Dick van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore Show and the modern sitcoms

Having watched at least partially some older sitcoms like the ones mentioned in the title, besides their old-fashioned charm, it seems obvious (to come back to an older theme, where I discussed the resemblance between older and modern actors) that the jokes and plots are often to be found in the newer sitcoms, like Seinfeld and Friends, aka newer and famous sitcoms.

I suppose it all comes from the old tradition of Borscht Belt entertainment, and that type of humor just gets updated with time. Or that it gets harder and harder to be original nowadays. The modern humor, nevertheless likable, is more a result of a mending process that of a creation process. It figures, since life gets somehow sadder and more monotonous by decade. With all the politically correctness obsession, the tolerance and the "being good and unoffensive" dogmas, the original humor has a hard life in our times...

Examples:  the gag with one character having a bath and the others coming in on his relaxing moment and turning it into an embarrassing, funny one - in MTM season 7 and in Friends; the idea of a character who finally writes down his memoirs/ life  and they actually become the sitcom we are watching - in DvD Show and in Seinfeld; the presence of a witty character which "zings" the other with his sharp and mean observations and who suffers when he must pause this habit - MTM Show (Murray and Ted) and Friends (Chandler and his New Year Resolution). The connections are frequent and punctual. Often one can exclaim: "just like in X or Y series!". They are hard to remember once a lot are gathered, that it why they pass into the "movie world subconscious".

This is a term I made up in order to denominate that area in our thoughts were all the movie experiences, all the empathic impressions we gather from the cinematographic experience, all the preconceptions related to some facial type or other resulting from a certain casting stereotype that we resent from seeing this or that movie gather and form a base we are hardly aware of, but which acts in the way that we suddenly feel attracted of repulsed by some places, ideas or people without having had any real previous experience on which those reactions would be based. We are in fact reacting to a false experience gathered from the cinematographic culture we have been exposed to.