The Ultimate TV Comedies Bracket -- Round Two, Day One

....vin-dic-ATION!

Hello, friends! We’re not just halfway through the month of November, we’ve arrived at the second round of the Ultimate TV Comedies bracket! We started with 128 seeds, and we’ve cut that number in half. More accurately, you have cut that number in half and let it not be said that brackets like this bear no surprises even in the expansive first round. (We’re going to talk about one of the upsets fairly shortly.)

We’re down to 64 seeds, and I do want to call out a scheduling heads-up — the last post of this round will arrive next Wednesday, and the bracket will take a few days off so we can all enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday. (Round Three will start on Monday, November 27.)

Ready to vote? Let’s go!

(1) Cheers vs. (32) Scrubs: Although I picked a scene below from Scrubs that is not remotely funny, I do want to emphasize that I very much enjoyed the Bill Lawrence show from NBC (and eventually ABC). Zach Braff was very well cast as the sincere-bordering-on-obnoxious JD, John C. McGinley was an all-timer, Donald Faision was charming, and so on and so on. If you know the show well enough, you know the emotional wallop it could pack as in the scene glimpsed below.

And all this aside…well, c’mon. It’s gotta be Cheers. A fundamentally perfect show. It can’t lose.

…right?

Cheers

Scrubs

(49) The Drew Carey Show vs. (17) Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Sometimes, you folks surprise me. In the first round, the ABC series The Drew Carey Show — which, to my awareness, isn’t even available to stream anywhere — was up against the HBO show Sex and the City. Now, I am not a big fan of the misadventures of Carrie and Mr. Big and the others, but…I figured that show was going to trounce Drew Carey.

I was wrong! So on one hand, I know that I would vote here for Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which very effectively married Michael Schur’s idealism towards the decency of the American spirit with goofy comedy. I know I would assume the Nine-Nine will win. They ought to.

But…listen, is Drew Carey out there voting on these polls? Let’s find out.

The Drew Carey Show

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

(8) Newsradio vs. (25) Soap: Every so often, I think of Phil Hartman and I get immensely sad because of how much I miss him. What would his career have looked like in the 21st century? (I feel like it has been said before — possibly by me on Twitter? Possibly not? — but imagine a universe where he lives and then is cast as Walter White on Breaking Bad.) At the very least, we can go back to the superlative cult comedy Newsradio and remind ourselves that he was one of the funniest people to ever work on television.

I like Soap. I love Newsradio.

But how do you vote?

Newsradio

Soap

(9) I Love Lucy vs. (41) 3rd Rock from the Sun: Well, it’s got to be I Love Lucy. Nice to see 3rd Rock — as wildly over-the-top as it was, I did enjoy it in its heyday — make it this far, but Lucy’s got this one in the bag.

I Love Lucy

3rd Rock from the Sun