YMMV / Becker

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Take away the laugh track and you have a sad story of a group of Jaded Washouts stuck in a crappy neighborhood, wondering what their lives could’ve been like if they didn’t miss out on their dreams.
  • Averted in Linda's case. She'd have no concept that she'd be considered a washout.
• Anvilicious: Becker, frustrated that the local mental health facility is closing down and flooding his waiting room with mental patients, goes down to the local government office to complain. He finds an old bureaucrat, who says he wants to help Becker with his problem, he really does... but. There's just not enough money in the budget to help him. It turns out the bureaucrat, like Becker himself, wears Jade-Colored Glasses, and believes Humans Are Morons after having spent 42 years within the system:
  "You're not listening! I can't help. Nobody can help. That facility is not going to reopen, and I'll tell you why: there is no money! There's no money because the federal government cut taxes, which is all anybody seems to care about anymore. That means less money for the state, which means less money for the city, which means we had to cut services, which means fewer cops, fewer firemen, bad air, bad water and crappy schools which will turn out yet another generation of voters who are too stupid and greedy to think about anything else besides cutting taxes! So don't you come in here and tell me to fix your problem, because there's not a DAMN THING I CAN DO ABOUT IT!... Where did that come from?"
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bob. So much that he became a main character in Season 3.
  • Linda as well. It might be the hardest role in the series, as the character or her comments are usually the punchline of multiple jokes in every episode.
• Heartwarming Moments: John Becker has plenty, being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Margaret gets most of hers trying to make Becker feel better about himself when he is down.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the second episode, Linda (played by Shawnee Smith) freaks out a patient about to undergo an MRI scan by mentioning a (then fictitious) horror film called Buried Alive. 9 years later, Shawnee Smith's co-star Tobin Bell from Saw would star in the horror film Buried Alive.
  • Also, in "Chris-Mess," Linda is presented as being a loud, but tremendously off-key singer. Her actress, Shawnee Smith, was part of multiple bands, was lead singer for an alternative heavy metal band Fydolla Ho from 2000-04, and then was co-lead singer of the country duo "Smith and Pyle," with Missi Pyle.
• Informed Wrongness: John's miserable reputation leads to him getting hit with this a lot, but "Elder Hostile" was a particularly egregious case. He takes on Jake's grandmother as a patient, and she insists she has a heart murmur even though John cannot detect it. After he repeatedly tells her that she does not have a heart condition, she slaps him across the face. The rest of the episode sees the entire cast making Becker out to be a complete and utter asshole simply because he refused to misdiagnose Mrs. Malinak. The fact that she physically assaulted him in his own office doesn't seem to bother anybody.
• Once Original, Now Common: Becker was about a cantankerous doctor... no, not that one... not that one, either. The character - and show - were eclipsed first by John C. McGinley as Perry Cox in Scrubs, then by Hugh Laurie as Gregory House. It's easy to forget that Becker had a respectable life span of six seasons and was one of the better sitcoms in a lean period after Seinfeld but before Arrested Development, either version of The Office, 30 Rock or Community.
• Replacement Scrappy: Chris Connor in Season 5. She becomes Reggie's replacement as the owner and manager of the diner and Becker's verbal sparring partner and Ship Tease Love Interest. She is little more than a boring Mary Sue who was there to give Becker a girlfriend. She also had no personality, unlike Reggie who was just as flawed and sharp tongued as Becker. Hector Lopez was this to Bob in season 6.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In a season 1 episode, one of Becker's patients is played by John Slattery, who later wound up on Becker writer Matthew Weiner's show Mad Men.
  • To a lesser extent, Shawnee Smith, playing a role the complete opposite of the one she'd become most known for, Amanda Young. The series started airing a couple of years before Smith was cast in the role.
• Seasonal Rot: Season 5 and 6 were not nearly as well received as the previous seasons. Possibly due to Terry Farrell's dismissal in Season 5 and Saverio Guerra's resignation in Season 6. Not to mention Chris Connor and Hector Lopez being their respective Replacement Scrappies.
• So Okay, It's Average: Other than a few one-liners from Bob, the show's humor is fairly dry and sarcastic with little in the way of generating uproarious laughter. There were certainly pieces that could have worked but it never came together. The series is certainly watchable, but it never really rose to the comedic heights of its sister shows, Everybody Loves Raymond and The King of Queens. This no doubt contributed to the series' descent into obscurity in the years since it's gone off the air.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Bob's hobby of sexually harassing women is never met with anything more than snarky rejection, but it's easy to imagine that some of the behaviors he displayed in the show would be met with some legal problems today.
  • When Jake inherits $25,000 from his grandmother's estate, he decides that he wants to use the money to buy a boat. Margaret reads Jake the riot act when he informs her of the decision, and convinces him that it would be wiser to use the money to go to college. However, a college degree doesn't guarantee success, and it could prove to be just as much of a waste of money. Margaret ironically can attest to this, given that she is a brilliant nurse stuck in a dead-end job at a failing practice.
• Values Resonance: The aforementioned Anvilicious scene, as the litany of tax cuts as a solution to everything started facing push-back in 2016, and the one pushed through Congress in December 2017 is facing more opposition than support even after the effects have been felt.