Will Friedle and Rider Strong Want the Sitcom Back and Honestly They Are Not Wrong

By Klep Napier | Wearecritix.com

It started as a simple audience question at Colorado Springs Comic Con. Ten episodes or the traditional twenty-something episode format? Which do you prefer?

What followed was one of the most genuinely interesting conversations I had all weekend. Will Friedle and Rider Strong, two people who spent years living inside one of the most beloved family sitcoms ever made, sat down and talked honestly about what has been lost in the evolution of television storytelling. And the more they talked the more it became clear that this was not just nostalgia talking.

They have a real point.

The Sitcom Is Gone and Nobody Is Talking About It

Will Friedle said it plainly and without apology.

He cannot stand that there is not a good family sitcom anymore. He wants to watch a great family having wacky fun times with the crazy neighbor and all the wonderful weirdness that ensues. He wants to watch Home Improvement again. He wants Family Ties back. He wants episodes that can be watched in any order on any given Tuesday night without needing to remember what happened three weeks ago.

"That's exactly what I want," he said when someone pushed back on the idea of a show that solves its problems in 22 minutes. No apology. No hedging.

And honestly? Same.

There is something that has quietly disappeared from television over the last decade and a half that nobody seems to be grieving loudly enough. The family sitcom. The kind of show where the stakes were real enough to care about but light enough to laugh through. Where you could turn it on after a long day and just be with characters you loved without committing to a six hour emotional investment.

Rider Strong is right there with him. The shows they both grew up on are now being dramatized, serialized and flipped on their heads to fit a darker and more grounded era of television. The fun family feeling has been replaced with prestige and consequence and weight.

And those things are not bad. But their dominance has left a gap that nobody is filling.

We Got More Sophisticated and We Lost Something in the Trade

Rider Strong offered the more analytical take and it is worth sitting with.

The problem is not that audiences are wrong for wanting more cinematic television. The problem is that in becoming more sophisticated consumers we have made it genuinely difficult for the simpler pleasures to survive. A new show that looked and felt like Boy Meets World with a laugh track and bright lighting would struggle to find an audience today not because it was bad but because it would feel like it belonged to a different era.

Networks have tried. People who worked inside those networks confirmed it to Rider directly. Every year pilots would get made that were trying to recapture that classic multi-camera family energy. They would never last because the audience simply would not show up for them.

The closest thing to cracking that code in recent memory was the mockumentary era. The Office. Modern Family. Shows that found a way to keep the warmth and the comedy of the sitcom format while making it feel visually grounded and real enough for modern sensibilities. Breaking the fourth wall through documentary style filmmaking gave audiences permission to accept the format again.

But even that era has passed. And nothing has quite filled its place.

Want to see the full conversation? Watch the clip from Colorado Springs Comic Con on the CritiX YouTube channel right here.

What Would It Actually Take to Bring It Back

This is the question that lingered after the conversation ended.

The audience for a great family sitcom absolutely exists. Every parent who wants to watch something with their kids that does not require a content warning. Every person who wants to laugh without processing trauma. Every viewer who remembers what it felt like to just look forward to Tuesday nights without needing to block out three hours.

The formula is not mysterious. It has worked before and it could work again. What it requires is someone willing to make it without apologizing for what it is. A funny show about a family. With a crazy neighbor. Where the problems get solved in 22 minutes and nobody has to die for it to mean something.

Will Friedle and Rider Strong would probably watch that show. So would a lot of us.

Mr. Feeny would approve.

Where Hollywood Meets Fandom.

By Klep Napier, Founder, CEO and Editor in Chief of CritiX Media. MPA-Accredited Entertainment Outlet. wearecritix.com