I'm going to say the new sitcom era was like 1988-2000, beginning with Roseanne and Married...with Children and ending with the reality TV boom which destroyed sitcoms. The wave before that was the Reagan-era wave of Full House, Family Ties, Facts of Life, The Cosby Show, and maybe The Golden Girls, though how "anti-idealistic" and acerbic the writing is makes it an influence upon the '90s. The primary difference between '90s era sitcoms and '80s era sitcoms was that the '90s sitcoms tended to be more openly critical of their characters and idealized them less, focusing typically on one of these three: workplace situations, groups of friends, or families. I'd actually put The Simpsons as a big part of the "new sitcom era", part of the trend of Roseanne, etc. I think overall the era peaked around 1994, though it was still sorta there until reality TV took over in late 2000. The last wave is those coffee culture shows like Will and Grace, Frasier, Friends, etc. that were big from late 1996-mid 2000.

well, to me personally the "new sitcom" era ended around 1997 when Married with Children ended and the Simpsons started to show some wear and tear (Home Improvement was also in steady decline and Seinfeld was still good but on its way out) though you're right it did probably last until 2000, the "late new sitcom" era had shows like Malcolm in the Middle, That 70's show, King of Queens, Becker to a lesser extent...late 90's sitcoms that all did well but I didn't enjoy too much...the last stuff before reality TV hit.

Will and Grace shoud've premiered in 1994 or something, that would've been the perfect show to sandwich between Friends and Seinfeld when NBC was at its peak.

Roseanne is what started the "midwestern" sitcom, home improvement, grace under fire, ellen, drew carrey would follow. They could be edgy at times, but were alot less cosmopolitan than friends or seinfeld. I remember watching Roseanne with my mom way back when...Dan came home and took a beer out of the fridge, she said something like "He just walks through the door and gets a beer...just like that? What kind of people do that?!"

well, to me personally the "new sitcom" era ended around 1997 when Married with Children ended and the Simpsons started to show some wear and tear (Home Improvement was also in steady decline and Seinfeld was still good but on its way out) though you're right it did probably last until 2000, the "late new sitcom" era had shows like Malcolm in the Middle, That 70's show, King of Queens, Becker to a lesser extent...late 90's sitcoms that all did well but I didn't enjoy too much...the last stuff before reality TV hit.

Will and Grace shoud've premiered in 1994 or something, that would've been the perfect show to sandwich between Friends and Seinfeld when NBC was at its peak.

Roseanne is what started the "midwestern" sitcom, home improvement, grace under fire, ellen, drew carrey would follow. They could be edgy at times, but were alot less cosmopolitan than friends or seinfeld. I remember watching Roseanne with my mom way back when...Dan came home and took a beer out of the fridge, she said something like "He just walks through the door and gets a beer...just like that? What kind of people do that?!"


Yeah, all of those shows were outgrowths of the Midwestern sitcom established by Roseanne. Though Home Improvement combined that "Midwestern sitcom" feel with the traditional '50s or '60s family sitcom updated for the '90s, and The Drew Carey Show followed a '70s-style workplace situation.

I think of Friends as a commercialized, more "Disneyified", Generation X-style Seinfeld that capitalized on early '90s "Gen X" movies like Reality Bites, and Frasier is just about as pretentious and "cosmopolitan" as '90s sitcoms can get.

I think of the '90s wave as having started in 1987, with the premiere of Married...with Children (a show I never particularly liked), which in itself had variations in its basic premise in Roseanne and The Simpsons. The late '90s era to me was sort of after Seinfeld ended in 1998, which I think of as when the "core '90s" really finally ended, despite signs of their ending having been in evidence since the "Macarena." Those sitcoms are the ones you mentioned before, though I think of Malcolm in the Middle as the first '00s sitcom, since it's pretty offensive and the characters are largely genuinely unlikeable. Of those shows, I only really enjoyed Will and Grace and That '70s Show. I think of the decline of The Simpsons as having started in late 1996, and having been fully declined by the beginning of the 1998 season, since even the season beginning in 1997 had some "classic" episodes.