Many a Gen Xer grew up on a steady diet of heavily laugh-tracked sitcoms. Flashback to 1987, I am in my room surrounded by pinups torn from sundry teen magazines featuring the likes of Michael J. Fox and Kirk Cameron. How could you not fall for the devilish and still kind-hearted Mike Seaver. The Seavers, along with the Keatons, and also the oddly blended Tony Danza/Judith Light family combo, gave us what I like to call “family-light.” Sure, there were more serious moments—they tackled topics like underage drinking, birth control and anorexia. That “very special episode” tag an indicator that the canned laughter might be somewhat less prevalent during that particular evening’s show. Yet still, these sitcom families managed to turn even the tougher moments into opportunities for wistful lessons and self-reflexive remembrances.
So let’s look at what they got right…One thing is for certain, go back a decade in television history, to the 70s version of a sitcom, and the prevailing...
