I think you probably would want to distinguish working class comedy from the pastoral comedies like Andy Griffith. Certainly middle class doesn't describe families like The Real McCoys, but I'm not sure these rural shows address the same set of issues that the working class shows do. It seems to me that the pastoral comedies get into rural/urban value conflicts more than the class conflicts/problems we see in shows like Roseanne. David Marc's chapter on the comedy of Paul Henning is informative on this topic. ___________________________________________________________ James Peterson University of Notre Dame [log in to unmask]