No offense to Jeremy Piven, whose work on Entourage I have not had the pleasure of watching just yet, but Neil Patrick Harris wuz robbed two years running for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy at the Emmys.
Harris’ turn as raving chauvinist Barney Stinson on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother is one of the last few saving graces of traditional sitcoms on American television today. With the exits in recent years of other popular traditional sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond, and Will and Grace, looking at HIMYM and Charlie Sheen’s glamour project Two and a Half Men as the top two few traditional sitcoms still broadcasting today paints a grim picture.
Call me a fuddy duddy, but I yearn for the days of traditional sitcoms. Mark my words, the day will come when all the comedy nominees will be from nontrad comedies – The Office, Ugly Betty, even Entourage – and we will no longer have such stellar audience-fueled guilty-pleasure sitcoms like Cheers, Frasier, Friends, The Cosby Show, Perfect Strangers, Murphy Brown, Golden Girls… you get the picture.
Boo to you, Emmys! I mourn the death of traditional sitcoms with this loss! I’ll see you at the funeral in sweatpants and seedy sneakers; mark my words, my eulogy, should ratings for HIMYM not rise significantly this third season, is going to be… wait for it… LEGENDARY.
