Classic TV comedies

 I wound up watching The Munsters tonight, probably for the first time in 30 years. 

Maybe that's an exaggeration but, then again, maybe not.

If you don't know the story, it was the rather farcical story of Frankenstein's monster and his bride, living with their werewolf son, vampire grandfather, and mortal niece. The idea was to plunk these misfits down in the regular world and let chaos ensue.

The show ran for two seasons on CBS, from 1964-1966. There were only 70 episodes and they've run in syndication ever since.

I watched part of maybe three episodes tonight and there were a few legitimate belly laughs to be had, but it led to a larger discussion about the shows that we watched in reruns along with new episodes.

For us, it was true classics: I Love Lucy and All in the Family and M*A*S*H and The Honeymooners and so on.

But there was also Sanford and Son and Good Times and Welcome Back, Kotter and Happy Days and Three's Company and Mary Tyler Moore and Cheers and Seinfeld.

And, of course, in my house, you couldn't get past The Addams Family (snap! snap!). It was a good show, of course, but when your last name is the same (just spelled differently) it became a bit of an albatross.

I had that damn theme song sang to me a lot.

Obviously, I'm just touching the surface of the comedies that I grew up with (Seinfield being later, of course).

This isn't an attempt to rank anything or create an inclusive list. Furthermore, there's no effort here to dump on any shows.

All of that can happen in other posts, I guess.

No, this is a straightforward effort to name some of the comedies that have come through my life. The latter-day ones for me were things like Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory and The Office.

I realize there are a lot of shows I didn't name, and maybe I did some of that with the purpose of having you -- the great readers -- name some other shows to further this conversation.

So, have at it.