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Okay, here's a puzzle for you: I'm going to put some television shows into Group A and others into Group B. See if you can figure out what metric I used to split them into their respective groups.
GROUP A: Friends, Gossip Girl, The OC, House, Desperate Housewives, 30 Rock, Grey's Anatomy, Entourage, The Gilmore Girls, CSI: Miami.
GROUP B: All in the Family, Good Times, Sanford and Son, Three's Company, Family Ties, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show, The Flintstones, Roseanne.
I submit that Group A shows render economic concerns in a wholly unrealistic fashion -- unlike real life, money rarely if ever imposes an obstacle to actions taken by the characters, and mostly they are shown living well beyond the means actual people in their situation could manage.
In contrast, Group B shows make some attempt at dealing with scarcity, or at least portraying its characters living relatively realistic lives given their occupations and circumstances.
My sense is that as time has gone by we've begun to see more and more shows that fit into Group A, and fewer and fewer suited for Group B.
That probably isn't a good thing.
Add Seinfeld to Group A.
How much of the appeal of TV is escapism, though? Especially sitcoms. I don't know how well Good Times holds up because I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but at the time my brother and I were big fans. Our mother, on the other hand, didn't see the appeal of a comedy set in the projects. For what its worth, she liked all the other Lear comedies, but found the setting of Good Times to be a downer.
Very good points, though a few (very) minor quibbles.
Early on in Friends, there was an episode when three of the characters (Joey, Phoebe and Rachel) confronted the other three about the fact that they made far less money. The show played out the issue of income disparity between friends (a situation Megan McArdle wrote about a little while ago in the webpages of The Atlantic).
Roseanne was about a (sometimes) poor working class family, but yet they still had the ability to own three businesses throughout the course of the show (Dan's drywalling business, the bike shop, and the Lunch Box). Further, in the final season, they won the lottery.
Outside of the show's premise, did Three's Company actually deal with economic concerns at all? Didn't Jack wind up buying a restaraunt (Jack's Bistro) either during the series or in a spin-off?
OK - I'm a bit of a jerk to split such hairs. I take your overall point. I also think Chris A makes a far better point than I when talking about TV being escapism.
[It's rather sad that after reading (and enjoying) much of your work here and at TAS, I haven't commented on anything until the subject of sitcoms comes up; I've got my priorities straight.]