Lisa
07-28-2011, 01:50 PM
I'm currently watching this series through for the third time, and it struck me that it gets better with rewatching, a rare thing for TV comedy. There's a ton of stuff they sneak in there that you can't possibly catch without multiple viewings. They will, for example, make jokes about things that haven't happened yet on the show, so it's about ten times funnier when you catch it the second or third time around. The show also has dozens of sight gags that you would never notice until you've watched it at least a few times.
I would say the downfall of this series (besides Fox shuffling it around and putting it on random hiatus, because Fox is sucky) was the fact that the humor builds throughout the series, so that each episode is ten times funnier if you've seen the one before it. A casual viewer would probably not find it very funny at all because you really, really need to pay attention and watch the episodes in order. This is de rigeur with continuing dramas, but not so much with comedy.
I honestly think this is one of the smartest TV shows ever produced. It's a shame it didn't last a little longer.