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Why aren't there any sitcoms anymore?

We've finally seen a slight decrease in the number of horrible reality shows on television (or maybe at least there are fewer new ones coming this season.) There were even several great dramas last season like Lost and 24. This season looks promising too, I'll definitely be checking out Invasion tomorrow when it premieres. But what's missing from all this? Sitcoms. There's Scrubs and a few complete pieces of crap on the WB and that's it. There's not even a ton of bad comedies on anymore. I think I finally figured out the reason why...

Cellphones.

At least half of the sitcom storylines from the last twenty years revolve around some misunderstanding or trouble that would've been solved in about 30 seconds if just one person had a cellphone. Now that there are about 1.2 cellphones per human in this country, these types of stories just don't fly anymore. For example, this afternoon I'm watching a classic Seinfed episode where Kramer is trapped in a department store's women's changing room in his underwear because he sold his clothes. The other plot line is that he accidentally left a piece of paper with Uma Thurman's number on it with the clothes. They then have to jump through all sorts of hilarious hoops to get everything back from Bania. If this episode was written today it wouldn't make any sense. He'd store Uma's number in his phone and be able to call as many people as he needed for help from the changing room. Problems solved and episode unfunny.

The advent of the cellular phone has forced writers to actually come up with new stuff and not rely on the old conventions, and I guess so far they've failed miserably. I guess we should support the few truly funny shows on television, so stop reading this and go watch Family Guy before they cancel it (again).

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