The New Twilight Zone: TV Sitcom Couples

At last someone has pointed out the bizarre rule of thumb that says every television sitcom must pair an average to downright unattractive man with a blazing hot, classicly good-looking, 27-34 year old wife. This writer emphasizes the fat-white-guy-with-model-wife matches, but you can point to the quirky skinny comics too. I mean Ray Romano's charming but he certainly got the better end of that deal. Ditto for Jerry Seinfeld's slew of top-shelf ladies during that show. And just to return to the fat guys for a moment while we speak of comics---are we really to believe these are the chicks a non-famous Drew Carey finds knocking on his door?? Even George Lopez... Yeesh. And am I crazy, or do all of these sitcom wives essentially look the same? Average height, dark hair, sweet face with layered haircut...and far too hot for her age bracket. Never fails.

This trend, coupled with the unwritten secret code that requres all beer commercials to feature goofy/quirky men interacting with stunning, conventionally attractive women, creates a strange alternate perception of reality that probably leads men to treat not-great-looking women with even less care and respect than they already would. Inside their head, they're calculating that if the King of Queens gets Stacey Carosi...well then Kelly Kapowski must be waiting behind door #1 for them! Nonsense. You probably ain't Zach Morris, partner, so be nice to your waitress even if she doesn't look like a sitcom wife (i.e. an actress that read for the part of Rachel on Friends but could only get a gig playing eye-rolling homemaker opposite a moderately successful stand-up comic who's supposedly living in the suburbs and working a blue collar job).

When do we get the show where some infantile, weird-looking woman is married to a bland-yet-gorgeous male underwear model who patiently laughs at her foolishness and remains happily married to her in their suburban home?


--And just to quickly launch a side rant, how far is this proliferation of young hottie detective/investigator/prosecutors/doctors on TV gonna go? Why do casting agents think they can take the girl from the facial cleanser commercial and throw a lab coat on her and suddenly she's believable as the top forensics expert in Philadelphia? Ridiculous...