Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Mike Redmond | News | April 6, 2026
With The Comeback Season 3 now out in the wild, Lisa Kudrow is taking a huge swing at the latest Hollywood scourge: AI writing. However, she’s not stopping there.
In a celebrity-on-celebrity exchange with Lily Tomlin for Interview, Kudrow did not hold back her thoughts on modern sitcoms. To her credit, she readily admits that the issue might be too close to the issue, but she’s not a huge fan of what she’s seeing. The biggest issue? Brace yourselves: Everyone gets offended so easily. Yup, we’re going there.
TOMLIN: Do you think sitcoms are dying or are they just evolving?KUDROW: I wish they were evolving. 30 Rock and Seinfeld and Friends were really funny and really well written. But I’m not drawn to new sitcoms that are multi-camera in front of an audience because I’m not buying it. I don’t know if that’s just because I’ve seen too many single-camera sitcoms—I think we need to get back to being able to tell jokes. I feel like we’ve been too afraid to make jokes that might make people uncomfortable.
TOMLIN: The multi-cameras with an audience, they’re not short on jokes.
KUDROW: Right. But the really good ones, they’re not tame jokes. They’re jokes that are kind of, “I can’t believe you just said that.” Comedy is about surprise. You need things you didn’t see coming.
To prove Kudrow’s point, I’m not touching any of that with a 10-foot pole because I can’t even share links without being accused of misogyny, war crimes, hating Meghan Markle, or secretly being in love with racist women. (OK, there might be smoke there.) The internet sure does suck, but it has let me feed my kids while wearing pajama pants for two decades, so maybe it’s actually awesome?
That said, while I get where Kudrow is coming from, the reality is that the pop culture zeitgeist has changed. I know the bandwagon thing to say is that Friends was never really that funny because of some elements that have not aged well, but folks, the writing is whip-smart. There’s a reason the show was so successful, and it’s because the craft was there. I don’t think that craft has gone away. We’re still seeing it in shows like Always Sunny, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, Ted. The problem is everything is voluminously niche now, and that’s evident by the fact that those are the only modern sitcoms I could think of quickly. There’s too much to stuff to watch!
The competition for eyeballs now includes everything from reality TV to Instagram videos where psychos put mustard on watermelon. Because of that fracturing, network sitcoms have gone the way of the dodo. The only people who watch them are CBS’ target audience: Your parents who’ll be in a nursing room very soon, possibly even tomorrow. And I say that as someone who just used an old-timey saying. “Way of the dodo?” Did I write that while getting excited about a chipmunk outside? Maybe. Did I give it a name? Also, maybe.
It’s neat to look at critters through the window though, right? I should leave him a snack.
