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This Wednesday, NBC's brazenly unfunny sitcom Whitney returns, in all its anachronistic tired battle-of-the-sexes glory. Despite being one of the most critically panned series, let alone sitcoms, of the 2011-2012 TV season, star Whitney Cummings has inexplicably been given another chance to bore you to death with her and co-star Chris D'elia's oh-so-wacky couples' banter. If that sounds strange given the vitriol, don't be so impressed by the renewal.
TV has long awarded disgustingly large episode orders to some of the worst, most groan-worthy situational comedies. Complex has counted down the 25 Least Funny Sitcoms of All Time for your side-splitting pleasure.
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Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)
25. Joey (NBC, 2004-2006)
Starred: Matt LeBlanc, Andrea Anders, Paulo Costanzo, Drea de Matteo, Jennifer Coolidge
We previously declared Joey the second worst TV spin-off of all time, and for good reason: Quite simply, the dim-witted but lovable would-be thespian from Friends left all of his charm on the best coast when he relocated to the West.
Joey Tribbiani worked perfectly within the confines of an ensemble cast, but he just isn't built to lead on his own. Drea de Matteo and Jennifer Coolidge do their best to support, but without the Friends gang to bounce off of, Joey the character and Joey the series came off as blandly as Dr. Drake Ramoray.
24. 8 Simple Rules... (ABC, 2002-2005)
Starred: John Ritter, Katey Sagal, James Garner, David Spade, Kaley Cuoco, Amy Davidson, Martin Spanjers
Oftentimes thirsty execs will assemble a new sitcom with a cast comprised of stars of hit series past and assume that will, above all else, solidify it as a winner. It's obvious that the suits at ABC thought they'd struck gold with the pairing of sitcom legends Jack Tripper and Peg Bundy as the parents of a contemporary suburban family.
Sadly, they wasted the talent because the Hennessy family lacks the hilarious self-possessed cynicism of the Bundy's, and aren't nearly as interesting a foil for Ritter as Joyce DeWitt and Insert Hot Blonde were. Instead, viewers were treated to typical, boring, Modern Day Dad Doesn't Get His Hot Hormonal Teenage Daughters fare. After Ritter's tragic, untimely passing the series only sank lower, with the addition of that show-killing midget David Spade and James Garner, who stumbles through every bland scene and microwaved joke as if he's making up a huge debt he owed to Ritter or someone else on the series.
23. Homeboys in Outer Space (UPN, 1996-1997)
Starred: Flex, Daryl M. Bell, Rhona Bennett, Kevin Michael Richardson, John Lithgow
Leave it to UPN to make a blaxploitation-esque sci-fi sitcom, only lacking in self-awareness, and with a title that sounds like a Wayans brothers parody series on In Living Color. Astronauts Ty and Morris whip through 23rd-century space in a ship that resembles a low-rider (of course) with an interactive female computer voice called—wait for it—Loquatia. Despite boasting some pretty impressive guest stars (Anthony Hopkins, George Takei), this would-be Black Star Trek isn't even fun to laugh at, much less funny on its own merit.
22. Whitney (NBC, 2011-Present)
Stars: Whitney Cummings, Chris D'elia, Rhea Seehorh, Zoe Lister-Jones, Dan O'Brien
In the years prior to landing her own series, Whitney Cummings gained momentum and acclaim with progressive stand-up bits and hilariously memorable performances on Comedy Central roasts and Chelsea Lately. Which is why her fan base and critics alike were stunned when NBC handed her the keys to her own sitcom and she chose to deliver the standard, formulaic, and ultimately dreadfully boring Whitney.
Guy and Girl live together. Wacky, weekly, battle-of-the-sexes hijinks occur over inane incidents and differences of opinion. There's nothing here that you can't catch on TV Land, except with a better cast and fresher execution.
21. I Hate My Teenage Daughter (FOX, 2011-2012)
Starred: Jaime Pressly, Katie Finneran, Aisha Dee, Kristi Lauren
The premise: Two suburban mothers realize their teenage daughters are beginning to resemble and behave exactly like the type of girls that made their lives hell during their own teen years. The result: The series that never rose above the aforementioned horrible premise and boasted a cast with not one sympathetic nor likeable character. They hate their teenage daughters, viewers hated them all, and the series shockingly didn't make it past 13 episodes.
20. Sullivan & Son (TBS, 2012)
Stars: Steve Byrne, Dan Lauria, Jodi Long, Owen Benjamin, Brian Doyle-Murray, Christine Ebersole, Vivian Bang, Valerie Azlynn
If you watch sports or Seinfeld re-runs on TBS, or like to get to the movie theater a few minutes early, then chances you are you saw their grossly over-done media campaign for Sullivan & Son, with cast interviews that claimed it was a fresh and daringly offensive new spin on a classic sitcom twist, and commercials that begged you to remember Vince Vaughn is loosely involved with the show.
If that somehow suckered you into believing TBS was actually capable of producing a decent original series, and you watched this crap, then what you saw was...Cheers. Excuse us, the worst Cheers impersonator of all time. Sure, there's a bar, and everyone knows each other's name, but you'd be hard-pressed to remember any of these cardboard archetypes yourself, let alone force a chuckle at the show's excruciatingly corny race jokes. The less said about Steve Byrne's sleepy lead performance or Jodi Long's as his ultra-caricatured tiger mommy, the better.
19. What I Like About You (The WB, 2002-2006)
Starred: Amanda Bynes, Jennie Garth, Wesley Jonathan, Leslie Grossman, Allison Munn, Nick Zano
Not even the combined hotness of Amanda Bynes and Jennie Garth could make this show likable, because as Manhattanite sisters Holly and Val, they play two of the most insufferably self-possessed women in sitcom history. Which would be fine, if the series knew and owned that. Instead every episode revolves around some contrived romantic hijinks or triangle that features both of them over-acting and over-reacting, even though hundreds of sitcoms before have informed every step of their well-worn melodrama. How this lasted for damn near 100 episodes we'll never know.
18. Cavemen (ABC, 2007)
Starred: Bill English, Nick Kroll, Sam Huntington, Kaitlin Doubleday, Jeff Daniel Phillips, Stephanie Lemelin, Julie White
In the event that you did your best to erase this unfortunate memory, allow us to refresh: Thirsty executives at ABC did indeed try to spin a sitcom off of the recurring GEICO—yes, the car insurance company—Caveman commercials. The series, which presented Cro-Magnons as a minority race just trying to make it in America, begged the important question: If shit like this can get greenlit, who's to say we're not all still neanderthals?
17. Big Day (ABC, 2006-2007)
Starred: Marla Sokoloff, Josh Cooke, Wendie Malick, Kurt Fuller
Despite the fact that the best sitcoms feature the most basic premises, every TV season a new one comes along with a gimmicky, desperate-for-attention concept that inevitably collapses on itself while failing to establish memorable characters around it. In 2006, that series was Big Day, comedy's would-be answer to 24.
The series revolved around the impending nuptials of the two leads, with every episode taking place on the same day as the couples face numerous obstacles leading up to the big event. There's really no way this series was going to make it past 13 episodes, but it didn't help that the wedding shenanigans had all the hilarity of a Hallmark original movie.
16. Joanie Loves Chachi (CBS, 1982-1983)
Starred: Scott Baio, Erin Moran, Al Molinaro, Ellen Travolta
In the shock of all shocks, a Happy Days spin-off dedicated to Joanie and Chachi's sickening simp affair was anything but a laugh riot, serving absolutely no point beyond extending Scott Baio's relevance a year past its sell-by date.
15. The Bill Engvall Show (TBS, 2007-2009)
Starred: Bill Engvall, Nancy Travis, Jennifer Lawrence, Graham Patrick Martin, Skyler Gisondo, Tim Meadows, Brian Doyle-Murray, Cynthia Watros
The only thing this series had going for it was a then-barely-legal Jennifer Lawrence gracing the screen as Bill's oldest child. Otherwise, Engvall completely drops the ball on the depressingly tired comedian-channels-Cosby-as-beleaguered-family-patriarch trope. Simply seeing commercials for this wet blanket used to get us tight. When will poor Tim Meadows land the Black Friend Supporting Role he deserves?
14. My Mother the Car (NBC, 1965-1966)
Starred: Jerry Van Dyke, Maggie Pierce, Ann Sothern, Avery Schreiber, Cindy Eilbacher, Randy Whipple
That title isn't some funny, figurative play-on-words. This '60s sitcom is literally about a guy, attorney David Crabtree (Van Dyke), who discovers while car-shopping that his mother has been reincarnated as a 1928 Porter and speaks to him through the radio. We're sure some kind of Oedipal argument can be made for this dude driving his Mom around on the daily.
If that's not enough to make you ask "What the actual fuck?" consider that MMTC also features the annoying Weekly Scheming Antagonist device, in this case an obsessed car collector desperate to have the collectible Porter. It appears someone at NBC was obsessed with talking cars, because they tried again with better results with the classic '80s so-cheesy-it's-fun drama Knight Rider.
13. Shit My Dad Says (CBS, 2010-2011)
Starred: William Shatner, Jonathan Sadowski, Will Sasso, Nicole Sullivan, Tim Bagley
In 2010, CBS greenlit a sitcom based on a Twitter feed, because the "Hollywood is out of ideas" rant needed more gas and the channel's programming didn't quite meet the shitty quota yet that season.
Shit My Dad Says tried to skate by with William Shatner channeling his own, much publicized eccentricities and character traits as the eponymous shit-talking father, which could have given this series legs, if the masses actually found Shatner's real or play antics funny. The resulting premise, which finds him living with his adult son, who makes a living off of blogging Dad's rants, is Frasier without the charm or chemistry.
12. Work It (ABC, 2012)
Starred: Amaury Nolasco, Ben Koldyke, Beth Lacke, John Caparulo, Rebecca Mader, Rochelle Aytes, Kate Reinders
Work It, the most critically panned series of the January 2012 TV crop, followed two men who decide they'll have a better chance in the current job market if they dress up as and pretend to be women. Basically someone at ABC had just seen Tootsie, and thought a silly feature premise would actually work as an on-going series. It lasted two weeks.
11. My Big Fat Greek Life (CBS, 2003)
Starred: Nia Vardalos, Steven Eckholdt, Lainie Kazan, Louis Mandylor, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides
How many series based off of a successful film last? More importantly, how many of them are actually good? Audiences loved Nia Vardalos' romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding but were unsurprisingly not up for a whole series dedicated to the Ian character's (renamed Thomas on the show) stranger-in-a-strange land misadventures amongst his Greek wife's stereotypical Greek relatives. Apparently this terrible idea was Nia Vardalos' call, which explains why Hollywood hasn't seen much of her since.
10. Kath & Kim (NBC, 2008-2009)
Starred: Selma Blair, Molly Shannon, John Michael Higgins, Mikey Day, Justina Machado, Melissa Rauch
If you're wondering why TV snobs flock to the original, foreign-country versions of the many series that are shamelessly remade over here, Kath & Kim is a good example of our spotty track record. The first blatant error was the casting of Molly Shannon and Selma Blair—as mother and daughter (they share an eight-year age gap in real-life). From there, NBC continued to fuck with and tweak every aspect that made the OG series work, like downplaying the quirkiness and making the show "sexier." Production should've shut down as soon Molly Shannon and "sexy" were mentioned in the same sentence.
9. ¡Rob! (CBS, 2012)
Starred: Rob Schneider, Cheech Marin, Claudia Bassols, Diana Maria Riva, Eugenio Derbez, Lupe Ontiveros
If the trade-off for Rob Schneider calling quits on his racially insensitive, painfully unfunny Adam Sandler movie cameos—in which he has portrayed every ethnicity under the sun with awfully caricatured results—was a Rob Schneider CBS sitcom, then the powers-that-be made the right choice in cancelling it and sending Rob back to the silver screen.
If the mere inclusion of Schneider wasn't bad enough, the premise was even more tired than he is. A middle-aged white guy (Wait, we thought Rob was Filipino?!) marries into a Mexican-American family and has to grow accustomed to their wacky, foreign ways! Can you believe this only lasted eight episodes? ¡Qué sorpresa!
8. The Paul Reiser Show (NBC, 2011)
Starred: Paul Reiser, Ben Shenkman, Omid Djalili, Duane Martin, Andrew Daly, Amy Landecker
It was inevitable that someone would try the winning Curb Your Enthusiasm model on a broadcast network, a feat that would always be doomed to fail. But even a Larry David cameo couldn't help The Paul Reiser Show transcend the soulless awfulness of its execution. It only took two weeks of stone-faced viewers for NBC to pull the plug. Leave the semi-autobiographical aimless wandering to the king on HBO.
7. Still Standing (CBS, 2002-2006)
Starred: Mark Addy, Jami Gertz, Taylor Ball, Renee Olstead, Jennifer Irwin, Joel Murray
On an episode of Louie, Louis C.K. poked fun at the well-worn situational formula of the wise-cracking fat guy who's generally disagreeable toward his exhausted, much hotter and out-of-his-league wife (kids optional). It's true, that formula is an over-done trope, but we're willing to go with it...provided the fat guy is actually funny. We could probably film a normal, real-life couple's banter, unedited, and it would be funnier than Mark Addy and Jami Gertz's chemistry or lack thereof.
As the Miller family, Addy was merely fat, and Jami Gertz was nowhere near hot enough to make us force a laugh, or even stay on the channel. Add in some wholly unremarkable children, and you have a sitcom most of the country forgot existed yet somehow ran for four years. We blame the Bible Belt.
6. Ferris Bueller (NBC, 1990-1991)
Starred: Charlie Schlatter, Brandon Douglas, Ami Dolenz, Jennifer Aniston, Richard Riehle, Cristine Rose, Sam Freed, Judith Kahn
This series is pure blasphemy in every regard. This unnecessary movie-to-television spin-off completely disrespects the classic film. In the series, Ferris Bueller's Day Off exists within the show universe but is treated with disdain as a film based on the gang's real-life adventures. So it's not even a continuation, but an unholy sequel/spin-off hybrid that just further proved its pointlessness.
To top it off, Charlie Schlatter is the worst Matthew Broderick stand-in imaginable, making up for a complete lack of Broderick's charm and swag with smarmy douchiness.
5. Small Wonder (Syndication, 1985-1989)
Starred: Tiffany Brissette, Jerry Supiran, Dick Christie, Marla Pennington, Emily Schulman
Talk about a series telling the same joke week in and week out. The members of the Lawson family adopt inventor patriarch Ted's (Dick Christie) secret robotic creation, Vicki (Tiffany Brissette), the humanized version of Voice Input Child Identicant, as one of their own. She has all the classic robotic trappings: removable panel with protruding wires, stilted mechanical speech patterns, and super strength, and each episode features zany human-robot relations while the nosy neighbors come thisclose to discovering "Vicki's" true nature. Wash, rinse, repeat, unplug the TV.
4. House of Payne (TBS, 2007-2012)
Starred: LaVan Davis, Ella Williams, Allen Payne, Lance Gross, Larramie Shaw, Keshia Knight Pulliam
What, you thought Tyler Perry's Black Hollywood Reign of Terror was reserved for the silver screen? Nope. In an effort to maximize on its shitty series quota, TBS struck a deal with the devil, and gave Perry boatloads of money for several executive-produced sitcoms, which feature the cheapest sets, broadest jokes, and cheesiest acting imaginable.
The most awful of the bunch is House of Payne, Perry's contemporary answer to The Cosby Show, Family Matters, and The Jeffersons, yet lacking in any of the cultural significance or, you know, humor, that cemented those as classics.
3. She's the Sheriff (ABC, 1987-1989)
Starred: Suzanne Sommers, George Wyner, Pat Carroll, Lou Richards
Chrissy Snow as the main overseer of law and order in a small Nevada county? What could be better, right? The only thing that could have made this ridiculous show worse was if it had Sommers contending with actual criminals, instead of gender-biased locals and wacky tourists.
2. According to Jim (ABC, 2001-2009)
Starred: Jim Belushi, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Larry Joe Campbell, Taylor Atelian, Bill Bruno, Conner Rayburn
This interminable and awful series has got to be the worst family-man sitcom of all time. According to Jim is too bland and boring to be truly offensive, but the hate really starts flowing when you realize how long it was on the air. Over the years, ABC has been responsible for some of the best sitcoms and some of the worst, but the fact that they rewarded a series so vanilla an eight-season run is a crime worthy of the highest punishment.
To add insult to injury, it's still syndicated to this day, as if anyone who had the misfortune of watching just 10 minutes of this crap would be willing to sit through it again.
1. The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer (UPN, 1998)
Starred: Chi McBride, Dann Florek, Christine Estabrook, Kelly Connell
A sitcom centering on President Lincoln's wise-cracking slave/valet. UPN, of all networks, actually tried to make this racist shit work back in 1998, because slavery is such a great, untapped "sit" and a sharp-witted slave amongst a bumbling white family is rife with so much "com." Was Tyler Perry secretly running UPN during the late '90s? What's next for U.S. comedy, Hitler the family man? We wouldn't put it past them at this point.