I watched one random episode of BBT after it was recommended to me by a few people. That one episode was enough for me to decide that I never want to see that show again, and also that I should disregard all recommendations from the people who said I should watch it.
I watched a scene where someone posted it without the laugh track and it was super cringey. Semi-related note… Taking the laugh track out of BBT ruins it, but taking Garfield out of Garfield comics takes it to a new level, see here -> https://garfieldminusgarfield.net/
You might like the Heathcliffe without Heathcliffe posts right here on Lemmy https://lemmy.world/c/heathcliff
I do prefer the Realfield edits, that replace Garfield with a normal cat.
Gives mire crazy cat guy than mental illness vibes.
Taking the laugh track out of anything ruins it. You are replacing laughter with dead air.
I’d be interested to see an edit of classic sitcoms with laughs (tracks or live), edited to remove both the laugh and the associated pause in the performance.
There would be more cuts than a fight scene from Taken. It would be super distracting.
The laugh track alone is enough evidence
There is a laughtrack in IT Crowd too…
IT Crowd also has a laugh track.
It tends to use it after actual jokes though.
Moss, how many times have I told you to shave those sideburns?!
British humour is infinitely funnier than the laugh track pandering American sitcoms.
The Office would like to have a word with you.
Some particular shows are better as Americans versions, I’ll not deny that.
I haven’t watched either of the Offices, but I have watched the entire American “Shameless” and that was glorious and fitting. The British version I glanced at was really meh. And whilst British comedy in general might be better, good comedy in a bad show is less valuable than mediocre comedy in a good show.
It’s like good food. Good side dishes won’t completely cover for a bad main dish, but if the main dish is really moorish, you won’t care about the side dishes being so-and-so.
Fair point.
do you like to think your username is pronounced “rhee-ri”, or “rhow-eh-reh”. People ask me about the pronunciation of mine sometimes and just made me question how you think yours…?
It’s “Rory,” but I’d never thought it could be pronounced any other way until now. Lol.
I’d imagine yours is pronounced: “Dah-suse”?
“Rory"
Yeah okay that’s a simpler way of writing the latter way, then way I thought it probably would be.
Dah-sus is more or less how I imagined it originally yes. Like the “da” from “da man” as in “the” and the “sus” not from the phenomena a few years ago where everything was “sus”, but from the Finnish word for wolf, “susi”.
I know it’s cringe but it was like 2002 when I came up with it.
And I’ve had friends go “deyh-sus” “deissus”, sort of, and I’m comfortable with it, but it’s not like how I meant it.
Rory… Amy relation? (Pun intended.) (so bad-ass btw)
Love Doctor Who, love Rory, but no. No relation. It’s just a name. Boring, but the truth.
The American version of the office has a visual laugh track, every time a character sideeyes the camera and smirks.
But it isn’t though.
Most humor is funnier than a laugh track sitcom. But humor being regional is … an interesting phenomenon if nothing else. Like yea I enjoyed the hell out of Monty Python as a kid and even now. But ill take the office from Scranton ober the og any day of the week. But I also wouldnt expect peeps from across the pond to feel that way.
Is their anything from that late 90s era early 00s British tv had to compare the chapelle show? Honestly curious, I only have so much knowledge of British humor.
I don’t think laugh track is inherently bad.
But I watched the Big Bang Theory for like the first 3 years, and it just kept devolving into shittier and simpler humour, and like really begging for the laughs with the puns, whereas in Britain it’s genuinely considered somewhat important to keep it organic.
Like unfiltered BBC panel shows are just so much more hilarious than an episode of “hey come share laughs over archaic and super over-blown stereotypes”.
Whatever cheap shit they’ve made over at the BBC is usually funnier than overproduced hyper-supervised multi-writer numbers-pleasing BS. I know that’s subjective, and I won’t die on a hill of “who’s the funniest”, because that’s subjective, but that’s my opinion on it.
It’s interesting when America tries to make British panel shows (like the recent HIGNFY one). The competition aspect and the points, which are only a conceit in the British version, start having importance. They care who wins and it destroys the comedy. The right answer becomes more important than the funny answer.
I would take the notoriously bad American attempt at the IT Crowd over big bang theory any day
big bang theory is about what dumb people think smart people are like.
Yes, it’s a horrible caricature, Henry Cavill is basically the template for most geeks these days.
I wouldn’t say dumb people. It’s a caricature, much like Dennis the Menace is a caricature of small children in a quiet, suburban neighborhood. Only Big Bang Theory wasn’t based on an existing comic. So more like Friends being an unrealistic caricature of a late-20’s/early-30’s group of people living n NYC.
Entertainment doesn’t always have to be authentic.
So more like Friends being an unrealistic caricature of a late-20’s/early-30’s group of people living n NYC.
Actually a pretty good comparison given how awful Friends is.
bbt is blackface
Not true. Blackface can be funny.
This is a charged topic that needs grace and nuance to do right. When blackface is done with the input, support and consent of the black community, it can re-open discussions about how black identities continue to be co-opted by white media.
Tropic Thunder is a great example of blackface as social commentary.
Sarah Silverman did it, too, as…I think a statement on stereotypes? There were levels there but I don’t think they were intentional.
Tropic Thunder had input, support, and consent of the black community?
I don’t believe it was, no. I said what I think should be done, not necessarily how things have been done.
I still think Tropic Thunder did it well, since it’s not making fun of black people, it’s making fun of how out of touch white people can be. I’m basing that off what Brandon T Jackson and other black perofrmers have said about it in the years following its release.
It’s just a dude dressed up like a dude, pretending to be another due.
Anyone down voting you never saw tropic thunder or did and have no sense of humor, probably think big bang theory is banging.
Reddit ass comment
apologies for the pixels, I stole it from reddit
Big bang theory is about nerds.
Also, BBT stayed entertaining for the most part throughout the 8 or so seasons it was on. IT started great and then dropped to “meh”.
Oh look, a dumb person.
Calling a person dumb because they like watching sitcoms is like saying Gordon Ramsey isn’t a chef because he likes fast food burgers.
How can you stay entertaining when you were never entertaining in the first place?
These shows are both for morons who think this is how nerds act.
What? The whole charm of the IT crowd is that it’s pretty spot on for how IT people act with each other. It’s hyperbolic for sure but I felt like it was the most authentic representation of tech people in the media.
i have absolutely been called over to laugh at a circuit board. hell, i’ve done it myself
Someone writing on that show had to have worked IT at some stage.
A lot of things that happened in that show resonated with my IT support experience.
The fucking unplugged pc.
(And the graveyard shift goth)
My old boss called me, said please come to my office… my laptop will not turn on and I cannot figure it out.
I get there, he tells me to please help him, he is probably being stupid.
I look at his laptop, I see his charger plugged in, I follow it down the desk, across the floor all the way to the wall socket where the plug lies…
He had walked the charger’s plug to the wall socket and just left it on the ground.
I plug it in, he sees me do this, laptop turns on, I leave.
I often reference the IT crowd when a colleague is having issues… “Have you tried switching it off and on again”
90% of the time it works, eyes roll, and we all have a laugh
Given there was only one writer, and he knew nothing about computing other than how to turn one on, nope.
I agree; silicon valley also did a great job with this imo.
The Big Bang Theory was frustratingly bad.
is this not comedy gold?!
It got so popular, had occasional Star Trek references, even a cameo by Leonard Nimoy, and I still couldn’t get myself to enjoy it. It’s such a a shame.
I watched a lot of it back in the day and by like season 10 (I have no clue how long it ran) I realized it was super boring and bad. There would be jokes as lame as “dude owns a Nintendo 64”. That was the entirety of the joke.
Also there is a long running arc about a main character who is physically incapable of talking to women unless he is intoxicated (aka alcohol).
At some point the “humour” was just pop culture references.
My grandparents used to watch it. I think it had one (1) funny moment I saw in all the show’s run that I caught when living with them - when Neil DeGrasse Tyson calls up Bill Nye and says “I hear you’ve been talking shit about me”, and Nye immediately hangs up the phone in abject terror.
Their cameos in SGA were funnier. “Way to make all the kiddies cry neil, feel like a big man??”
I saw some clips on YT where they removed the laugh track.
It’s really hard to find the show funny when they take out the bit where it tells you when to laugh.
I watched and enjoyed TBBT, but I don’t rewatch it. I saw one of these videos with the laugh track removed and was honestly surprised at how awkward the show was without it. It didn’t change the fact that I liked it when I watched it though.
It’s mostly awkward because suddenly you have long times of silence normally occupied by the laugh track. If it was intended to be without a laugh track there wouldn’t be awkward silence.
Yeah, I’ve wondered what it’d be like if someone did one of those laugh track removal experiments, but re-edited to remove the quiet parts
This is kinda off topic, but there’s a show called Kevin Can Fuck Himself that plays around with sitcom tropes, wife and I enjoyed it a lot.
I hate laugh tracks.
Fun fact. That show was filmed in front of a studio audience.
Although I don’t know if they augmented the audience with canned laughter in post.
Same with Friends and most shows with laugh tracks
In the beginning it was kinda funny. But it went downhill pretty fast, got super cringe regarding the guys trying to get girlfriends, then the creepiest one of the lot gets one. Just ugh.
Saw a critic call it, “Nerd blackface”
Omfg, that describes it adequately.
Amazing
Blackface is a bit more complicated and disturbing than “pretending to be like a black person for comic effect.” I don’t think it’s appropriate to compare it to to depictions of nerd culture.
It’s what stupid people think smart people sound like. I’ve never been able to watch it, but I remember hearing Sheldon brag about Ubuntu being his favorite Linux distribution? Like, can you imagine someone saying that in a room of Linux nerds?
It’s stupid and disrespectful to geeky people, but it’s not perpetuating harmful and violent narratives.
can you imagine someone saying that in a room of Linux nerds?
Ironically, that would be hilarious.
brag about Ubuntu being his favorite Linux distribution we? Like, can you imagine someone saying that in a room of Linux nerds?
H-hey!
Why???
I think the comment was also made by Sheldon? Sheldon’s character should be the kind of person who chews people out on forums for not reading the Arch Linux wiki, or to launch into the “GNU/Linux” copy pasta reflexively when Linux is brought up.
But that would require them to have more then a surface level understanding of the culture they’re making fun of lol.
perfection.gif
IT crowd is about nerds for nerds. Big Bang theory is about nerds for non nerds. “Nerd blackface” is more succinct though.
I like to say that Big Bang Theory was a stupid show about smart people, and Arrested Development was a smart show about stupid people.
Yes, it’s the “Friends” of it’s era - the comedy is in the laugh-track, I mean studio audience.
watched it, it was okey lol. don’t put too much thinking in it
See also: Community.
Community, IT Crowd, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Scrubs… The 00’s had a lot of great sitcoms. We didn’t know how good we had it.
Community had less than half a season in the '00s, so calling it an '00s show sitcom seems a bit of a stretch.
Oh wow, in my head I pictured it starting around 2006 or so.
Yeah it was easy for me, because I recall that I first watched it in 2013, and binging all 4 seasons that then existed in a pretty quick timeframe. So I knew it had to be pretty close one way or the other. It ended up extremely close to that “less than half of a season”, with 12 out of 25 episodes of season 1 being in 2009.
Probably because of that gas leak
My name is Earl
(Since you’re including things that began barely in the 00’s, I’m going to include things that ended in the 00’s)
Friends
Frasier
Both riddled with laughing tracks. Neither is funny either.
BBT is a show about smart people for dumb people. The IT Crowd is a show about smart people.
While I like IT Crowd it’s unfortunately written by a TERF activist so I will never watch it again. Also explains why there is an episode about a trans woman getting beat up
A man so abhorrent his wife and family wants nothing to do with him.
Goddamnit. Father Ted and Black Books too. I won’t stop watching because shows are made by more than one guy, I just won’t do it in any way that gives him money.
All three of those sitcoms had excellent comedians and writers in the cast, and they don’t deserve to have their work overshadowed by one man’s terrible views.
Yes
Exclamation mark
Yes
Exclamation mark
To whom it may concern… No too formal
Looking forward to hearing from you.
It’s cuz they work as a team. An IT team. Team, team, team. Team players, each and every one.
You think that’s a picture of my family? No! It’s the A-Team!
God I loved that character. Wish he lasted longer, I found his absurdism waaaay funnier than his son’s rape jokes.
What a way to go though.
He was actually a big get to start the show. But only agreed to do the two seasons. But I absolutely would have loved to see where the absurdism went. He had such a dry deadpan delivery that just made it everything he did funny.
do you like saying the word Team, and that picture on your desk, is it of your family?
No. It’s the A-Team.
The jewelry man.
I watched both, and yes.
I watched none, and yes.
Start here
I watched only TBBT, and no.
You should explore your horizon a bit more, it is a great show.
What is it called?
The IT Crowd
Expand*
I did not know The It Crew, going through the first episode and I’m quite liking it.
If someone else is curious: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQxUFrtzYaUmbH4EzI4dxqpQt5Dhu_6Gs
If BBT was made today it would be accused of being written by AI. Fully flanderised characters, and endless filler episodes.
AKA “The Chuck Lorre Special”
