How about Shakespeare? Lots of traditional "gutter" humor are todays "classics" (ie only people with their head in the clouds reads/listens to the damn stuff), for the sole reason that it was popular back in the day.
The Lucille Ball Show was popular back in the day... don't mean to say I'd sit and watch it, though. Listening to that woman's squawky voice made me want to strangle her For the same reason, squawky voices, I'd rather watch Shakespeare's Hamlet or Othello than Lavern and Shirley. Those two I also would like to have strangled the moment they opened their mouths. "Squawk squawk, squawk, squawk"
They may very well have been popular back in the day, but frankly, (and I was in my early 20's when it first went to air here in Oz), I'd rather have watched octogenarian nude tennis. Dropped ball retrieval might have been a shock to the system, but preferable to much of what TV executives/producers deem is entertainment on TV... back then AND nowadays. Most of it is mindless garbage, that if it were converted into pig swill, I'd shoot my pigs to save them the indignity of having to eat it.
I like Futurama because it is really well done. I like South Park for the social commentary. I like Family Guy because of Stewey's quest for world domination. Sadly I rarely (and for the past year never) got to watch any of these shows due to lack of time and/or circumstance... but I do look forward to being able to watch them again at some point.
I feel for you if this is what you look forward to. If these are entertainment highlights in your life, then I think it's tragic, to put it bluntly. Seriously, I find all these 'so-called' adult cartoon shows a complete insult to my intelligence and I have to agree wholeheartedly with Lightstar:
If shows like this were not around, maybe most of the younger adults in this world would not be functioning at the level of a 12 year old as has been noted in many studies. All shows of this type are trash.
When I say regular crucifixion is too good for the creators of this animated drivel purporting to be entertainment, I meant it. The world has been corrupted far too much already. In fact, I've been rather curious about several Chinese tortures I read about. To see them being applied in real time before stringing the guilty up by their gonads would satisfy that curiosity.
As for social commentary, South Park is little more than a social disease. However, if social commentary is what you want, perhaps you could take in documentaries and watch current affairs programmes that deal with the REAL world. As Lightstar alluded to before, various studies indicate that many young adults are not reaching full mental maturity because their brains have been addled by too much inconsequential crap on TV and in the movies. And we wonder why the world is in ruins.
Oh and before anybody tells me to lighten up, it makes my blood boil to see this world going down the shit shute because Hollywood's influence has impacted on society in a negative and derogatory way. The fantasy is incessant, and our young people have difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong, truth and fiction, because the once defining lines have been blurred beyond recognition. Hollywood's quest to go bigger, better, faster, longer, etc, etc, may have taken cinema going into the 22nd century with meaner, nastier special effects, but it also has a downside.
Society has become desensitised thanks to Hollywood, and now there is little that shocks us anymore, meaning that mankind can do meaner, nastier things to itself and hardly anyone bats an eye. And with instant 'entertainment to constantly gratify us, we do not think for ourselves anymore, but more and more do the bidding of those people with the most power and/or influence. Many of those people are the powers in Hollywood, and they need to be brought down several pegs or ten... before their decadence brings civilisation to its knees.
It can't happen?? Yeah, tell that to the Romans... all the other decadent societies that have since fallen by the wayside. There must be restraints, and ours have become fewer and fewer.
