Well, nothing is ever 100%, but going back and looking at all the classic comedies and you will see that that is a standard feature for many. Of course others (Andy Griffith Show, Cosby, etc) not so much.
I accept your apology.
…:)
Watching TV this week, I’ve been thinking about what I do and don’t like about various sitcoms a little closer.
I don’t like studio laughter / laugh tracks in most modern scripted entertainment, but I can watch some older shows more easily, and I have less problem with the studio audience on SNL. Part of this might just be that I see older sitcoms as more “period pieces” and accept the laughter as a relic of the times. But, I think a big problem for me is actually just the pacing of the modern 4-camera sitcom.
Something like Parks and Rec or Arrested Development have the luxury of doing lots of little jokes that set up a bigger joke. But when you have a 4-camera show, the laughter means that every joke is of the same importance. After a while, it feels oppressive, there’s very little room to shape the scene.
Also, because they need to have a laugh every X seconds, there’s some jokes they just can’t do. Parks and Rec often has jokes that go <line> <beat> <laugh>. But it isn’t that there’s mugging for the camera or anything in that beat, it’s just the nature of the joke that it takes a second for it to sink in. Certain kinds of straight-man performances demand one or more beats of silence, and the traditional 4-camera show just doesn’t accept that kind of pacing. I think sitcoms from say, the 90s, were more willing to have a little dead air than modern sitcoms are. I’d need to track down some episodes of, say, Frasier or Seinfeld to confirm this theory though.
No kidding. Fawlty Towers anyone?
That’s one of the nice things about the MAS*H DVDs (to name one of my favorite television comedies): The laugh track was now optional.
I think that’s true of nearly all television, not just sitcoms. Hell, watch some of the first few seasons of X-Files and the pacing is absolutely glacial at times compared to modern show pacing. Tons of opportunities taken for pauses, quieter moments, letting scenes play out.
True, even a lot of cinema is like that too. It’s one of the more interesting things in watching remakes. A lot of older movies just had nothing happen for ages.
Not really related to the time frames, but my favorite story about this kind of thing is about when Disney brought My Neighbor Totoro to the US. In the original, Totoro has a lot of long, lingering pans of the scenery, or just establishing shots with, e.g. the sound of cicadas (if you’ve ever been to Japan in summer, it’s a familiar sound, and makes sense for the audience).
But Disney decided that American audiences (children) would get bored and lose interest in those scenes, so they are a number of lines added when you can’t see the characters. Mostly little stuff like kids shouting “Hey dad!”, just to break up the monotony.
I loved MASH when it was on TV (although there are some things about it that really drive me crazy, such as Margaret’s hair always looking like she just left the beauty parlor and how the TV show made Radar a wuss when he was nothing like that in the book/movie). But the show, especially the later seasons, really don’t hold up very well after the years.
Heh. Peacock is kind of badass in that clip.
Yeah, Radar’s “development” over the course of the TV show is oddly backwards. At the outset, he’s enigmatic and kind of shady - conniving three day passes, drinking martinis from the still in the Swamp, and smoking Henry Blake’s cigars with his feet up on the desk in the colonel’s office - and it’s all part of the character, not a plot-related aberration. But he gets more naive and simple as the series progresses. From around season three on, he’s a wuss, as you say, despite the occasional episode written to pad him out a bit.
On the other hand, Hot Lips started out as a one dimensional “regular army clown,” but the show did a pretty good job in fleshing out the character, notwithstanding the jarring and frankly (sorry) unattractive platinum blonde hairdo.
I still like the show. For all the later season faults - earnestness, mawkishness, and a general hardening of the arteries - it tried to do new things.
A very appropriate CNN article on the Big Bang Theory was published today here.
“There could be some resistance, here and there, from people who are living a geeky or nerdy life, who thought we might be making fun of it or trying to emulate it without knowing what we’re talking about,” (the executive producer) said. “But it really does come from a place of love. I’m not a scientist, but I certainly grew up a nerd who was on the outside and didn’t have a lot of friends. A lot of these references come from our personal knowledge.”
I would use this as an example of which this show is just terrible.
Wow, that clip made me wanna stick nails to jumper cables led to a car battery, stick one nail in my eye and the other in my urethra, wrap barbed wire around the two ends of the car battery, and the light the battery on fire.
Brian, I call that Saturday night. Why all the hate for battery sex?
I thought that was funny, yeah it scares me that I get most of the references, and so does my wife (kind of a Penny).
My wife is kind of a nickle. That would be five Penny’s. Just kidding honey I lo…
::OUCH::
It was a jo…
::OUCH::
Stop it!
(LAUGHTER)
This wasn’t meant to sound pleasurable, but hey, whatever blows your pants off…
Fixed, in the spirit of the thread.