Sitcoms have been around for nearly a century. Shows like I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Friends, The Office, Parks and Rec, It’s Always Sunny, Scrubs, 30 Rock and countless others have entertained audiences on TV for nearly a century. Though with recent trends in awards voting, it seems the typical sitcom has fallen off for more subversive shows in the genre. With shows like The Bear, Hacks, Barry and Atlanta sneaking into the Best Comedy category, it begs the question, can sitcoms just be funny anymore?
#sitcom #emmys #theoffice #thebear #abbottelementary #itsalwayssunnyinphiladelphia
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The biggest issue is writers can't or won't write comedy for an audience anymore.
An infinite number of chimps sitting at an infinite number of typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare but even those chimps couldn’t make THE MESSAGE funny
“Friends” ruined sitcoms.
You spent what felt like two hours talking about your favorite sitcoms…could you make your point a little faster next time?
The consumption of media through streaming has put comedy in a bad place. Comedy works fine when it is episodic and seen once or twice a day. It needs those times between to breathe. Binging comedy shows how many of the setups are overly similar, how many of the jokes are references and callbacks, and how little gets accomplished in the never-evolving characters.
Without a storyline to tie the jokes to comedies become background noise at best.
The day a modern sitcom captures the vibe of something like Laverne & Shirley is the day I can die happy.
I wonder what the impact of shorter seasons has had on how sitcoms are made. When you have a smaller number of episodes to tell your story they probably focus more on those serious topics and there is less room for frivolity. I think this is unfortunate because sometimes you just need some lightheartedness. It likely contributes to the way people often rewatch older series repeatedly.
Yeah, sitcoms will definitely come back. They just need to fall out of vogue for long enough for people to get a little nostalgic about the format. The first time someone does something really clever with it after that, it’ll blow up again. Look at something like “Kevin Can F**k Himself” for a recent example. It’s just a matter of time until audience nostalgia starts to catch up with the creators who are already starting to get creative with the tropes.
Dude was talking about nothing in this
Even as a chef, I don’t find that Bear show funny at all.
They have use the laugh track well again if they want my eyeballs, and not be lazy with it in how they blatantly are now.
I just find myself looping through Friends, HIMYM, Modern Family and The big bang theory because these are the last sitcoms worth watching.
Everything is so plagued with political agendas and "you're not allowed to joke about that" content today.
To be honest, the program was based from the perspective of a privileged white class for the vessel protagonists for the enjoyment of a privileged white class. The classic American sitcom was not based in a place of awareness of any reality outside of that narrow white male coded perspective. That need for pure unadulterated “fun“ is a thinly veiled refusal to engage with the facts I was bladed and qualities and atrocities that so many diverse groups supposedly represented in the sitcoms of year faced.
People (especially in privilege) are simply more concerned with maintaining their comfort and the ease of their entertainment than facing uncomfortable truths. It's a matter of choosing pleasure over ethics, and when you're in a position where the consequences of that choice don't seem to impact you, it's easy to remain
'disengaged'.
White people, in particular, tend to feel much more intense resistance to acknowledging these uncomfy realities because, historically, the systems that benefit them are rooted in exploitation and harm. Engaging with that fact means confronting a much larger web of injustice and complicity; for the weak, it feels too overwhelming to tackle because it threatens to challenge their understanding of their own position in the world.
Your "fun" is merely a form of escapism. It lets you ignore how your consumption is sustaining harmful systems/individuals (AS I TYPE ON MY IPHONE) just because it's easy to turn away doesn't make it any less damaging. The real work lies in actively facing this reality and understanding the ways in which our choices (down to who we support and how we spend our time and money) shapes are world. I believe that people are changing their viewing habits and production companies are changing their productions in line with more meaningful content because just being fun does not work in an evolving and increasingly more aware society.
That's how you ruin an entire genre when your emphasis is squarely on DEI batcrap…
Archie Bunker, everyones favorite bigot!
I was hoping this video would focus more on the issue of comedies not focusing on jokes, but rather feeling compelled to constantly make on-the-nose political commentary. Shows like Brooklyn Nine Nine and Ted Lasso, can be hilariously funny, but they regularly force political commentary ungracefully into the show. Gone are the days when shows like Friends, The Office and Seinfeld could focus on making the audience laugh without feeling the need to preach their views. And when they did cover taboo topics (lesbian wedding in Friends, "Gay Witch Hunt" in The Office, discussion of abortion on Seinfeld), it always felt like an exploration of the theme, rather than simply asserting a position. That's what separates art from propaganda; exploring a theme and allowing the audience to form their own view, rather than telling them what to think.
Why is friends in the thumbnail?💀
Shows in the 70s 80s 90s etc did not use laugh tracks. They were filmed in front of live studio audiences. Big difference.
Dramas and sitcoms are on the same scale after all
Woke killed comedy
What a load of pointless waffling without actually saying anything
More serious themes tend to attract a larger audience but here's the catch. They are simply too negative. The appeal of light-hearted sitcoms is they can boost your mood. I personally would never watch something that doesn't serve this purpose. The more serious and gloomy a show gets I'd hate it more. Just because sth is more successful in grabbing your attention doesn't mean it's good for you.
I’m confused. Your thumbnail says something about sitcoms being funny but Friends is on there.
I'm convinced the American media is just been dumbed down to cater to the dead attention spans of a broad audience. Many tv shows in the U.K and Australia for example are very entertaining and funny (Inbetweeners, Not going out, We can be heroes, British the Office, Fisk etc), but cater to a small audience who enjoy offensive jokes or subjective humor. These shows, depsite being absolute classics in my eyes are taken off the air for American shows which in my opinion (other than Abbott Elementary and the old South Park) are pretty rubbish, but broadly cater to a large audience and therefore make more money.
Trump ruined comedy. It’s hard to laugh at fiction when the man ruling reality is so much more ridiculous.
Also, Hollywood is way too goddamn deep in identity politics. It’s hampering the jokes.
Honestly I think that our societies have simply lost their sense of humour. Everything is an assault.