Dictionary.com defines a sitcom as a situation comedy. Therefore, I will devote this hub to the comedies I think have stood out above all the rest. The ones that make you laugh out loud and the ones you want to watch every time a rerun comes on. The shows with characters you want to be friends with, and the writing you wished you could have come up with. These are the television sitcoms I have always loved and why I think they're so great. In no particular order.

 Seinfeld ran for nine seasons from 1989 to 1998. It featured such well known characters as Jerry, Elaine, Geaorge and Kramer and followed their lives living in New York. The idea for the show was that it was basically a show about nothing. There were no ongoing plot lines so to speak and most episodes dealt with meaningless occurences in day to day life.  Trying to get a loaf of marble rye bread to a dinner party or searching the city for a particular birth control option.

Seinfeld was full of hilarious characters and concepts and there are few of us who don't have a favorite Seinfeld quote...or three.

 Friends is a sitcom about a group of six twenty and thirty - somethings living in New York.  It follows their day to lives, through jobs and relationships, family and fun.  Friends included the memorable characters of Monica, Ross, Rachael, Phoebe, Joey and Chandler.

This show ran for ten seasons, from 1994 to 2004.  Many fans were gained in the process and the hilarious situations this cast found themselves in every week, kept peole watching long after it went off the air.

Roseanne was a comedy about a wife and mother named Roseanne and her slightly disfunctional family. The show ran from 1988 to 1997. This show gave people a glimpse into an area that was becoming quite popular, the reality of family life. Viewers no longer wanted to see the pristine picture perfect worlds of Leave It To Beaver and The Brady Bunch, they wanted something that was more true to thier own lives and Roseanne delivered.

Still on in rerun form, this show has maintained a fan base even now, 12 years after going off the air.

 The Cosby show ran from 1984 to 1992 and centered around the Huxtable family. The head of the Huxtable clan was Cliff, the Dr. father and Claire, the lawyer mom. The show offered a humorous look at the trials they faced with their five children.  The show was ground breaking as well as funny, in that it was one of the first programs on TV to feature an African American family in such a situation.  Never before had the patriarch and matriarch of a black family been a doctor and a lawyer respectively and lived such a prominent lifestyle.  In addition to being wholesome quality family television, it also changed the course of television.

 The Wonder Years ran from 1988 to 1993 and was told through the nostalgic eyes of Kevin Arnold.  The idea of the show was that a grown up Kevin was rememberrring back to his youth and relaying the memories to the audience.  It was a slightly different spin on the sitcoms we were  used to at the time and I will always have fond memories of Kevin, Paul, Wayne and Winnie.

 Another sitcom in which a man is remembering back to his earlier life, HIMYM, is a show that continues to offer hilarious takes on the life of a group of friends. The show began in September of 2005 and continues to crack audiences up every week. Ted, Lilly, Marshall, Robin and Barney are too funny characters living a crazy life in the city. Though still a newbie to the sitcom world, How I Met Your Mother will surely stand the test of time to become one of the best long running sitcoms of our generation.

 This show is a classic in every sense of the word. Lucille Ball has captivated audences for generations and will probably continue to do so for years to come. Scenes from I Love Lucy are emblazoned on the minds of the young and old alike and are forever immortalized in posters, bags, apparal and reruns.  I Love Lucy is still one of the funniest sitcoms ever created and I laugh out loud every time I see an episode.  I challenge anyone not to giggle at least a little while watching Lucy and Ethel cramming chocolates into their mouths at the candy factory, or while listening to Lucy spout off mistake after mistake trying to say Vitametavegamin.

 As one ofthe longest running shows on television today, The Simpsons have surely found a place in the hearts of many.  Who of us hasn't laughed at Bart, Lisa, and Homer, to name a few.  Matt Greoning stumbled upon something good when he introduced The Simpson family on the Tracy Ullman Show in 1987. Since then, The Simpsons have appeared weekly on the Fox network and are watched daily on multiple channels in rerun form.  The Simpsons even became movie stars in 2007 with the feature lenght Simpson's Movie. 

Full of over the top, hilarious characters, this animated sitcom will continue to spark laughter for years to come.

 This one starts to edge out just a little from the sitcom category. While certainly a comedic series, the show also dealt with a lot of drama and action during the Korean War. The series followed a group of army doctors trying to keep civilians and soldiers alike alive.  Hawkeye, Trapper John, BJ Honnicut, Klinger and Frank Burns are just a few of the loveable and fiesty characters.  The series ran from 1972 to 1983 and was based on the movie by the same name.  The movie itself was actually vased on a book by Richard Hooker.  M*A*S*H's finale episode easily became the most watched episode in television history with 105 million views and can still be found in syndication al over the world.

That 70's Show ran from 1998 to 2006 and followed the lives of five Wisconsin teenagers in the 1970's.  This show was hilarious. The characters were fantastic and the story line were always laugh out loud funny.  Fez, Hyde, Jackie, Eric and Donna had many memorable scenes and even Eric's parents Red and Kitty brought more than their share of laughs to the mix.