Misery Loves Three's Company

 Pity poor, homeless Jack Tripper. Underemployed, he is taken in by a pair of women whose roommate has just left. The catch here is that Jack must live a lie as the only way to remain in the apartment with these newfound friends is to pretend that he is gay, which oddly enough is the only way their dim and mostly intolerant landlord will allow this cohabitation.

When we're talking intolerant, there is no better example of that than Archie Bunker. His wife is on the receiving end of much of his daily abuse, but his new son in law who lives upstairs with his daughter is also a focal point for Archie's rage. Along with anyone who does not conform to his very narrow view of the world. The suffering in this household is epic.

Those wacky surgeons of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital have to endure wave after wave of casualties brought to them by helicopter and packed ambulance as they try to eke out some sort of normal life in the middle of a war zone. The camp's clerk is stunted in his development and continues to sleep with a teddy bear. One of the corporals clings desperately to the idea that pretending to be a drag queen will allow him to be sent home on a psychiatric discharge. Everyone drinks to excess, and the war rages on around them. Comrades are ridiculed and ostracized while others are sent home or killed before they can arrive safely. 

This is the comedy. 

My wife and I watched the trials and tribulations of a Chicago Emergency Room staff for years, hoping for some sort of happy ending. When Nurse Hathaway finally left the Windy City to be reunited with her pediatrician/movie star love, that could have been the end of things. Happily ever after. But not back in the ER. That place kept serving up trauma and defeat on an hourly basis, while the lives of those who work there were subject to as much personal drama as that that crashed through the sliding doors on a gurney. 

We watched every episode. 

Now we are trying to get off the ride that brings wave after wave of rotting corpses back to rip at the flesh of the folks who survived the initial plague. Eleven years later, some of the same crew continues to forge ahead amid the most hopeless imaginable future, searching for a place that won't be overrun by more death and more dead. No matter who leaves to pursue a movie career, the mill keeps grinding. And yet, my wife and I feel compelled to sit on our couch and stare at all that suffering. 

Because somewhere in there, it makes us feel better. My life is considerably better than that of someone being harbored as a closeted gay zombie who is forced to operate on the miserable racists carted into our makeshift tent in the ruins of what used to be Chicago. Over and over again. 

That's entertainment.