Sitcom March Madness

For the past few weeks, Vulture has been running a bracket to determine the best sitcom of the past 30 years. This morning they declasred a winner. Before you see who that winner was, take a minute and run through the 4 rounds they set up, and come up with your own opinion:

Cheers
The Office

Arrested Development
South Park

Friends
Golden Girls

Roseanne
Malcolm in the Middle

Cosby Show
Simpsons

Larry Sanders Show
Community

Sex and the City
30 Rock

Seinfeld
Louie

This morning, Matt Zoller Seit, a critic whose opinion I usually respect, got it completely wrong and named The Simpsons over second-place Cheers.

Over on Monkey See, Linda Holmes has summed up most of my feelings on the subject:

For me, though, that's why The Simpsons has always seemed like less than it appears to others. It's plenty funny, and I get (and agree with) what others have often said about the lovely marriage at its center, Homer's relationship with God, and so forth. I do not in any way deny the show its flashes of brilliance — I enjoy it, and I've found something entertaining in it every one of the hundred thousand times I've seen it at either my best friend's house or my sister's house. But it also contains something I don't always care for, which is a reference that's supposed to be a joke.