TV Sitcom Lessons

Because the learning doesn’t stop over J-Term, FM catalogues the things that network sitcoms taught us about how to be a well-adjusted adult straight white guy this break.

1) No matter how bald and out-of-shape I get, my wife will remain as beautiful and thin as she was on our pilot episode. She has to: it’s in her contract.

2) Difficult moral decisions and parenting are best left until after the game is over.

3) Sundays are mostly for drinking beer and sitting still.

4) My only available parenting tool appears to be grounding my kids, which proved sadly ineffectual in my eldest son’s manslaughter conviction.

5) My wife talking to another man makes me so jealous and insecure that I behave with goofy irrationality.

6) The one exception is the mailman, whose periodic appearances are both comedic and sexually impotent.

7) Despite my always asking for another beer, constantly making references to beer, and spending a third of every episode in a bar, nobody seems to suspect that I have a drinking problem.

8) I have exactly one black friend.

9) Expressing an interest in art, literature or politics can be mocked as proof of my own insecure masculinity by my friends and co-workers, even if I bring it up in our favorite topless bar.

10) My kids don’t have to be smart or competent, they just have to move out once they graduate for me to admit that I love them.

11) Anyone moving towards the kitchen means it is ok for me to request another beer.

12) I can replace vitamins and fruit with nachos and suffer absolutely no negative consequences, other than my light-hearted late-night flatulence. But that’s my wife’s problem, not mine.

13) My boss is mean, my coworkers uninspiring, and my job lacks any personal meaning or opportunities for advancement. The only thing worse is the possibility of my wife ever having a career.

14) If I appear lazy, stupid, selfish, hedonistic or depressingly static these are not personal shortcomings.

15) Instead, they are loveable foibles that will continue inspiring hilarious misunderstandings and dramatic irony for between four and seven seasons.