Evil_Chuck wrote:
...I am baffled by the amount of awards it won for its alleged comedy when it never made me crack a smile...
Don't be baffled. The Emmy's, Oscars, Grammy's, et al. are nothing more than industry self-promotion. They literally give themselves awards as a way to make you think how great they are. Ok, so its not like CBS themselves gave the show awards, but a trade association of which CBS is one of the dominating members gave CBS awards. Anyway after they do it, they advertise stuff as "winner of 10 emmy's!" or some such nonsense. Even if you can look past the industry giving itself awards, the collective taste of the voters for these awards, if not subjected to politicking and undue influence, is questionable at best and outright awful at worst - it almost always degrades into a popularity contest rather than an honest evaluation of the work in question. Plus what is glossed over is that very few of them actually watch more than one episode per year of the shows they were voting for. Even though, for instance, "Two and a Half Men" may be nominated for "Best Comedy", its not the whole season of the show that's nominated (even though the format of these awards shows make it seem that way), its actually a specific episode that is nominated, then the voters supposedly watch that one episode of Two and a Half Men and the one nominated episode of each of the other shows and then make their decision based on that. Same for all the other categories too - each show only submits one episode for each category, or for individual awards each actor/actress has one episode submitted (so if a show has two actors for best supporting actor, they may not both necessarily submit the same episode of the show).
In any case, except for Big Bang Theory I don't really watch any sitcoms any more and haven't for ages, but every now and then when I watch an episode of a random one its the same old formula-based garbage. I don't think sitcoms have really changed since I started watching them 30+ years ago. Yeah, the underlying stories change but the mostly dull jokes and situations stay basically the same.