Not enough of today's television programming is about sex - the religious right has it all wrong. There is too little sex. Too little real sex. Too little healthy sex. Sex on television is a promise for zany consequences, one liners, and ridiculous metaphors. Sex is not love or pleasure but a joke, a never-ending ejaculation of the pocketbook that stretches from one half hour to the next. Before the audience has a chance to stop and smoke a cigarette, the networks are banging away again at their self-perception.

The aim of today's sitcom is to talk about sex without talking about sex. Whether it is Generation X in coffeehouses, baby boomers in suburbs, or extended families under one roof, they all continuously allude to the same thing - sex. Elaborate metaphors for genitalia and absurd similes for sexual experiences fuel the laugh tracks of primetime lineups. The actual plot of the show is constructed only to find new ways to write the same jokes with new scenarios, locking the sitcom in a redundant cycle.

To be fair, situation comedy has never truly focused outside itself onto society. Class issues were brought up in All in the Family and even Good Times, but these were subplots, rest areas to attract new demographics to a network freeway of billboards and convenience stores of capitalist life. Other than this rare bit of social commentary, classic sitcom gags were primarily based upon physical humor, The Honeymooners for example. The only physical humor today, however, is of bodily functions, what things come out and especially what goes in.

Viewing the totality of a sitcom's lifespan, not much goes in or out. Other than an occasional new character to make the show "edgy," the series is static. Characters always operate on the same level, a couple in love remains so, with a few detours thrown in just to make sure the audience is watching. Characters are figureheads, ideologues who never change in any fundamental way. One week's crisis is forgotten by the next. Although it is a series, episodes are taken as capsules: chapters complete with their own conflict and resolution. Any hope for evolution from the cultural climate in which it originated to a more current one is only addressed in the wardrobe department.

So how does a sitcom succeed in offering a more socially conscious experience? On some levels The Simpsons used to achieve this, but a cartoon has an entirely different set of rules. Destroying traditional functions of television is a much easier conquest when the characters are animated. The one notable example from the last decade that subverted television's rules while maintaining a fanbase is Murphy Brown. Not only was the show dominated by a strong woman surrounded by weak, effeminate men, it made topics currently dominating the headlines fodder for storylines nearly every week. The furor created by the Dan Quayle speech and Brown's single mom status is very telling. Plenty of films and made for TV movies had tackled the same issue, but a sitcom trying to address a social problem? Immoral.

Considering television's love of cloning one popular show into another, it is very strange that nothing like Murphy Brown has been attempted since. Murphy Brown was a very popular award winning show yet nothing has followed it. Why? Despite the trivialities of the show and its pop political stances, the show was dangerous. Monday nights at 9pm on CBS were reified from passive entertainment to something a bit more involved. When television calls upon an audience to make judgements, to question the morality and motivations of its characters, particularly in a fictional setting, it has destroyed its own purpose; it's very nature. Television is supposed to be passive so advertising and programming merge into one unified block, the audience accepting each with equal zeal.

This is the primary culprit of the poor state of television today. Sex without consequence and storylines that end before they begin are both symptoms of money. The nature of advertising demands it. Why else would Paul Reiser be doing long distance telephone commercials? The presence of a recognizable television star during primetime garners attention even in a commercial. Advertisements are becoming more like television and vice versa, to the point where the public is not only being sold a product, but a detrimental lifestyle, abridged to remove any possibility of resistance.

Yancey Stickler reads too much Adorno, watches too much Sopranos and The Larry Sanders Show, and listens to way too much Wilco.

Got a problem? Email Yancey at filmmonthly@hotmail.com