Post by Torgo on Sept 11, 2015 0:47:59 GMT -5
While some would argue that the sitcom is the lowest form of entertainment (a sentiment that I find hard to debate against), such a simplification of the genre kind of misses the point of why it exists in the first place. I made an observation I found interesting once while visiting my mother and step-father, who are big fans of the show The Big Bang Theory. Why? I’m not sure. I always thought its winking references to nerd culture would have alienated people who are not in the crowd (unless they appreciate the series as a mockery of nerd culture). Add in the fact that the show is about a group of unlikeable characters and isn’t very funny in my opinion, as it just kind of drops titles of various forms of cult media and expects these titles alone to get a laugh, and it’s a show that has very little appeal yet gained a huge audience despite itself. This is different than what someone like Kevin Smith would do with his film projects, where he interweaves them with a true-to-life story, or Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which molds them into a unique artistic achievement.
Anyway, the observation I made was about the base of what a sitcom is. It’s something I never would have thought of when I was a high school student but only as a working stiff pushing 30. Imagine coming home from a hard day, dealing with people or whatever bull you put up with during the day. At the end of that day all humor has been drained from you. Maybe nothing will be funny ever again, but at that moment what you need is to kick your feet up and have a laugh. At the end of this day those with the broadest sense of humor will be the easiest to please because in a primetime littered with sitcoms it would delight and put at ease someone’s stress in life.
Perhaps this is why internet nerds often come across as angry as they do, because their elitism in what they find funny means they’re more stressed? Is a cheap laugh the best laugh because it’s the easiest to obtain? Is that why Two-and-a-Half Men lasted as long as it did? (I always wondered about that)
I like sitcoms. Classic sitcoms more than modern. The domestic sitcom has become overdone since its inception back in the day with I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners and has since become a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. I like the sitcoms of the 60s myself. These sitcoms kind of briefly veered away from that father-knows-best and spunky loving housewife family sitcoms. They became creative with premise and had unconventional characters, locations, and stories. We had shows like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, The Addams’ Family, and The Munsters. That’s not to say these shows were safe from repetition. Bewitched in particular, while rich in grace and charm, was pretty much the same plot every week: Samantha’s relative (roulette wheel as to who) shows up and makes a mess, Darrin throws a fit, Samantha cleans it up. But these shows were something new and it’s disappointing that television migrated back to domestic and workplace comedy in the 70s with All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, two great shows but not as aesthetically interesting to me. There have been a few shows that tried to revitalize unconventional setting like Dinosaurs and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which in essence were just copies of The Honeymooners and Bewitched) but not a lot had taken off.
To get straight to the point, I've been thinking about making a thread like this for a while. Just a place for me to jot down random things I think about while watching my classic jolly shows. I thought it might be fun. What finally got me to start this thread? I was shopping at Wal-Mart the other day and came across a complete series set of Gomer Pyle USMC. It was one of those shows I used to enjoy a lot when I was younger but never really considered buying it on DVD until it was right in front of me. It was a good price, $35 for 150 episodes, and I just started thinking of all the great episodes...
Anyway, picked the set up and started going through the discs and remembered why I liked this show when I was a kid. I'd even say I liked it more than the show it spun off from, The Andy Griffith Show. That's not to knock the charm of Andy Griffith, but I always considered that show a dryer form of humor as opposed to the goofball chuckles that Gomer went for. I do enjoy a good comedy that's about bringing chaos to order, and that's what Gomer's show was in spades. It seemed odd to me at first when I found out that they put him in the Marines, but looking at the final result it's the perfect setting for the character, because his personality contrasts it but his earnest enthusiasm and loyalty supports it.
There's a lot of talk about straight men to classic comedians over the years, and the further I get into this series the more I'm convinced that probably the one that gets overlooked is Frank Sutton as Sargent Carter. He's pretty much the perfect character for Gomer to bounce off of, which is something Gomer never got on The Andy Griffith Show. Andy himself pretty much was the straight man to every other person on his own show, which is part of his genius when you think about it. He knew when to step aside and let someone else take the spotlight. With Gomer he kind of just had the attitude of how he was used to him, but didn't quite understand him. Sargent Carter however is an example of a man who will never get used to Gomer nor understand him, yet gives off soft hints that as much as he wishes he could hate Gomer for being so different than his vision for the perfect soldier, there's something about this southern redneck that he likes. Sutton plays all these simultaneous emotions toward this character quite brilliantly, and dances from one to another like an expert.
Between you and me, the more I see Sutton, the more I'm convinced that should there have been a live action Flintstones movie in the 60s, Sutton should have played Fred. I will stand by that statement until the day I die.
But I guess sometimes the show can get monotonous, as that Simpsons clip up there kind of says all it needs to about the show. A little hijinks goes a long way, and sometimes the show repeats certain plots early and often. As of this typing I just finished an early second season episode where Carter is angry at his sister for not marrying a Marine, which brought back odd memories of a first season episode where he was angry at his adopted Asian daughter because she was marrying a Marine. Of course, character wise Carter would probably object no matter who these two might have married (both plots also involved him thinking these two women were romantically interested in Gomer, which probably fueled his fury), so I guess it's not a huge deal. Just plot echoes causing deja vu.
Incidentally it's probably proof that the show wasn't really a comic masterpiece, though I'd say that was probably proven by the clip of The Jim Nabors Hour that was included on the DVDs, which is the show that Nabors and Sutton left Gomer Pyle for in order to create because they wanted to try "something different." If I were to judge The Jim Nabors Hour by this one clip alone (which I might as well since it's all I have), then trying "something different" pretty much just means recreating Gomer and Sargent Carter in different settings, because that's pretty much what the entire clip was. It certainly made it feel like Nabors' only character was Gomer, and having only one character in your arsenal is a very bad thing for a variety show because it misses the point of the format. Sticking with Gomer Pyle USMC for another year or two probably would have been a preferable option because it would have kept their characters in a format that worked better for them.
But on the whole I'm very happy with the purchase, and still have three and a half more seasons to go. And if anybody wants to chime in here about some of their favorite laughs from classic comedies, feel free to do so!
Anyway, the observation I made was about the base of what a sitcom is. It’s something I never would have thought of when I was a high school student but only as a working stiff pushing 30. Imagine coming home from a hard day, dealing with people or whatever bull you put up with during the day. At the end of that day all humor has been drained from you. Maybe nothing will be funny ever again, but at that moment what you need is to kick your feet up and have a laugh. At the end of this day those with the broadest sense of humor will be the easiest to please because in a primetime littered with sitcoms it would delight and put at ease someone’s stress in life.
Perhaps this is why internet nerds often come across as angry as they do, because their elitism in what they find funny means they’re more stressed? Is a cheap laugh the best laugh because it’s the easiest to obtain? Is that why Two-and-a-Half Men lasted as long as it did? (I always wondered about that)
I like sitcoms. Classic sitcoms more than modern. The domestic sitcom has become overdone since its inception back in the day with I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners and has since become a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. I like the sitcoms of the 60s myself. These sitcoms kind of briefly veered away from that father-knows-best and spunky loving housewife family sitcoms. They became creative with premise and had unconventional characters, locations, and stories. We had shows like Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart, The Addams’ Family, and The Munsters. That’s not to say these shows were safe from repetition. Bewitched in particular, while rich in grace and charm, was pretty much the same plot every week: Samantha’s relative (roulette wheel as to who) shows up and makes a mess, Darrin throws a fit, Samantha cleans it up. But these shows were something new and it’s disappointing that television migrated back to domestic and workplace comedy in the 70s with All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, two great shows but not as aesthetically interesting to me. There have been a few shows that tried to revitalize unconventional setting like Dinosaurs and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which in essence were just copies of The Honeymooners and Bewitched) but not a lot had taken off.
To get straight to the point, I've been thinking about making a thread like this for a while. Just a place for me to jot down random things I think about while watching my classic jolly shows. I thought it might be fun. What finally got me to start this thread? I was shopping at Wal-Mart the other day and came across a complete series set of Gomer Pyle USMC. It was one of those shows I used to enjoy a lot when I was younger but never really considered buying it on DVD until it was right in front of me. It was a good price, $35 for 150 episodes, and I just started thinking of all the great episodes...
Anyway, picked the set up and started going through the discs and remembered why I liked this show when I was a kid. I'd even say I liked it more than the show it spun off from, The Andy Griffith Show. That's not to knock the charm of Andy Griffith, but I always considered that show a dryer form of humor as opposed to the goofball chuckles that Gomer went for. I do enjoy a good comedy that's about bringing chaos to order, and that's what Gomer's show was in spades. It seemed odd to me at first when I found out that they put him in the Marines, but looking at the final result it's the perfect setting for the character, because his personality contrasts it but his earnest enthusiasm and loyalty supports it.
There's a lot of talk about straight men to classic comedians over the years, and the further I get into this series the more I'm convinced that probably the one that gets overlooked is Frank Sutton as Sargent Carter. He's pretty much the perfect character for Gomer to bounce off of, which is something Gomer never got on The Andy Griffith Show. Andy himself pretty much was the straight man to every other person on his own show, which is part of his genius when you think about it. He knew when to step aside and let someone else take the spotlight. With Gomer he kind of just had the attitude of how he was used to him, but didn't quite understand him. Sargent Carter however is an example of a man who will never get used to Gomer nor understand him, yet gives off soft hints that as much as he wishes he could hate Gomer for being so different than his vision for the perfect soldier, there's something about this southern redneck that he likes. Sutton plays all these simultaneous emotions toward this character quite brilliantly, and dances from one to another like an expert.
Between you and me, the more I see Sutton, the more I'm convinced that should there have been a live action Flintstones movie in the 60s, Sutton should have played Fred. I will stand by that statement until the day I die.
But I guess sometimes the show can get monotonous, as that Simpsons clip up there kind of says all it needs to about the show. A little hijinks goes a long way, and sometimes the show repeats certain plots early and often. As of this typing I just finished an early second season episode where Carter is angry at his sister for not marrying a Marine, which brought back odd memories of a first season episode where he was angry at his adopted Asian daughter because she was marrying a Marine. Of course, character wise Carter would probably object no matter who these two might have married (both plots also involved him thinking these two women were romantically interested in Gomer, which probably fueled his fury), so I guess it's not a huge deal. Just plot echoes causing deja vu.
Incidentally it's probably proof that the show wasn't really a comic masterpiece, though I'd say that was probably proven by the clip of The Jim Nabors Hour that was included on the DVDs, which is the show that Nabors and Sutton left Gomer Pyle for in order to create because they wanted to try "something different." If I were to judge The Jim Nabors Hour by this one clip alone (which I might as well since it's all I have), then trying "something different" pretty much just means recreating Gomer and Sargent Carter in different settings, because that's pretty much what the entire clip was. It certainly made it feel like Nabors' only character was Gomer, and having only one character in your arsenal is a very bad thing for a variety show because it misses the point of the format. Sticking with Gomer Pyle USMC for another year or two probably would have been a preferable option because it would have kept their characters in a format that worked better for them.
But on the whole I'm very happy with the purchase, and still have three and a half more seasons to go. And if anybody wants to chime in here about some of their favorite laughs from classic comedies, feel free to do so!
