[With] the premiere of [United States] …, it should be clear that a TV breakthrough has occurred worthy of heavy study…. Yet no one seems to be noticing.

On paper, it's a simple proposition. United States is about marriage…. Familiar as it may sound, though, Larry Gelbart has given us a show that violates all the rules of sitcom, a game as rigid as pinochle.

By American TV standards, Gelbart is a radical, a madman, a bomb-thrower. Instead of the usual frantic half-hour punch-punch of jokes, the scripts of United States, by Gelbart and Gary Markowitz, have an altogether different rhythm. The show is a comedy of observations and insights; it looks for involvement, identification and a laugh. There is a lot of dry material leavened by something that used to be called "wit." Genuine wit coming off the screen today is like a foreign language. My ear needed tuning. United States is high octane stuff, very rich.

This is all the more surprising because the Gelbart name is associated with the frantic laughter of M∗A∗S∗H. Yet in his new series Gelbart the agent provocateur has dared to turn off the laugh track…. Television trusts you to laugh at Laurel and Hardy, Marx Brothers or Burt Reynolds movies. But sitcoms in prime time are not allowed to go on without a running signal to inform the audience that something funny has been said. Even M∗A∗S∗H has a laugh track; it always sounds as if hundreds of North Koreans have gathered in the bushes to giggle at Hawkeye and Corporal Klinger. Laugh tracks are hazardous to your health….

United States obviously is trying to save lives. Still, it is unnerving to listen to a comedy without canned guffaws after being conditioned to expect such hollow heartiness. In this show you have to make up your own mind about what's funny. It's scary….

Missing, too, are the trendy graphics and the introductory teases that tell you the whole story before it's acted out. Moreover, the show starts in the middle of a scene—a clever device that gives you the feeling of walking past an open window and overhearing your neighbors talking, forcing you to listen right away. (p. 21)

Most unnerving of all, however, is the fresh handling of the plot and the characters. United States does not have situations; there are no "sits" to go with the "com." As a result, the dialogue is freed from serving the false master of a contrived story. The people speak their minds. Mr. and Mrs. Chapin are not silly and undignified TV folk. They're gutsy and sensitive; they don't disguise their feelings for each other. As with real people, we don't learn all about them at first glance by recognizing their type.

One of their two sons is named Dylan, not a TV name like Joey. The other has problems, and they evolve on screen. The parents do the things real parents do. The father doesn't just lather up, he actually shaves in the bathroom while the Today show drones along on the TV set. The couple even has sex—on one occasion before going to Uncle Charlie's funeral. It's a long way from the Bradys and the Partridges to the Chapins. Like Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman or the twin- or single-bed issue, United States will divide the nation into two camps.

Then there is the absurd title. What kind of curve ball is Gelbart throwing the American people with this double entendre on marriage? Mr. and Mrs. Nielsen won't get it, despite its brilliant subtitle, "The State of Being United." They'll think it's a put-on or a documentary or, worse, a public TV show. (pp. 21-2)

Well, I love it. Of course, Kitman's law is: If a show pleases me, 99 per cent of the American people will hate it. Admittedly, United States is a difficult show for the usual TV audience. You know, the "Mork and Shirley" masses. But for people like us who are as excited by the Nielsen ratings in the papers on Wednesday as we are by the latest English soccer league scores, this is our cup of tea.

I'm not saying you will like the show right off. You may even wonder why it isn't funny. Remember this is not an average American family; it is a California family. The alien nature of the characters is one of the show's few drawbacks. Perhaps, like the movie 10, we have here another example of the complete breakdown in communication between New York and California.

Still, by normal TV standards United States is literature. (Now there's a selling word for you.) Pseudo-literature to be sure. On the other hand, could you find a comedy by [Maxim] Gorky, [Honoré de] Balzac or [Anthony] Trollope peppered with such fine slices of U.S. life as our commercials?

Any new show worth its salt must develop an audience. Offbeat comedy, especially, has to be given the opportunity to find its own voice—and viewers must be given a chance to appreciate it. Unlike movies or theater, TV shows have to grow on you, like hair on your face. Gelbart's M∗A∗S∗H started out slowly, too. The audience had to adapt to its rather unlikely concept. A hospital unit with men dying from ghastly wounds as a source of situation comedy at first seemed about as funny as an open grave. But it caught on. Nowadays new and different shows are canceled before they get a chance to clear their throats.

If United States had been programed more daringly, it would have made more of an impact. On the opening night it should have been given an hour for two episodes, so that we could really get to know Gelbart's family. I would even have rerun the first episode as soon as it ended. Instant replay works in sports, why shouldn't it in comedy? The problem is people don't pay much attention to what's being said in comedy shows. They just monitor them while doing something else. Usually with good reason. I'm not the only viewer who has taken up crocheting and needlepoint, I assure you….

If ever there was a show destined to find its audience the second time around in the summer, like All in the Family, it's United States. (p. 22)