Foothills...epidemic...cyber frontline

Must be serious -- you don't mix this many metaphors under normal circumstances.

Knives out

impoitintix

I'm guessing this is one or more typos, but I am at a loss here. What?

Are they not inside?

Liberals, or the left?

but not the proofreading

The FDA did not give a reason for the toothpaste recall.

Given what we know about this administration, I'd guess that the toothpaste was recalled because it contains fluoride.

It's just german measles

Ah, I see. Because your original comment seemed to confine the question to American media and TV specifically, I thought your interest was more in the mechanics of storytelling in that genre than it was.

Oh, I'm sure my examples weren't the best. This was all off the top of my head.

There are better examples, I think, but they come from shows where the cast was large enough and the plots complex enough that the drama of the show wasn’t as necessarily centered on husband/wife conflict. Many shows aren't like this and in these, if you have a competent partner, most likely you will be a buffoon.

I think that there have always been shows that do this, to some extent. In addition to the Honeymooners, you might include shows like I Love Lucy, Bewitched, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. Shows like these were typically set mainly in the home, rather than following the work life of one of the characters.

I can see why it wasn't the most popular format. New shows need to distinguish themselves from established shows, and setting a new show in yet another American home probably wouldn't do that. Also, a home-based show eventually gets monotonous because of the limited setting, and so these shows can go to ridiculous lengths to break out of that setting (how many times did Lucy scheme to appear in Ricky's club).

I'm all for homemakers having better representation, but I can understand why they are less focused on, which I believe is why they become relegated to sidekick status (which I think is why they often become comedy relief or serve more as plot devices than real characters)

This was assigned reading and the instructor had us guess about the year of publication also. Interesting to me that the question is still being asked, since it was four decades ago when I read it.