Sorry, I've Been Busy Watching "The Hub"

In my unemployment, I've somehow been able to watch even more TV. And in my watching, I stumbled on a brand new cable network called "The Hub".

I did a little research and discovered that it launched on October 10th, and it used to be "Discovery Kids". It's a joint venture between Discovery and Hasbro.

First of all, it's a little scary that a new, random channel popped up, and out of the 800 channels I get, I immediately found it.

But check it out, these are the shows on the current schedule for "The Hub": The Wonder Years, Family Ties, Doogie Howser MD, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, GI Joe, and Transformers.

It's like I am the head of the network. It's unbelievable. I love The Hub! I have no idea how I lived without it for so long.

So if any of this sounds appealing to you, and it definitely should, check your local listings because it's out there, usually in the 200's (for Direct TV it's 294).

Needless to say, I've been watching Doogie and The Wonder Years quite a bit. And I have to say, the shows hold up. What is interesting is that they are both single camera half hour shows that do NOT feature wacky cut-aways, flash backs, or a fake documentary crew.

It seems like you can't have a half hour single camera comedy now without those things. It started with animated shows such as "Family Guy". Every joke is, "that reminds me of the time Superman delivered me a pizza and it took longer than 30 minutes" - cut to Superman delivering the pizza.

Then came Arrested Development. Admittedly, it did this "wackiness" pretty well, but it seemed to start a bad precedent of just jokes for jokes sake. It's similar to Scrubs. Scrubs started off strong, but then drifted into crazy cartoon land. Every joke needed to be punctuated by a cut to: JD dancing to a Bell Biv Devoe Song.

Currently, you have The Office (fake documentary/interviews), Modern Family (the same), 30 Rock (complete cartoon land), and Community (ditto) to name a few.

For some reason, these shows are unable to sustain themselves without the crutch of quick cutting zaniness.

And yet, Doogie and The Wonder Years were two extremely successful shows that lasted a long time. They did not rely on any of that. They did not have the standard "sit-com" rhythm of 3 jokes a minute. They were funny, but they weren't laden with punch lines. In short, they worked as half hour comedies, and half hour stories.

And as far as I can tell, this formula hasn't been attempted since. Why?