What’s with the current generation’s distain for sitcoms?

[Lance Uppercut]

And by that, I mean the classic 3 cam setup with a studio audience.

They always think they’re using canned laughter, and claim they can’t watch the show without “laugh track” “queuing them to laugh”.

I mean, I loved the hd era of shows on tv looking like movies, but I find there’s a place for the classic style of tv shows. Oddly enough, one of the most popular shows, was how I met your mother and that definitely had a laugh track because there was way too much editing, cutaways, flash forwards, and flashbacks to have taped that all live.

[schma]

At 40, I'm not really the current generation, but How I Met Your Mother was probably the last Sitcom I had any interest in. For me the decline kicked in during my teen years when I started to realize that every single sitcom, no matter how different the setups, were just recycling the same tired plots that had featured in sitcoms for decades. The fact that in many cases I could see the embarrassment of a character coming 20 minutes before it happened just made it painful to watch. It was cringe inducing before I'd ever heard that term. I even gave up on big bang theory because they were just as guilty of this. Yeah they had a veneer of smartness because of science and nerd jokes, but that was only a thin layer on top of the same old tired tropes and plots and once I saw through it, I was done.

[Gunhaver]

Sitcoms have struggled to evolve as a format. You can change the outward appearances to appeal to different demographics but the format remains largely the same, and audiences have been trained on it for years. It's tired.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

The genre hasn't evolved as the world has gotten better in some ways, bleaker in others. How do people working two jobs to afford renting a two bedroom flat relate to the latest Friends clone where straight and pretty white people live in huge apartments in massively expensive cities while working one job, or a family with one working adult living in a 6 bedroom house they own? How do you reflect the changes in the makeup of society without being decried as 'Woke' and the actors being subjected to an organised torrent of threats and and abuse?

[Mozenrath]

Seinfeld is getting a lot of love from people on social media who, a lot of them were born after the show was already over. I think the level of irreverence helps it.

In general, though, the issue with launching any new sitcoms is that they are having to try to tap into something sitcoms on syndication aren't already serving. The last one that made any sort of splash was probably Big Bang Theory, and even that is enormously divisive. (I am not a fan of the material, but the cast is probably a big part of why it was successful as they elevate it as much as they humanly can. Their emmys are deserved on that front.)

[hassanchop]

They were already kinda mocked in the 2000s for being formulaic, even the creators of The Simpsons claim one of their impetus for their satire was how "zombie" like sitcoms they grew up were to the point of being unrelatable.

And let's not even get started to the modern trope of "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny.

[Futureraven: Beelzebruv]

Mar 2, 2024 4:53:21 GMT -5 hassanchop said:

They were already kinda mocked in the 2000s for being formulaic, even the creators of The Simpsons claim one of their impetus for their satire was how "zombie" like sitcoms they grew up were to the point of being unrelatable.

And let's not even get started to the modern trope of "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny.

Yeah this isn't a new thing, the late 80s the sitcom was seen as dying or passe. Back then, the solution was to make a Rosanne, a Simpsons, a Married With Children to parody it.

In the 2000s it was to change the format to single camera, so you have The Office, Scrubs etc.

It's just this time, we'll there's no money in TV and the younter generation are into different forms of media so we haven't gotten the new iteration.

Maybe something will come around buy much like game shows it goes through waves.

[A Platypus Rave]

Mar 2, 2024 2:59:58 GMT -5 Lance Uppercut said:

And by that, I mean the classic 3 cam setup with a studio audience.

They always think they’re using canned laughter, and claim they can’t watch the show without “laugh track” “queuing them to laugh”.
.

which is funny most of the ones people complained about didn't use laugh tracks.

[HMARK Center]

Also need to keep in mind that sitcoms were created during the era of there only being three main networks and typically just one TV set per household, so shows were generally created to have as wide a broadcast appeal as humanly possible, which over time could lead to very tired tropes and very "safe" writing, since the point of having wide appeal is to not do anything that scares off potential viewers by being too different or challenging.

Since the 90s, though, first cable got huge and then the internet took off, and now there's entertainment options out there for every taste and sensibility under the sun; the "safer" formats don't have the appeal they once did, though some, like talent/variety shows, some game shows, etc. have evolved their presentation styles enough to not fully fall into that.

[Pooh Carlson]

Mar 2, 2024 2:59:58 GMT -5 Lance Uppercut said:

And by that, I mean the classic 3 cam setup with a studio audience.

They always think they’re using canned laughter, and claim they can’t watch the show without “laugh track” “queuing them to laugh”.

I mean, I loved the hd era of shows on tv looking like movies, but I find there’s a place for the classic style of tv shows. Oddly enough, one of the most popular shows, was how I met your mother and that definitely had a laugh track because there was way too much editing, cutaways, flash forwards, and flashbacks to have taped that all live.

The way HIMYM did it was filming the show with no audience, editing it, then showing the edit to a live audience and recording their laughter.

[Jaws the Shark]

Mar 2, 2024 3:45:54 GMT -5 The Dark Order Inferno said:

The genre hasn't evolved as the world has gotten better in some ways, bleaker in others. How do people working two jobs to afford renting a two bedroom flat relate to the latest Friends clone where straight and pretty white people live in huge apartments in massively expensive cities while working one job, or a family with one working adult living in a 6 bedroom house they own? How do you reflect the changes in the makeup of society without being decried as 'Woke' and the actors being subjected to an organised torrent of threats and and abuse?

Bingo. I wouldn't say there's a disdain for sitcoms, there's a disdain for sitcoms people can't relate to. Going back twenty odd years, The Office or Malcolm In The Middle or whatever weren't great and beloved just because they had good jokes, it was because they were about the mundanities of lower-middle class life and most of us could see something of ourselves and our own lives in them. I don't get that from Friends, or How I Met Your Mother, or the Big Bang Theory, I just see a depiction of a world that I'm not and will never be a part of.

Rewrite the Big Bang Theory with the perpetually broke and struggling neighbour as the protagonist rather than the wealthy, highly educated scientists and you might have an interesting premise there.

[hassanchop]

Mar 2, 2024 8:56:21 GMT -5 Jaws the Shark said:

Mar 2, 2024 3:45:54 GMT -5 The Dark Order Inferno said:

The genre hasn't evolved as the world has gotten better in some ways, bleaker in others. How do people working two jobs to afford renting a two bedroom flat relate to the latest Friends clone where straight and pretty white people live in huge apartments in massively expensive cities while working one job, or a family with one working adult living in a 6 bedroom house they own? How do you reflect the changes in the makeup of society without being decried as 'Woke' and the actors being subjected to an organised torrent of threats and and abuse?

Bingo. I wouldn't say there's a disdain for sitcoms, there's a disdain for sitcoms people can't relate to. Going back twenty odd years, The Office or Malcolm In The Middle or whatever weren't great and beloved just because they had good jokes, it was because they were about the mundanities of lower-middle class life and most of us could see something of ourselves and our own lives in them. I don't get that from Friends, or How I Met Your Mother, or the Big Bang Theory, I just see a depiction of a world that I'm not and will never be a part of.

Rewrite the Big Bang Theory with the perpetually broke and struggling neighbour as the protagonist rather than the wealthy, highly educated scientists and you might have an interesting premise there.

And don't make them "edgy" for no reason thinking it will draw people in. That's another thing they miss the mark. Certain adult shows weren't great because of swearing or gross out stuff or pop culture references, they were great because the jokes were great and well written not because they "deep" man. Don't have to be. To put it bluntly, don't swear for the sake of it, do it because you mean it.