days I say to myself: EELM - which stands for Every Episode, Less Medicine.
* With Boston Legal it was EELL: Every Episode, Less Law.
* With Third Rock From the Sun, now being endlessly repeated here, it was EELS: Every Episode, Less Strange. (By the second season, the fact that the characters were supposed to be aliens was hardly ever mentioned. They might as well have been tourists from the next state.)
* With M*A*S*H and The Simpsons, it is EELF: Every Episode Less Funny than the ones before it.
And so on.
What I ask myself is why the people who make these things don't give up and move on, as the British have done with numberless series whose time has run out, and as American TV executives have done with, say, Star Trek (the original series) and The Wire. The answer, of course, is money. In America, just as there is no activity during which the consumption of food is considered to be inappropriate, so it seems that there is no activity which should be permitted to cease so long as it continues to make money. How sad this is.
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