As regular readers of my little missives here are aware (both of you), I occasionally suffer from bouts of insomnia. There are other occasions, however, when I enjoy them, instead.

The insomnia that's been plaguing me since the beginning of the year has been more severe than usual, and I've given up trying to fight it. As is typical, I find it difficult to do productive work during these bouts, so in the wee hours of the morning I'm now catching up on my backlog of DVDs. These include the first couple of seasons of the new "Battlestar Galactica" television series.

The new incarnation of this series is clearly an effort of my generation to reinterpret the television sci-fi of our parents' generation. And allow me to say that when it comes to sci-fi dramas (like BSG, or Firefly, or Babylon 5, or Heroes) or, for that matter, even mainstream dramas or crime shows (such as Law & Order, or anything by David Kelley or Joss Whedon, and a few seasons of ER), my generation is *so* good when it comes to writing. The dialog, the pacing, the story, the character arcs -- the best of the current and recent crop of shows more than holds its own against the best of the past. The original Star Trek? The Fugitive? The Prisoner? Amateurs. The original Battlestar Galactica was hokey. The new version is a masterpiece.

(At least, so far. The finale of the first season is still fresh on my mind, and it was amazing. I'm almost halfway through season two, and the standards keep improving. Wow.)

Even shoot-em-up serials like "24" have a punch that at the very least matches the best of its predecessors. The tagline for "24" should be: "We've upped our stakes. Up yours."

And yet, as much as my generation has learned about telling a good tale and setting up a good crime scene, we apparently don't know shit about sit-coms. "Frasier" was the last sit-com to have any kind of even half-way decent writing and innovation, but when you get right down to it, the Bill Cosby Show and Cheers (both of which were modeled after previous sit-coms and neither of which were particularly innovative) were the last of the "great" traditional sit-coms.

Why is that? Why can't my generation write a compelling situation comedy? Or, perhaps, why can't my generation produce/finance one that's well written?

My thought for the day: if one wants to make a name as a television writer, re-visit the sit-com. Study up on the classics, like the Dick Van Dyke Show or Bob Newhart or Mary Tyler-Moore, and then open up a can of Generation X Whoop Ass on it. Snark fests are not comedy, and back-talking children are not interesting. Bring on the intelligent, thoughtful, poignant humor like the greats once did, and aim those guns at the twenty-first century.

I'm told that "Arrested Development" started to go down that path (I haven't seen it, yet, but I plan to -- and I worry that it may be a bit on the snarky side), and I'll point out that the writing on Bab5 is what paved the way for the even better writing of Firefly or the new BSG. I'm inclined to think that we're almost there; that my generation is ready for laughter that doesn't come from a can.

What do you think? Am I missing any truly great situation comedy that's being produced today?