They Just Crack Me Up, My Favorite Sitcom Characters

God bless the good sitcom They are sources of endless mirth, they are comfort when we’re stressed, they are reminders of the wonderful cavalcade that life can be. We need them. Imagining a universe without a steady source of chuckles is bleak. Thankfully among the hundreds (is it thousands)? of TV sitcoms produced over the past seventy years are a precious few that we can rely on to tickle our funny bones again and again. When in their first run we eagerly anticipate their next show. Afterwards we revel in their ability on streaming services. They are a joy to behold.

Every once in awhile there’s a comedy that isn't just funny but captures the zeitgeist or basks in eternal truths. And then there are some that do both, comedies like Seinfeld and The Mary Tyler Moore Show that are of their time but will live on for generations. Many sitcoms quickly become dated, characters who seemed fresh and funny at the time are now stale and tired. (Recent viewings of former favorites like the original Night Court and Bosom Buddies proved this.) 

Without exception the best sitcoms have memorable characters who don’t just make us laugh but also make us root them on even when we know they are not meant to win in this world. We love these characters despite their foibles, indeed because of them. They are often people who by rights we should strongly dislike. But…they make us laugh and there are few things more important in this life than that. We come to know these people, they are like family. They are literally important to us.

Here are my ten favorite sitcoms characters. You will notice among them are mostly selfish, egotistical people. But none of them are stupid, none of them are cruel and all of them have within them a basic humanity and most important of all, the capacity to make us laugh.

1. George Costanza (Jason Alexander) Seinfeld. I’ve always found George to be frighteningly relatable (please, don’t tell anyone). He has a sort of everyman quality. Never a total failure but never a great success. His impulse on one episode to start doing the opposite of what he thinks is the correct move speaks to a lot of us. Especially as it made his life better. Jason Alexander absolutely nailed the role of a lifetime and turned a best friend character into a cultural icon. (We're living in a society!)

2. Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara) Schitt’s Creek. Ms. O’Hara consistently went to the top but never over it. Moira pushes everyone to the limits with her narcissism and flamboyance but there is a humanity to her that is undeniable. Often oblivious to others but somehow still a great wife, mother and friend. O'Hara has excelled in innumerable roles but this is may be her best. Genius. 

3. April Ludgate (Aubrey Plaza) Parks and Rec. She damn well steals ever scene she’s in. Laconic, philosophical, unsentimental and absolutely true to herself every second of the day. April is always the wisest person in the room — and the most cynical. She’s got a super-powered bullshit detector and is thus a great judge of character. 

4. Barney Fife (Don Knotts) The Andy Griffith Show. How can an arrogant, self-absorbed bumbling fool be so damn lovable? Here is the genius of Don Knotts’s portrayal. Everyone is always exasperated by Barney but loves him just the same. We roll our eyes at his antics while rooting him on. Knotts established a template that few have been equal to.

5. Basil Fawlty (John Cleese) Fawlty Towers. Sardonic, smart a schemer and yet a loser, Basil is in many ways the quintessential lead sitcom character. Forever trying to outwit his wife, forever stymied by bad luck, forever frustrated by those bumbling idiots who are merely going about their quotidian tasks, Basil can never win. He can also never stop trying. As much as his work on Monty Python, the character of Basil Fawlty exhibited the comic brilliance of John Cleese.

6. Oliver Putnam (Martin Short) Only Murders in the Building. Well for crying out loud he’s played by Martin Short so how could he not be hilarious and lovable? Frankly I could watch Oliver Putnam read the phone book and be entertained. To watch him team with two comic masterminds like Steve Martin and Selena Gomez (yes, I called Ms. Gomez a comic mastermind, got a problem with it?) is utterly scrumptious. 

7. Rosa Diaz (Stephanie Beatriz) Brooklyn 9-9. There is a hidden warmth and cuddliness to Rosa barely perceptible beneath that steely exterior. What is there about a woman who is as tough as nails that is so appealing? Another character who is always true to her own code. When Rosa shows any vulnerability we love her all the more. 

8. Jim Brockmire (Hank Azaria) Brockmire. There is a brilliant and witty man not so deeply hidden in the character of Jim Brockmire. There is also a raging and ragingly funny alcoholic whose addict’s lust for more, the most and then some more is so relatable to those of us with the same disease. Getting sober was good for his character and didn't stem the tide of laughter he inspired. 

9. Sergeant Ernie Bilko (Phil Silvers) The Phil Silvers Show. The eternal schemer. The fast-talker. The conniver. He always wins yet never gets the big score. Ultimate success is always just out of reach. We should hate him for his self-possession and the way he uses even his closest friends. But the charm of Ernie Bilko is irresistible. 

10. Jack McFarland (Sean Hayes) Will & Grace. Just Jack indeed. We round out the list with yet another ego maniac, but with yet another compellingly cheeky character who beguiles us with the singularness of his personality. Jack lights up every room he enters and we can't get enough of him.

Here are my favorite sitcom ensemble casts: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Seinfeld, 30 Rock, Community, Schitt’s Creek and Taxi.

You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow: A Look at the Bogie/Bacall Classic To Have and Have Not

I watched To Have and Have Not (1944) Hawks last night. Here are a few not so random thoughts.

Humphrey Bogart starred in four films that were absolute masterpieces of American cinema: The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, The Big Sleep and Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Any one of these films alone would cement Bogie’s place in the firmament of great Hollywood stars. But he also was in a second tier of terrific films and To Have and Have Not is among these along with The African Queen, Key Largo, Dark Passage, Petrified Forest, The Roaring Twenties, All Through the Night and Angels with Dirty Faces. Of these I think To Have Not is the best.

Walter Brennan gives a bravura performance as Eddie, Harry Morgan’s (Bogart) alcoholic friend. Eddie is by turns touching, pitiful and funny. “Ever been bit by a dead bee?” But it’s hard to watch Brennan knowing what a virulent racist he was. He reportedly did a jig upon learning that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Separating the artist from the man is often a challenge. One of my favorite films of all time is Red River but I wonder if I’d like it even more if I didn’t have to sit through Brennan and the equally bigoted John Wayne.

To Have and Have Not will always be remembered as the film in which Bogie and his future wife Lauren Bacall met and fell in love. Betty (as she was called) was only nineteen at the time but as her performance indicates, mature well beyond her chronological age. Bogie and Bacall had incredible onscreen chemistry and graced the screen together three more times, most notably in The Big Sleep. They married a little over a year after meeting. In contrast to the reprehensible Brennan, Bacall was a liberal Democrat and proud of it. She once said: "being a liberal is the best thing on Earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind.”

Another lovely young woman in the cast was the then 18-year-old Dolores Moran. She did not marry as well as Bacall nor did she reach any level of stardom. Moran developed a reputation for promiscuity (she had an affair with director Howard Hawks) in those double standard days. Moran was a stunning young lady who definitely had some acting chops but her career came to nothing and she died of cancer at age 52. Sad.

Marcel Dalio appears in To Have as Frenchy. He had previously played opposite Bogie as the croupier in Casablanca Prior to that he had a not insignificant role in the French classic, Grand Illusion. Dalio was born Israel Moshe Blauschild. A Parisian and a Jew, he barely escaped the Nazis. According to his IMDb biography: “He waited until the last possible moment and finally, with the sound of artillery clearly audible, with Madeleine, fled in a borrowed car to Orleans and then, in a freight train, to Bordeaux and finally to Portugal. In Lisbon, they bribed a crooked immigration official and were surreptitiously given two visas for Chile. But on arriving in Mexico City, it was discovered the visas were rank forgeries. Facing deportation, Marcel and Madeleine found themselves making application for political asylum with virtually every country in the western hemisphere. Weeks passed until Canada finally issued them temporary visas, and they left for Montreal.” I believe there’s a good book and maybe even in a movie in Dalio’s story. From 1941 through the early sixties he appeared mostly in American films (at least two more with Bogart) and TV shows. He appeared in such films Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Sabrina and How to Steal a Million, before spending the last part of his career back in France.

To Have and Have Not is one of the many pictures produced during the war that also served as propaganda for the allied war effort. It was the good guys besting the bad guys and there was no ambiguity about who was good and who was bad. Such films managed to be entertaining, comforting and inspiring. In many cases, as here, they were good movies to boot.

One of the delights of To Have and Have Not is Hoagy Carmichael who portrays Cricket, the piano player at the bar that is the film’s primary setting. He had a natural charm and soft, easy, pleasing voice and could really tickle the ivories. His only other really notable film appearance was in The Best Years of Our Lives. Of course Carmichael’s real claim to fame was as a composer, songwriter and musician. Among his compositions were Stardust, Georgia on My Mind, The Nearness of You and Heart and Soul. Not too shabby.

To Have and Have Not boasts an excellent cast (although Sheldon Leonard plays a Frenchman and a German actor with a German accent plays another Frenchman) but also benefits from the direction of Howard Hawks who has to rank fairly on a top ten list of all time great American directors. He was a master at pacing and though not renowned for visual artistry could frame a shot with the best of them. He made this film during his peak years, after His Girl Friday and before The Big Sleep. At the time there was no one better save perhaps Hitchcock.

The film is very loosely based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway. I read the book and it has about as much to do with the film version as does the Pirates of Penzance. The screenplay was written by William Faulkner although much of the dialogue was improvised. So while it is true that two Pulitzer Prize winning authors contributed to the screenplay, they ultimately had little to do with it.

Final thoughts: A damn fun movie, even if you have seen it numerous times, as I have. Between the three Bs (Bogie, Bacall and Brennan) you’ve got all you’ll ever need out of a cast. There is action, adventure, comedy, music, romance and people with high ideals winning over a me-first cynic. Jolly good.

Take a Break From the War and See a Movie, a Look at the Films that got Americans Through WWII

Sullivans Travels

Americans did not suffer anywhere near as much during the second world war as did people in such countries as Russia, England, France, Germany and Poland, to name but a few. Indeed those were horrific times for many nations with constant bombings, enemy occupation, horrible deprivations, mass arrests, executions, the destruction of homes, torture and displacement. In the U.S. there was rationing, restrictions on travel and the sadness of loved ones going overseas to fight, many never to return or to come back maimed. You could also be one of those slated to serve in battle zones, waiting anxiously waiting deployment. Or you could have recently returned living with horrible memories or perhaps permanent injuries.

Family and friends were a necessary solace in such times as was entertainment in various forms, most affordably, movies. (Movies were about 25 cents in those days, the equivalent of just under $5 today). While the United States was making war planes, ships, bombs, weapons and all other necessary materials of war at a rate that stunned the world, it was also still making movies and good ones too.

So if you’d spent a busy day as a Rosie the Riveter or were worried about a family member off at war or were enjoying a short leave before shipping out, or were just stressed from following war news, what better way to relax than at the local theater? This was a time when you could enjoy a double feature, newsreels, cartoons, shorts and travelogues. But would the feature presentation be worthwhile? Let’s have a look at what you could see.

December 1941

Right after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war, four terrific films were released. Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels starring Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake, which is to me one of the great films of all time hit theaters shortly after the U.S. entered the war. It was followed by a classic screwball comedy from Howard Hawks, Ball of Fire starring Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper. If you liked horror films then you could enjoy The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains.

1942 was a terrific year for U.S. releases. For example: Casablanca, Talk of the Town, To Be Or Not to Be, Palm Beach Story and Now Voyager. You’re getting Bogie, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Bette Davis a classic Lubitsch and another from Preston Sturges. For icing on the cake there was also All Through the Night with Bogie taking on Nazis in New York, This Gun For Hire with more Veronica Lake this time with Alan Ladd and The Magnificent Ambersons directed by Orson Welles. A banner year.

By 1943 the releases were all made after the war started. Look at what you got: Shadow of a Doubt, one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, the wild and wacky Arsenic and Old Lace with Cary Grant and a supporting cast that included Peter Lorre, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson and James Gleason (plus the adorable Priscilla Lane). There was yet another gem from Sturges, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek. The highly diverting Cabin in the Sky with Lena Horne. The heavy and powerful Ox-Bow Incident with Henry Fonda. A comedy about the war time housing crunch in Washington D.C., The More the Merrier featuring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. And there were some good pictures about the war such as Destination Tokyo (Cary Grant again) Five Graves to Cairo an earlier and excellent directorial effort by Billy Wilder. Air Force directed by Hawks, a criminally underrated film and Fritz Lang’s powerful Hangmen Also Die. Meanwhile Jean Renoir had gotten out of France and directed This Land is Mine set in a fictional Nazi-occupied town, starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara. Finally for more chuckles there was another from Lubitsch, Heaven Can Wait with Gene Tierney and Don Ameche.

1944 didn’t produce quite as much but there was still good quality. Sturges came through again with his classic satire on hero worship and politics, Hail the Conquering Hero. Bogie was back this time with Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not ("You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.") Hitchcock struck again with Lifeboat. Fritz Lang released another thriller, Ministry of Fear starring Ray Milland in one of his better roles. There was also noir as Dick Powell played Philip Marlowe -- surprisingly well -- in Murder My Sweet. To top it off you had Ingrid Bergman again, this time with Charles Boyer in George Cukor’s Gaslight. The movie title that created a verb.

We close with 1945 which was the weakest by far of the war years with very few really good films released (although as the war was winding down there were some terrific films coming out in Europe such as Rome: Open City, Brief Encounter, I Know Where I’m Going, Children of Paradise.) In the states the Yuletide classic Christmas in Connecticut was released — in the summer? There were also The Southerner, The Story of GI Joe and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Not much. Might be interesting to figure out why the paucity of films in ’45. To be fair there were a few good ones released after hostilities ceased, namely: Mildred Pierce, Spellbound and The Lost Weekend. That’s still not a lot.

The war was not a terrible time to be a cinephile. It just sucked to be a soldier.

Death, Existential Angst, Aging Are All Discussed in a Surprisingly Upbeat Post

The author as a young father

You don’t have to think very hard to realize that our dread of both relationships and loneliness, both of which are like sub-dreads of our dread of being trapped inside a self (a psychic self, not just a physical self), has to do with angst about death, the recognition that I’m going to die, and die very much alone, and the rest of the world is going to go merrily on without me. I’m not sure I could give you a steeple-fingered theoretical justification, but I strongly suspect a big part of real art-fiction’s job is to aggravate this sense of entrapment and loneliness and death in people, to move people to countenance it, since any possible human redemption requires us first to face what’s dreadful, what we want to deny. — David Foster Wallace

There was a time that I didn’t think about death. I was young and morality was a vague concept. It was something that happened to other people in other families in other circles. I knew my father was going to die someday though at times I doubted even that. He seemed indestructible in the same way I’ve often thought of myself recently. He’d gone on so long and stayed so healthy that it was almost impossible to imagine a world without him. Eventually a freak fall did him in but not until he was past ninety. 

I’ll be seventy on my next birthday — less than six months from now. Have I got another twenty good years? What guarantee is there that there going to all be “good”? I suppose I should adopt a one-day-at-a-time mantra as one learns in twelve step programs. I should be enjoying the hell out of today, it being all I’ve got. I spend too much time in the past often re-living bad moments. Those times I did the wrong thing, failed to say the right thing, didn’t see what should haven been obvious, made the wrong choice. If you’re going to live in the past, stay in the happy moments, those times when everything was clicking, when you seemingly had it all together. They existed and they were good. Why wallow in past miseries?

I’m adopting a new program — actually a revitalization of an old one — in which I assign myself writing 500 words a day — minimum. It’ll be good for me. Good for my writing, good for my brain, good for my soul. 

Writing used to be a lot easier. Nowadays I need a topic and a damned good one at that. I also need to be in the right mood in the right place with no distractions. That’s ridiculous. You’ve got to be able to write under any circumstances. Still, maybe 500 words a day is overly ambitious. But I’ve got to try.

I remember coming home when I was a kid and hesitating at the front door before opening it because I didn’t know what awaited me on the other side. What was Mom going to be like? She could perfectly fine doing her cheery June Cleaver bit, asking about my day. Or she could be a raving loon, yelling at light fixture. If it was the latter would she break character for a minute to acknowledge me or would she go on nonplussed or would she turn her ravings toward me? It was the uncertainty of the moment that was so horrible.

The hesitation was always momentary. I had to face whatever music was playing. If it was really bad I’d retreat to my room or quickly make a u-turn and go outside. Thankfully I had a vivid imagination and could lose myself in it. Reality was too difficult to bear.

It was a difficult way to grow up — boy that’s understating it. I normalized it. I knew none of my friends were going through the same sort of shit but I also knew I was better off not thinking about. How did this affect me? What peccadilloes of mine can I attribute to this bizarre and horrible upbringing? Did it lead to my alcoholism? Did it lead to my crankiness? My anxiety? My panic attacks? My variously mistrusting or overly trusting people? My misjudgments? How exactly did it fuck me up? Who would I be today had my mother been perfectly sane? 

Perhaps the more important question at this point is: why trouble myself with these questions? I’ve done the whole therapy bit — many times. Better not to look back and wonder. Better to look ahead and wonder. After all I’ve got a new novel that I finished that I believe is quite good. There’s much to look forward to including another European vacation in the spring. 

Tomorrow will mark thirty-six years clean and sober. It’s amazing that I’ve been a sober alcoholic longer than I’ve been alive as anything else. I can barely remember what intoxication was like. I’ve got a sense of what having a bit of a buzz going was like. I’m a lucky man to have gotten sober when I did — just weeks before my wife found out she was pregnant with our first and just as I was embarking on my teaching career. Lucky.

I’ve got blessings to count. I’ve got bright days ahead. Depression can go fuck itself.

Is there Sculptor's Block? Bottoms, a Documentary and Depression all in under 600 Words

From Bottoms, in theaters now

Do painters get painter’s block? Do sculptors get sculptor’s block? Do potters get potter’s block? If they do I’ve never heard tell of it. If they don’t, why the hell not? I’ve heard people claim that writer’s block is a myth. This is said by people who either don’t write or can’t imagine anything that is not within their own experience. In other words they lack imagination.

Lacking imagination does not merely mean you cannot conjure stories, it means you lack empathy. You cannot conceive of things outside of your world. This is a common affliction among conservatives in the United States. They are cold-hearted precisely because they have no empathy and they lack empathy because they have no imagination. Their thinking is stilted, stifled and stuffed.

I have no segue to introduce the fact that I saw a new film called Bottoms at an actual movie theater on Sunday (Berkeley’s last — theater, not Sunday). It was an absurdist comedy centering around two lesbians in high school who form a sort of fight club. Their motives are not necessarily pure but like a latter day Mean Girls there is a redemption arc and a helluva story in the bargain. There are also many laughs some courtesy of former Cal and NFL football player Marshawn Lynch who plays a teacher named Mr. G. He starts one class by saying that the holocaust was real and it all stemmed from the Treaty of Versailles and he wants his students to act out said treaty. That’s some innovative teaching. Marshawn improvised a lot of his lines and that was a really good call by the director. Bottoms was great raunchy fun with much to say about high school, sexuality, masculinity and friendship. I look forward to more from the young director, Emma Seligman.

Last night I watched Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, courtesy of the Criterion Channel. It is a documentary about the great biographer Caro and the even greater editor, Gottlieb who are still working in their late eighties. Caro rocketed to fame with his 1975 bio of Robert Moses, The Power Broker and has since produced four volumes (when the hell is the fifth coming?) of a biography on Lyndon Johnson. Meanwhile Gottlieb has edited over 700 books including Catch-22, True Grit, all of Toni Morrison’s oeuvre and books by the likes of Michael Critchon, Bill Clinton, Ray Bradbury, Lauren Bacall, Salman Rushdie, John Cheever, John le Carre and many, many more. The film is about both men as individuals and also on their long collaboration. They are extremely admirable individuals whose contributions have been incalculable. It was moving, inspiring and thought-provoking. Lizzie Gottlieb, one of the subject’s daughter, directed.

For reasons too complex to get into I have today off. It is my pleasure to be writing here now. It is also my sad lot to be as depressed as hell. Merciful heavens but does life feel grim and awful and full of foreboding and terrors and heartache and pain and anguish and do I feel worthless and hated and a complete failure. I’ve experienced this enough to know that it won’t last but I can’t FEEL that it won’t last. It feels forever as obvious and ugly as death. It’s not the worst level of depression, If it were I’d not be able to write. How terrible to think I’ve suffered worse than this. How grateful to be writing and alive and healthy. There’s tomorrow.