Sitcom critics get serious about laughs.

In the introduction to Critiquing the Sitcom--A Reader (Syracuse University Press, 357 pages), the book's editor, Joanne Morreale wrote that television developed "people's sense of themselves and their place in the world." She believed sitcoms express "the ideological tensions that mark particular social and historical moments," (translated into normal language, that means each program reflected its time) and each essay that followed examined one or more sitcoms.

The essay writers are all academics: professors of Journalism, Communications, Media or English at various American universities.

The book is divided into sections, each covering an era in television. Sitcoms analyzed in the first section--covering the 1940s and 1950s--included Mama (1949-56) and Amos 'n' Andy (1951-53). In "Why Remember Mama? The changing face of a Woman's Narrative," author George Lipsitz compared Mama the sitcom, to I Remember Mama, the film released the year before.

One of the more interesting essays in this section, "Amos "n" Andy and the Debate over American Racial Integration," by writer Thomas Cripps, discussed the popular but oft-criticized 1950s African American sitcom. African-Americans had experienced equality overseas during World War II, but came home to the same white-controlled society. Cripps pointed out that while other early ethnic sitcoms helped introduce new ethnicities to white, anglo-saxon Americans, "Amos'n'Andy was asked to perform a similar service for an ethnic group whose history included slavery, discrimination, and exclusion from the opportunity for easy assimilation implied" for white immigrants.

The 1960s were covered in three essays, which discussed The Beverly Hillbillies (1962-71), Gilligan's Island (1964-67) and Julia (1986-71). "The Unworthy Discourse--Situation Comedy in Television," by Paul Attallah, opened with the author noting that television writing is generally "unworthy," since much of what had been written so far had "been heavily marked by a high degree of sameness." Attallah talked briefly about The Beverly Hillbillies (which revolved around a family of country folk that suddenly came into money and moved into the posh town of Beverly Hills), because, he said, "it remained doggedly at the level of sitcom," instead of rising above by addressing socially imporant issues.

The title of Laura Morowitz's "From Gauguin to Gilligan's Island' referred to an episode of the sitcom in which a Russian artist ran away from civilization to live on the island. She contended that the artist was based on French Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin, who in real life escaped to Tahiti in search of Utopia. Morowitz examined the worldwide popularity of Gilligan's Island (a comedy about a group of tourists stranded on a desert island), when, in the midst of the Cold War, many episodes revolved around some sort of invasion.

In "Is This What you Mean by Color TV?--Race, Gender and Contested Meanings in Julia," Aniko Bodroghkozy examined Julia, a sitcom about an African American nurse and war widow who moved to an integrated apartment building to raise her son. She analyzed viewers' letters, which the show's producer, Hal Kanter, had saved. She admitted that "letter writers tend to be a particularly motivated group of television viewers," so the letters "should not be seen as representative of the larger audience's responses to the program." In one case, a young black female viewer had written, "Your work is good for an all white program ... but Julia is no Negro woman." To this, Kanter sarcastically replied, "I'm glad you think our work is 'good for an all white program.' I'll pass your praise along to our black writer and black actors."

One of the essays in the 1970s section delved into the lesbian undertones of female pal comedies Laverne and Shirley (1976-83) and Kate and Allie (1984-89), with references to I Love Lucy (1951-57). In "I Love Laverne and Shirley--Lesbian Narratives, Queer Pleasures, and Sitcoms," Alexander Dotty referenced an episode of Kate and Allie (which revolved around two recently divorced best friends), in which Allie dreamed she and Kate were Lucy's Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz. To explain how this can be read as "lesbian," Dotty mentioned an I Love Lucy episode in which the Mertzes and the Ricardos split up into same-sex couples and Lucy refers to them having a "gay time." Dotty pointed out that the main comedy in Laverne and Shirley lay in "seeing how various threats to maintaining Laverne and Shirley as a couple are overcome."

The 1980s were discussed through Cheers (1982-93) and The Cosby Show (1984-92). In "Where Everybody Knows Your Name--Cheers and the Mediation of Cultures," Michelle Hilmes stated that Cheers took as its premise this conflict: "'high' versus 'low' culture, the tradition of the arts versus the tradition of entertainment."

In Michael Real's "Structural Analysis 1--Bill Cosby and Recoding Ethnicity," The Cosby Show is praised for avoiding and sometimes challenging black stereotypes. Real wrote that main characters Cliff and Claire Huxtable, a black doctor and lawyer, were "about as stereotypically upwardly mobile and yuppie as can be imagined." The show was criticized because theirs were not considered "typical" black occupations, but Real noted that that same critique was never applied to Redd Foxx's character in 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son, who was a junk dealer, even though running a junk yard is just as (if not more) atypical a job for a black man in the 1970s as being a doctor or lawyer in the 1980s.

Sitcoms examined in the 1990s section included Roseanne (1988-97) and Seinfeld (1990-98). In "Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess," Kathleen Rowe Karlyn discussed the history of the "unruly woman," noting that "femininity is gauged by how little space women take up." She added that Roseanne's ease with her large body, "signified by her looseness, [triggered] much of the unease [sic] surrounding her."

Book editor Joanne Morreale's essay entitled "Sitcoms Say Good-bye--The Cultural Spectacle of Seinfelds Last Episode," was a close study of the hit show's final episode. The series "closed in a recursive loop, in an episode that was replete with self-referential ... references." Jerry and his friends were put on trial for criminal negligence in a small Midwestern U.S. town. In the end, they were sentenced to one year in jail. Trapped in a cell together, Jerry criticizes the buttons on George's shirt. To this, George responded, "Haven't we had this conversation before?" They did--it was the same as the first conversation of Seinfeld's first episode.

One of the book's faults, which becomes apparent in the later chapters, is that the 1980s and 1990s essays were written in the midst of the shows' success. This lack of retrospect limited the scope of the writers' views, and rendered these essays unworthy to stand alongside the others, whose subjects had time to ferment in viewers' and readers' minds.

Taken on their own, or grouped together with other essays whose themes were more congruent, most of these essays would have been a good read. But each examined different themes in particular sitcoms; none critiqued--as the anthology's title promised--the sitcom as a genre.