It seemed for the longest time, television just lost it’s shine of quality. When reality shows emerged, the quality of television story writing went down. Sitcoms safely stuck with their sexual humor or vulgarity and that undertone dribbled into the frameworks of reality TV. Saturday Night Live, which had simple and clever humor turned into mostly sexual-based humor in the ’90s. There were times SNL was criticized for poor writing. Tina Fey’s writing style I believe really boosted the show’s image and quality. The past couple seasons of SNL have been just plain funny with cleverly and wittily written sketches that aren’t necessarily based on sexual humor. After going so long without it this type of writing, you forget how many non-sexual situations can be made humorous. Imagine!
The same must be said for some new TV sitcoms. Admittedly, there have been many cut and dry sitcoms slapped together with simple one-liners. Hope and Faith was one example that simply… Wasn’t funny. I went to a taping of one show and found we were 
forced to laugh at the driest, least funny one-liners. CBS’s one plus year old How I Met Your Mother has been the highlight of my new sitcom joys. It’s not just written; it’s composed of clever humor that flows and tickles you throughout the entire episode. The writing may have some sexual references but it’s cleverly done. It’s not gaudy nor smutty. There is an actual storyline where by the end you find yourself asking how the writers can come up with such shining work that’s so funny.
The Class, on CBS, just premiered and so far, the humor is joyfully pleasant. No one liners. Just a funny storyline that you simply embrace and want to share with others. Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm is an expert at this stuff. An incident that crops up at minute 0:14 reappears 20 minutes later to complete a joke. And that is much more believable than a family at home throwing one-liners at each other.
So we’re getting back up there. Television is once again beginning to shine again with quality examples of good writing.
