"Wings" never got its due at the time -- much like "The Bob Newhart Show" lived in the shadows of "Mary Tyler Moore" and others -- but as I rewatch it now, the writing is consistently smart, laugh-out-loud funny and never seems dated, while the dual always-ending-in-a-coincidence plots on "Seinfeld" seem a little obvious and contrived to me now. The Hackett brothers are a fraternal spin on "The Odd Couple," but Steven Weber's Brian is deceptively good, and Thomas Haden Church's take on the absent-minded "Kramer" type is "Saturday Night Live" to Michael Richards'"Fridays." Helen, Fay, Roy and Antonio are also reliably excellent -- and I swear I'm not just letting the way Tim Daly fills out his chinos cloud my judgment! Netflix is inexplicably missing a few episodes, but be on the lookout for Joe getting the old lady at the video store fired on Christmas, Brian being convinced that Fay is a serial killer and Lowell having to move in with the Hackett brothers when his houseboat is accidentally sunk. "Wings" is a first-class sitcom.
