“Abbott Elementary” Is a Classic in the Making
During its recently-wrapped first season, ABC sitcom Abbott Elementary garnered enormous critical acclaim and developed a passionately devoted fanbase. Here, I reflect on what makes the show work so well and why it feels like a classic in the making.
The art of the network television sitcom has evolved dramatically over the last seven decades and their cultural dominance has markedly declined in the last two. Gone are the days of “Must See TV” when Friends and Seinfeld were garnering 25–30 million viewers a week and swept the Emmys. Nowadays the minority of people who still watch network television are generally watching sports, reality television, and procedural dramas.
That’s certainly not to say that there have not been good network television sitcoms since their heyday (which arguably lasted from the early 1970s to the late 1990s). The last 20 years have given us well-regarded series like Fox’s Arrested Development; ABC’s Modern Family and Black-ish; NBC’s The Office, Parks and Recreation, and 30 Rock; and CBS’s How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. But the reality is that network television comedies aren’t nearly as ubiquitous or high-quality as they once were. In the last 10 years, only 18 of the 70 nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series have gone to series that aired on network television. Nowadays, cable networks and…
