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In case you don't know, and according to the Nielsen ratings you probably don't, the best series on TV right now is Upstairs, Downstairs, bar none, and that includes Sanford And Son (a.k.a. The Whitman Mayo Show) and even more especially All In The Family — I mean, how many times can you laugh at the same joke? Any sitcom is going to get a little less funny each week (to do otherwise would be to go against nature) "cause TV gives you a premise then works it, which is more disastrous to comedy than drama.

March 1, 1975
Richard Walls

Prime Time

Titanic Hits Soopburb, Lady Bellamy Coes Down

Richard Walls

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In case you don't know, and according to the Nielsen ratings you probably don't, the best series on TV right now is Upstairs, Downstairs, bar none, and that includes Sanford And Son (a.k.a. The Whitman Mayo Show) and even more especially All In The Family — I mean, how many times can you laugh at the same joke? Any sitcom is going to get a little less funny each week (to do otherwise would be to go against nature) "cause TV gives you a premise then works it, which is more disastrous to comedy than drama. But the media is habit forming and if you still think it's funny everytime Archie says "meathead" and the electronically goosed live audience laughs like it's gonna burst a blood vessel (which makes my teeth grate as much as any laugh track) then you're merely behaving in a normal post-Pavlovian way.

Audience manipulation aside, the best form of entertainment for TV is soap opera "cause the protean nature of its structure allows the premise to be changed, sometimes radically tho usually moderately, whenever it's been work-

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