(Continued...)

But you haven't answered the question. Seriously, as a young boy without the Internet, didn't you sort of draw your X-rated tableau from the sitcoms you watched?

No, I got them more from MTV. I would masturbate to absolutely anything on MTV. I remember masturbating to the Pointer Sisters' video for "Jump," because they showed a little calf. Also, Dance Party USA was my big go-to—it was a poor man's Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Which is really just a poor man's Watching People Dance at an Actual Party. It was on in the afternoon in the '80s. Kelly Ripa was a dancer. And I humiliated myself to that show. I got semen on everything. Sitcoms, you just can't. You know, Winnie Cooper was something unattainable for all of us, and we would never, NEVER, sully her like that.

'The Wonder Years' really was about Winnie Cooper's vagina, wasn't it? "You know what? We were trying to climb in that thing every week"And then at the end she went to Paris, which was basically the symbol that she was about to get some serious exercise ...
You may actually be reading a little bit too much into that show. You need a vacation.

But as for sex and sitcoms, does your character in the show have any sort of Oedipal thing? He's living at home, and he's in his 30s.
For sure, as you will see in episode six.

What happens then?
I'll give you a hint: Katey Sagal guest stars, the mom from Married With Children. Which leads us to Christina Applegate!

There you have it.
I actually compare the show a lot to Married With Children, in that it came out at a time when people had a chip on their shoulder about sitcoms and it sort of broke the sitcom rules while staying true to them. So I think this show has a lot in common with that.

Why do you think the sitcom can be revived when it seems to be in huge trouble on all sides?
Because TV is about escapism. And there's only so much reality show or one-hour drama about a football team set in a low-income town you can take. People like theater whether they know it or not. They like hearing people laugh at something they think is funny. They like a story to be wrapped up in 22 minutes. It has an anesthetizing effect, you know? I don't think TV should make them jittery. And I think that sitcoms own that, while reality shows and one-hour dramas operate under the pretense that they're not escapism. They try to be something else, and all the sitcom wants you to do is laugh and feel good.

But you know, we respect the sitcom form as much as we kind of fear it. On The Winner, we actually told the warm-up guy to tell the audience, "Hey, if you think something scandalous is gonna happen, please don't go 'Ooooh.'" We sort of have to deprogram audiences every week. It's kind of a double-edged sword. We appreciate their laughter, but they are sometimes as programmed as a laugh track.

The laugh track is one of the eerier inventions of our empire. Dead people laughing.
And in that it has sort of programmed real audiences to sound like a laugh track. They hit all the cues. And they laugh just as heartily the third time around as they do the first. By the third take, they're laughing just as hard as they laughed the first time, and I think it's just because they know they have to.

How is The Daily Show audience?
Oh, God. It's all college kids and NPR listeners. They smuggle in The New York Times in their tote bags. The Daily Show audience used to drive me fucking crazy, because they would just applaud at every reference to some right-wing guest being taken down. Or anything slightly to the left of center. They would stand in their chairs, and it would just drive me crazy. The Daily Show, at its best, is not smug. And Jon tells the audience, "Look, tonight Bill O'Reilly is gonna be on, and we know you don't like him, but he is a guest in our house, and you treat him with respect." And Jon absolutely hates it when people will just applaud at anything remotely liberal. It's a knee-jerk audience. It's so easy. But at the same time, I used to peek out from behind the curtains, and the excitement on people's faces, it's giving me chills right now just thinking about it.

You guys became the voice of the people, but you never wanted to be.
I certainly didn't. I'm just a poop joke guy. And I mean that.

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