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PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 1:07 am
by CowboySlim
Who are these people: Seinfeld, Fraser, Mork & Mindy, Friends????

Is everybody here a victim of the laugh track? Do you really watch these shows where they think you are too stupid to know when to laugh and they have to cue you?

Does anybody here watch any truly ridiculous entertainment like WW Wrasslin'? Now that's real stuff with a real live audience and real actors - no phony laugh track required. None of this here today - gone tomorrow crap where even the best of the laugh tracked sitcoms only run about four years max before they exhaust the patience of even the dullest of dolts.

Wrasslin's stood the test of time. It's prospered through the first 60 years TV and it is as strong as ever.

Slim
Who fancies himself to be an amateur cultural-sociologist-anthropologist but not an apologist for that which is truly entertaining.

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 1:43 am
by Alejandra
Ian wrote:
eliminator wrote:Seinfeld was a way better show !


Am I the only person in the world that doesn't think Jerry Seinfeld is funny? He's right up there with Raymon on my "overrated comedians" list.


You're not alone on this one. I dislike Seinfeld show very much, I think there were better like Spin City, Wings, and now Two and half men. Also I didn't like Raymond. Also never liked Happy Days, it made me vomit.

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 1:46 am
by Alejandra
BuddhaTB wrote:BTW, what's up with all the huge ass avatars around here lately?


Which one?

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 1:58 am
by pranav81
My cousin likes Friends very much and watches reapeated episodes without fail.He has recorded some CD's which he watches in free time.For me,I HATE it.


::Pranav::

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 2:11 am
by Alejandra
pranav81 wrote:::Pranav::
_________________
Nobody's perfect.


Cindy Crawford is perfect :D

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 2:19 am
by pranav81
Alejandra wrote:
pranav81 wrote:::Pranav::
_________________
Nobody's perfect.


Cindy Crawford is perfect :D



Yeah,I guess I will modify it someday.There ofcourse are exceptions.

I agree,Cindy Crawford IS perfect.


::Pranav::

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 2:33 am
by dodecahedron
another vote for Cindy! :D

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 9:32 am
by socheat
Sadly, I must admit I watch quite a bit of TV. Right now, I think Scrubs is hilarious (Slim, you'll be glad to know that it has no laugh track and not filmed before a live audience). Haven't heard much support for Friends other than "I thought it was ok, but I hate it now", so I'll be bold, go out on a limb, and be the first to admit I'm one of the people who thought Friends was a great show. It was actually my favorite for a while. Like most shows it was much better when it started. As time went on, the writing got worse and worse, but I still thought the shows had its moments. This season however, was absolutely horrible. I think the series was supposed to end at 9 years, but NBC was making so much money off of it, they begged the cast to do another. Now, I completely understand why Seinfeld (which I never really liked much) ended before most people wanted it to.

While in a waiting room a few months ago, I was reading some celeb magazine and they had interviewed the Friends cast. Each cast member talked about what they liked best about their own character's personality. During this last season, those aspects of each character were really, really emphasized and exaggerated. It was as if the actors said "We'll only do this last season if you write our characters the way we want", which obviously made them all one-dimensional, and hard for the writers to write anything decent other than sketch-like comedy.

Kind of like that one South Park episode where Butters tries to come up with an evil plot, and each one he thinks of turns out the Simpsons had done it at one point or another. The writers just cant keep coming up with new stuff after a while, and so they jump the shark. I think Friends jumped the shark a few seasons back... not sure when, but it did. All shows jump the shark eventually (unless they get cancelled), and it usually happens when the talent get even greedier and want more money and control. Or when the network stops seeing it as entertainment and start seeing it as a money machine.

Hell, I haven't watched the Simpsons in a while, but I hear people saying that even that show is going down the drain. Voice talent wanting more money? 12+ years, right? Not surprised.

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 12:24 pm
by jase
lol @ CowboySlim :lol:

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 12:33 pm
by dodecahedron
Socheat:
i agree with most you said.
like i already said, i liked friends (a lot) but for the last 2-3 seasons it's kind of "dried up".
i was honestly surprised when i realized that i was constantly missing the show now on its last season. we just stopped viewing it and hadn't even noticed... :o

PostPosted: Sat May 08, 2004 3:11 pm
by CowboySlim
lol @ CowboySlim


jase,

Now Benny Hill, that was a great show, although it did have a laugh track IIRC. He wrote it, sang in it, danced in it, did it all himself. And it did not lack for the simple minded stupidity of all the TV comedy shows, but I enjoyed it.

Slim

PostPosted: Sun May 09, 2004 2:16 pm
by jase
It's always amused me the way Americans love Benny Hill.

Now I must say that I do find him quite amusing in small doses as well, but ask most Brits about him and he's an embarrassing anachronism (similar to that other 70s British comedy legend Dick Emery), and some have even got it into their heads that he's offensive, sexist and even racist.

Needless to say he's never repeated here...

And yet the USA, the country which invented political correctness, seem to lap his humour up.

BTW I think there were only ever about 35 eps made of the series in the 20 or so years he was on British TV :o

PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 9:27 pm
by Spazmogen
I have to agree with Slim.

Benny Hill was wonderful. I loved the slapping on the old guy's head.

I also used to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus (in re-runs).

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 2:47 am
by dodecahedron
Spazmogen wrote:I also used to watch Monty Python's Flying Circus (in re-runs).

excellent!
i like Brittish comedy much better then American as a whole.
Benny Hill - yuck.

great:
Faulty's Towers
Are You Being Served?
Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister
To The Manor Born
BlackAdder (LOLOLOLOLOL)
just a few i can snatch off the top of my head right now.

more recent shows:
Teachers. excellent ! hillarious!
Coupling.

did This Life qualify as Comedy or Drama? it was excellent too!

I hate:

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:14 pm
by Alejandra
I hate:
King of Queens.
Seignfeld.
The Drew Carey Show.
Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Everybody hates Raymond.
Ally McBeal (first and last season).

No comedy:
La Femme Nikita.

Old ones:
The A-Team.

Maybe other that I don't remember.

Re: I hate:

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:36 pm
by dodecahedron
Alejandra wrote:King of Queens.
Seignfeld.
The Drew Carey Show.
Whose Line Is It Anyway.
Everybody hates Raymond.
Ally McBeal (first and last season).

No comedy:
La Femme Nikita.

Old ones:
The A-Team.

Maybe other that I don't remember.

LOL The A Team - now there's a flashback!

Seinfeld was KING. Drew Carey OK, very funny at times. all the other comdies you mentioned were/are IMO so-so at best.

La Femme Nikita was very good for its time. i watched it avidly. i think i saw all of the chapters (at least once :) ). if there are any i missed, they were very few indeed.

BTW La Femme Nikita was, as i recall, a Canadian show. at least it was producted in Canada.

also BTW, the guys that made 24 Hours are the same ones who made LFN or at least they participated in it. Cochran was an advisor for LFN.

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:46 pm
by dodecahedron
i wonder what percentage of the viewers here saw the A-Team (i mean old enough to have seen the original showings - not reruns).

A-Team (at the time...)
Seinfeld
La Femme Nikita
Thunderbirds
....
it seems we have quite a bit in common, Alejandra! :D

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:58 pm
by Alejandra
Did you saw in my subject "I hate:", maybe I must have putted in the text body, I'll edit it.

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 1:19 pm
by jase
I watched the A-Team first time around (about 1983 wasn't it), I was about 10 at the time. Loved it then, although it looks terrible now lol

Whose Line Is It Anyway... well that used to be a great show, when it was in its original form on Channel 4 UK (late 80s) with Tony Slattery, the great Stephen Fry, Clive Anderson, Josie Lawrence, John Sessions, Paul Merton, Rory Bremner et al (all of which have had creditable careers since), but it seemed to lose its way after it was first taken over to the States. The early shows were extremely funny though :)

Wasn't La Femme Nikita Australian, or have I got that mixed up with something else?

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 1:23 pm
by dodecahedron
:lol: :lol: :lol: LOL
i missed it (the subject line is in very small characters...)

it kind of negates all i was :(

Re: I hate:

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 1:25 pm
by Alejandra
dodecahedron wrote:La Femme Nikita was very good for its time. i watched it avidly. i think i saw all of the chapters (at least once :) ). if there are any i missed, they were very few indeed.


I dont know if there are DVDs for all show seasons, but there are DVDRips season 1 and TVRips for seasons 2 to 5.

Oh, a friend told me that.

dodecahedron wrote:BTW La Femme Nikita was, as i recall, a Canadian show. at least it was producted in Canada.

I didn't know that.

I liked 2 canadian shows (I think they were canadians), one that I don't remember the name, it was about a news TV station. The other was "First Wave" with ex-porn (former?) star Traci Lords, about allien invasion.

PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 1:27 pm
by dodecahedron
jase wrote:I watched the A-Team first time around (about 1983 wasn't it), I was about 10 at the time. Loved it then, although it looks terrible now lol

yeah.

i'm pretty sure LFN was Canadian.

PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2004 1:24 am
by Alejandra
Does anybody like to watch "The O.C."?

PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2004 6:55 pm
by smartin4
I used to love how B.A. Baracus would always say "You ain't gettin' me on no plane", then they would find a way to knock him out for the flight and then he would get mad when he realized how he got to where they were.

PostPosted: Thu May 13, 2004 8:19 pm
by jase
i like Brittish comedy much better then American as a whole.


dodec, did you ever catch League Of Gentlemen? You ain't seen British comedy until you've witnessed that series..... Not for the faint hearted though!

Have to say that there is a lot of dross that calls itself British comedy, but when it clicks, my god does it click :lol: