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Post by James Fabiano on Feb 13, 2021 11:32:29 GMT -5
I’m a terrible judge since comedy is so subjective. I actually have seen episodes of Small Wonder, What a Dummy and Nick Freno, Licensed Teacher and while I didn’t find them hilarious, I wasn’t exactly looking for torches and pitchforks. On the flip side, how did stuff like Modern Family last so long? I mean, sorry, to me, it’s not funny. Then again, yeah, there’s no reason that something like Heil, Honey, I’m Home should have made air. That, at the end of the day and to the end of time is the correct answer. Scary thing is, with MacFarlane humor and such being so popular, Heil... wouldn't not find an audience now.
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BorneAgain
Fry's dog Seymour
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Post by BorneAgain on Feb 13, 2021 12:09:49 GMT -5
Heil Honey is unique in that even if one fully embraces the tasteless nature of the concept, its still not funny. Its a one sketch premise stretched over an entire episode (and indented for an entire series) while the actors are so cartoonish in their performances that there's no real straight man dynamic for anyone to play off of. Beyond the issue of well, being a show about Hitler, its not really a satire of actual sitcoms, its a shallow parody of what the writers think sitcoms are.
For comparison's sake Wandavision spoofs classic situation comedies, but it works because they actually respect the core media they're parodying and get nuanced comedy (and drama out of it).
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agent817
Fry's dog Seymour
Doesn't Know Whose Ring It Is
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Post by agent817 on Feb 13, 2021 12:34:04 GMT -5
Okay, with 2 Broke Girls having been mentioned, I will note that I binged on that show in mid-to-late-2019. I have this tendency that when I come across a show and if it interests me enough, I will start binging on it. I can defend it to a point. Sure, Kat Dennings has some...nice assets and she can be funny, but for some reason I gained a bit of a crush on Beth Behrs when watching it, especially with her as the straight woman of the two leads. As for anything else, some of the sex jokes went a little too far for even free TV. It was like "How did they get away with that?" The same could be said about Oleg and Sophie, both of whom made some rather dirty jokes in a lot of episodes. There were some genuinely funny moments. For example, Jesse Metcalfe playing one of Max's booty calls who also happened to be a DJ at a Whole Foods. He seemed like he was having fun playing that role.
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Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
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Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Feb 13, 2021 12:53:30 GMT -5
Mrs. Brown's Boys is quite the polarizing show And it's fellow 1970s sitcom reincarnation Citizen Khan Rowan Atkinson and Richard Curtis had more to do with creating Blackadder, Elton came in later. He's great as part of a team, on his own, he's always been kind of eeeeehh, the king of the failed bbc evening sitcom. And yet Upstart Crow is just him and it’s the best thing he’s written in thirty years. It's spectacularly hard to make anything involving David Mitchell not funny.
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Post by Jaws the Shark on Feb 13, 2021 12:53:59 GMT -5
Big Bang Theory is saved thanks in large part to Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco's comedic chemistry with Parsons, a strong supporting cast (Laurie Metcalf as Sheldon's mom was genius), and having actual character development. Howard started as a repulsive creep that we were supposed to like, but they turned his character around after he met Bernadette, and had him acknowledge the piece of shit that he was, and admit that he was ashamed he was ever like that. Seriously, the work they did with Howard was great, and it allowed Simon Helberg to shine. Friends, I gave up watching, tried to watch some clips online, and while some jokes hold up (like "Pivot! Pivot! Pivot!" and Chandler throwing out Stalin as a stage name that Joey should use and Joey running with it), there's a lot that does not hold up at all. I have two main problems with The Big Bang Theory. The first is that it relies on lazy writing and generic "nerd culture" tropes, and because of this, apart from not really thinking it's very funny I find a lot of the characters quite unlikable and annoying. But it's irritating rather than offensive.
Friends actually makes me angry, though, and not just because it was on television all the f***ing time when I was a kid and I never thought it was funny. It's a programme about a bunch of self-absorbed, over-privileged, whiny, vapid, spoilt yuppies with various individual personality defects that make each of them absolutely unbearable, who inexplicably manage to afford this expensive lifestyle despite never going to work. In Seinfeld this was the joke and you were supposed to dislike the characters so you would enjoy their misfortune, but that doesn't happen in Friends. They never really get their comeuppance and the result of their shitty, selfish behaviour is usually a happy ending, with lots of hugging and guzzling expensive coffee and basking in how brilliant and what great Friends they all are. And I feel as if I'm supposed to like and identify with and care about these wankers when what I really want is for them to fall flat on their smug faces.
But clearly lots of people do, and this is part of a larger issue I have with Friends, which is that it became an aspirational programme. I think it contributed to the commodification of urban living, and subsequently the gentrification and luxurification of cities as big capital sought to exploit the kind of aspiration created by things like Friends. City living is now a Veblen consumer product to be sold to people seeking to become the stars of their very own series of Friends, or Sex In The City, or any of the other nauseating rich yuppie love-in sitcoms that polluted television in the nineties and noughties, and the effects of that are massive and serious. So that's why I hate it.
Sorry guys, got a bit heavy there.
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adamclark52
El Dandy
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Post by adamclark52 on Feb 13, 2021 14:05:25 GMT -5
Prob an unpopular opinion that would get me bood out of most rooms but .. Friends Can't stand it, tried watching a few times but forced humor and unlikable characters all around. Even the theme gives me a headache. I only watched like the first three seasons. And that's cause I thought my friends would think I was cool. I still think S1 was the best, and dammit I LIKED the monkey! Coupling on BBC took their formula and improved it, IMO. Then America room their formula and got cancelled after something like three episodes
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adamclark52
El Dandy
I'm one with the Force; the Force is with me
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Post by adamclark52 on Feb 13, 2021 14:09:06 GMT -5
E) all of the above
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Paul
Vegeta
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Post by Paul on Feb 13, 2021 14:16:44 GMT -5
What A Dummy- a family lives with a sentient ventriloquist dummy.
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Post by greyfmdan on Feb 13, 2021 18:17:07 GMT -5
The '90s relaunch of Get Smart with Andy Dick as Maxwell Smart's son. Was planning to post this. I was a big fan of the classic Get Smart, and as a kid I liked the idea of a revival, but looking back, it wasn’t particularly good. Yes. I actually kind of liked it early on, but eventually lost interest & gave up on it. When this was first mentioned, I thought maybe it was a typo and was supposed to be a reference to the early 90s ABC/Nick show Hi Honey, I’m Home—which would probably also be on some people’s lists. (Personally I thought Hi Honey was a cute idea, and looking back it probably was kind of a stupid show, but not offensively so.) But yeah, this show, which I can happily say I’ve never seen, sounds far worse.
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legendkiller1985
Don Corleone
If I'm going to have a past, I'd prefer it to be multiple choice
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Post by legendkiller1985 on Feb 13, 2021 20:02:05 GMT -5
Life With Lucy which ended up being Lucille Ball's last tv project before she died. They tried to create I Love Lucy but Lucy was in her 70's by this point.
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Post by Viking Hall on Feb 14, 2021 10:58:20 GMT -5
Not On Your Nellie: Only ran from 1974 until 1975 but somehow they managed to squeeze three series out of it. In truth, I've only ever watched the first episode but it's absolutely one of the most unfunny 25 minutes I've ever sat through. The premise is that an aging landlord is getting too frail to run his pub and so brings in his daughter to run it for him. Pretty straight forward on paper, absolutely mind boggling in practice though when you consider that the sitcom was a vehicle for the 70 year old Hylda Baker who was actually five years older than her on-screen father John Barrett. This kind of bizarre casting was something a lot of ITV sitcoms of the era suffered with (I'm looking at you On The Buses) but this is probably one of the more egregious examples. The humour is proper lowest common denominator and the main character of Nellie is entirely unlikable making watching beyond episode one a torrid prospect.
Celeb: I also saw Amanda Holden get an earlier mention for Big Top but bad sitcoms is something she already had form for prior to that. Firstly, the truly atrocious Celeb, an incredible 2002 fall from grace for nineties British comedy darling Harry Enfield which was so bad even 12 year old Enfield superfan me couldn't stomach it for more than a couple of episodes. Apparently, the series ran for six episodes in total but has rarely, if ever seen the light of day since. In fact, it's so forgotten that it hasn't even got a Wikipedia entry which is surely the biggest indictment a 21st century television series can receive? Easily the lowest point in Harry Enfield's career.
Mad About Alice: Not to be deterred, Amanda Holden returned a couple of years later with her own comedic vehicle, Mad About Alice. Less disappointing that Celeb due to no one having high hopes for a sitcom starring Holden and lanky TV presenter Jamie Theakston in the first place, Mad About Alice is more just the poster child of how far BBC sitcoms had fallen in the earlier 2000's. There's nothing inherently offensive or bad about it, it's just not funny and wallows along in its own blandness pointlessly. In its defence, it does at least get a Wikipedia entry though.
A Prince Among Men: Did you ever watch Red Dwarf and think, I'd love to see Arnold Rimmer playing an ex-footballer with a dodgy Scouse accent? Well, no, nor did anyone else, but that didn't stop BBC1 producing A Prince Among Men between 1997 and 1998. Chris Barrie was a big deal in the nineties, Red Dwarf had grown from humble beginnings into one of the biggest cult hits of the decade and he had also found mainstream success in the popular Brittas Empire series between '91 and '97 as well. So in hindsight A Prince Among Men probably felt like a can't miss prospect for the BBC and I would imagine they thought they had another hit in the bag when the first series aired in 1997. Well, they didn't. Although it lasted two series (presumably a contractual obligation based off of Barrie's popularity) the sitcom isn't fondly remembered and suffers from the same bland, boring humour a lot of sitcoms from the late nineties and early noughties suffered with. In all honesty, it's probably not even the worst example of the era, but like Celeb, suffers worse than most by wasting the obvious talents of its lead actor who by rights, shouldn't be anywhere near anything this bland, let alone fronting it.
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HonkyTonkMan
AC Slater
This avatar picture features Elvis Presley wearing his Chinese Dragon jumpsuit live on stage in 1974
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Post by HonkyTonkMan on Jan 17, 2024 4:11:25 GMT -5
I legitimately hate all of the sitcoms that I'm about to list. I won't ever understand their appeal or popularity.
Becker
Bosom Buddies
Frasier
Friends
How I Met Your Mother
Laverne & Shirley
Malcolm in the Middle
M*A*S*H
Modern Family
Mr. Mayor
Murphy Brown
Roseanne
Seinfeld
Superstore
The Big Bang Theory
The Conners
Two and a Half Men
Will & Grace
Young Sheldon
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BlackoutCreature
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Post by BlackoutCreature on Jan 17, 2024 8:04:31 GMT -5
I legitimately hate all of the sitcoms that I'm about to list. I won't ever understand their appeal or popularity.Becker
Bosom Buddies
Frasier
Friends
How I Met Your MotherLaverne & ShirleyMalcolm in the MiddleM*A*S*HModern Family
Mr. Mayor
Murphy BrownRoseanneSeinfeld
SuperstoreThe Big Bang TheoryThe ConnersTwo and a Half MenWill & GraceYoung Sheldon You necro'd a three year old dead thread just to complain about hating every sitcom ever?
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Post by thechase on Jan 17, 2024 8:06:08 GMT -5
Woah, what's wrong with M.A.S.H?
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Push R Truth
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Post by Push R Truth on Jan 17, 2024 8:43:14 GMT -5
you can just say "i don't like most sitcoms" and it would have been much easier
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Post by Pgarodactyl on Jan 17, 2024 9:29:12 GMT -5
Ok, I see M*A*S*H listed and am ready for a fight.
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tirtefaa
Unicron
If you wanna know the truth, you gotta dig up Johnny Booth.
Posts: 2,846
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Post by tirtefaa on Jan 17, 2024 9:52:26 GMT -5
Full House is proof that not everything I remember from my childhood was as good as I remember it being. I used to anticipate this show so much as a kid, and years later I catch an episode when I was in my 20's....it was terrible. Beyond terrible. Cheap writing at its finest.
Speaking of cheap writing, that's what I always thought of Two and a Half Men. Sleazy, cringe and just the kind of writing that barely passes a first draft. You look at a classic sitcom like Cheers where they probably revised the script 20 times before it was filmed, in order to tighten up the gag. Two and a Half Men seemed to be the polar opposite of that. Just the bare minimum effort along with an obnoxious laugh track just kills the entire experience.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Jan 17, 2024 11:12:58 GMT -5
I legitimately hate all of the sitcoms that I'm about to list. I won't ever understand their appeal or popularity.Becker
Bosom Buddies
Frasier
Friends
How I Met Your MotherLaverne & ShirleyMalcolm in the MiddleM*A*S*HModern Family
Mr. Mayor
Murphy BrownRoseanneSeinfeld
SuperstoreThe Big Bang TheoryThe ConnersTwo and a Half MenWill & GraceYoung Sheldon You necro'd a three year old dead thread just to complain about hating every sitcom ever? He didn’t say Cheers and it’s telling that Becker was the very first sitcom he listed which is comparatively obscure to some others listed. Almost definitely not the case, but I imagine him turning on CBS on November 2, 1998. After he experiences the first episode of Becker, a grimace washes across his face and he pledges never to enjoy another sitcom.
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tirtefaa
Unicron
If you wanna know the truth, you gotta dig up Johnny Booth.
Posts: 2,846
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Post by tirtefaa on Jan 17, 2024 11:16:11 GMT -5
Well...Becker wasn't that bad.
Kind of funny that Terry Farrell quit DS9 to star in it, only to get canned halfway through the series.
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Post by KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!! on Jan 17, 2024 11:21:59 GMT -5
Well...Becker wasn't that bad. Which makes it weird on a list of beloved sitcoms he hates that’d be the very first he names. It’s just random.
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