Same. Never understood the appeal. The one guy, Joey?, so cringe…
Edit: back to say one thing that it did capture well was what it was like to just hang out with people and not be online all the time.
My face when someone asks if I have watched Game Of Thrones (which hearing about it is the extend of the knowledge I have).
I’m not a fantasy person, but I had a gf who was a HUGE GoT fan. She whined enough to the point I watched it with her.
I still don’t like it.
I like tits and peter dinklage. It checked some boxes for me.
Imagine if Peter Dinklage got implants. You’d be in heaven.
Same experience here, my wife was obsessed with it and badgered me mercilessly until I finally sat down and watched… I lasted about 5 minutes before I welped and slapped both my thighs as I got up to play games
I tried to watch it. Couldn’t do it.
Friends is a funny show. But I’ll say that after season 5, it got progressively less and less funny.
Idk why you’re being downvoted, you’re right. The shows first few seasons were great because the humor felt original and the chemistry between the characters felt organic.
I felt like all of the characters declined. Chandler’s sarcasm became more and more forced. Ross getting divorced again and again got repetitive, I also didn’t like how they handled him having a kid. Joey’s character was lobotomized and he went from being a funny womanizer to being a child in an adult’s body. The girls stayed more consistent, but I felt like Phoebe’s shtick kind of wore off and became annoying. I also hate the ending.
I think the first half of friends is one of the best sitcom products that American TV has produced, but the second half is just mediocre.
Absolutely. I think everyone became one dimensional. And you’re right, they all had great chemistry in the first seasons.
I also don’t know what people are talking about when they call the humor “dated”. I don’t think it’s dated. It’s just that different people find different things funny. I mean, who can forget “PI-VOT” and then “I’d like to return this couch. I’m not completely satisfied with it” - says Ross as he returns a mutual couch, that’s been severed in two
Chandler’s dad is pretty dated
“That man has gone too far. That is too many clothes for one man to wear.”
I haven’t watched friends, but I’m sure Twin Peaks is funnier overall.
Is twin peaks intended to be a comedy?
No. It’s a murder mystery, with a bit of physiological horror.
Sounds hilarious.
That’s me watching any sitcom
Dated a girl who thought it was the best show ever. Shoulda seen the red flags, but I had on rose tinted glasses.
My wife loves it but never watches it any more thankfully. Not a fan personally
My ex wife used to watch the whole thing at least once every couple years. I don’t know how anyone could enjoy that even if they liked it when it was on TV. I was in junior high and high school when it was on, and it was inescapable.
> character says something obnoxious and pauses
> canned laugh track lasts just long enough to not overlap dialog magically
> repeat
Makes me wonder what commonly accepted tropes from today will be laughed at in 10 years.
Is there a trope for “pointing out tropes?”
There should be. People too often act like a trope is always bad, but they exist for a reason. Used properly, they can aid storytelling.
Actually, like most sitcoms of that era, it was filmed in front of a live studio audience, it’s not a canned laugh track. The reason it lasts just long enough to overlap audio is because the actors wait for the laughter to die down before continuing. The whole point of the laughter isn’t to make it funnier to the viewer, it’s so the actors can see how the jokes land and tweak their performance, it’s constant feedback. It’s done for the same reason comedy has an audience even when it is a filmed special.
Hollywood trope: Applause sign. Forced laughter and laugh tracks are definitely real.
Funnily enough, it was filmed in front of a live audience, and it is canned laughter. In the edit, they often replaced the audience’s genuine reactions with stock laughter for various reasons. For example, when Monica popped out from under the sheets with Chandler, the audience shouted for minutes on end, they trimmed that for broadcast.
They had to trim a lot of Kramer’s entrances in Seinfeld because the crowd cheers too much too.
For those that don’t know, Scrubs going without canned laughter was considered a risk which is why they added those silly noises in the first season.
I have never seen that gif before but god do I hate it
My face watching Big Bang Theory
You don’t like watching nerdface performances played for derisive laughter?!
I know nerds who love the show. Well, they’re people who made being a
nerdconsuming pop culture their whole personality. Not terribly great at analyzing said media though.Ungh I had some professor give me a bad grade on a paper for ripping to shreds the portrayal of specific characters (it was entirely appropriate for the class). They were like “maybe you just don’t understand, its supposed to be kinda offensive, but these are great representations of (thing)!”
BBT, turns out, was prof’s favorite show, like you said, their personality.
No. Absolutely no. In fact, quite the opposite of good portrayals. I lost all respect for their opinions or teaching credentials, as both are clearly worthless.
What’s annoying about the ones I know is that they’re holier than thou “woke” types that like to remind you about how problematic your media is, but have huge blind spots for the things they like. How do they not pick up on the issues with BBT?
The fun things about losing respect for one teacher’s credentials is it also casts doubt on every teacher’s credentials. It was pretty depressing to learn that academia is driven more by ego than by knowledge and education.
And you don’t like sexual assault jokes played for the same canned laughter?
But I actually do like that, it just needs to be IT Crowd or Office Space or Silicon Valley or literally anything is fucking better than BBT gah.
I love all 3 of those - any more similar recommendations?
Better off Ted is in the similar vein of Office Space in satirizing big corporations
Hm, only other coming to mind is Mythic Quest, maybe. I don’t think it reaches the same heights of funny but still balances around nerd culture. I also have a sweet spot for Superstore but that might just stem from my time in big box retail.
Superstore just went too long. Fun show mostly.
There’s a difference between made for nerds and nerdface.
You can tell BBT was not made for nerds, because all the supposed nerd in-jokes get trampled into ground in the service of explaining them to normies.
The one episode I saw had them refer to The One Ring as “a Lord of the Rings ring”, and then had them quote the inscription in English rather than the original Black Speech… you can almost hear some dickhead in the writers’ room saying “I don’t think the audience are going to know what that is, you need to make it clear”. You don’t see the IT Crowd explaining to the audience why Windows Vista is bad or what any of the posters in the set mean.
IT crowd did have that one gag where the character said he’s putting this fire with the rest of the fire when that should be a self-explanatory step when sorting out a fire. You have to sort it before you can out it (for any lost non-nerds that somehow ended up in here).
That’s the thing. IT Crowd or Office Space etc, ask youto laugh at the action because they are absurd, not laugh at the people. Thats why TBBT is so bad.
I want to watch IT Crowd but anything with laugh tracks loses me immediately :/
Is there a tool for removing laugh tracks on shows that are good but need to tell you when they did a funny?
Would not recommend. If you’ve seen shows like that with the laugh tracks removed, they’re dreadful. Full of dead pauses while the characters wait between their lines for the laughs to end.
Fun fact: a half hour comedy script is 22 pages (22 minutes of content, after the ad breaks). But a half hour comedy script for a show with laugh tracks is 11 pages, 11 minutes. Literally half the show’s runtime is taken up by laugh tracks.
There’s a sad set of shows from before I got tired of laugh tracks. Sad because they are harder to enjoy now that I understand the laugh track is pretty much just there to dumb down the humour.
Though that could be an interesting remake formula: take some existing show then redo it but without a laugh track or live audience. I hated how live audience shows needed a pause after each main character’s first appearance while the people present did the whole “scream because you see a new celebrity”.
I’m about to blow your mind: the IT Crowd has a live studio audience. One of the specials goes over each cast member and shows bloopers and such, and you can see them in several shots. I believe they also talk briefly about the audience, though it’s been a while. If I remember right, they would take the audience reactions of two takes and sort of merge them together.
I don’t understand the struggle some people have with laugh tracks. You can just use your own judgement and decide for yourself if you find the things funny or not.
Not sure about others, but for me if the comedy is largely unfunny I find the laugh track to reflect an overscaled and nonsensical appreciation of this comedy which is somewhat grating. It makes the whole scene dumber to a varying degree.
On the other hand, if the comedy is good I can very easily overlook a laugh track as it paces the laughter more closely which seems to bother me far less.
[audience murmurs]
The original BBC IT crowdbdidntnhave a laugh track, did it?
Can’t recommend anything I’m afraid. But I will warn - I’ve seen edits that remove the laughing from I think it was Friends? It really ratchets the awkwardness to 200% with all the actors pausing for silence, I’m not sure what’s worse.
Like most British TV comedy series, it was recorded with a live studio audience, rather than a “laugh track” added later - so there’s probably no versions that exist without it.
There’s a chance that it’s a 5:1 mix rather than stereo, and might have the audience on a different channel to the main dialogue - which would then be fairly easily to remove in something like Audacity.
Otherwise your options are turning the sound off and reading text subtitles, or using an “llm-powered” vocal remover.
Not to mention how awkward laugh track comedies usually are when you get rid of the laughter, with everyone just standing in silence for a few seconds any time something funny happens.
That’s why you get about twenty retirees and sit them in front of your tv. Then you tickle them with a feather duster when you want them to laugh, that way you have your own live studio audience. Just remember to press record on the camera you’re filming the tv with
[Laughter]
Oh god, they wouldn’t subtitle that, would they?
Maybe they don’t do that in the UK?
I’ve seen it all the time here in hell (bet you can guess where that is).
Also this gem: “[Dramatic music plays]”
I refuse to watch that shit and know the spin off is garbage because my Maga loving dad loves that show.
I didn’t watch The Big Bang Theory but I’ll recommend Young Sheldon, funny and good story.
Idk why you’re downvoted, reportedly ‘Young Sheldon’ is way better. Partly because it was made without live audience.
Yeah that show sucks too. I never got thru an episode…
ugh I really like that show, it’s one of my comfort shows, and I really like the extended Big Bang Universe. It’s sad the show gets such a bad rap but it’s also not entirely unwarranted. The characters do feel really fleshed out, like they’re actual people who are the result of their life experiences. But if you can’t stand the way that Sheldon is, or the laugh track, or any combination thereof, the show really is impenetrable.
And annoyingly Young Sheldon goes on to be a really amazing prequel, but you need to watch and enjoy BBT first to get the most out of YS.
Honestly I hated BBT for the longest time too. Only a few years ago could I actually get into it.Hating on big bang theory is how you signal your superiority online, it’s the same on lemmy as it was on reddit. Liking big bang (or friends, or…) is for normies, and sheep, and people here are /r/verysmart.
For what it’s worth I also enjoyed it, and sometimes put on a random episode (just like with friends). Haven’t seen young Sheldon tho, I don’t like prequels for some reason (same as better call Saul).
Fair. YS really is to BBT what BCS is to BB. So if you already don’t like BCS then YS is a hard sell.
Do keep an eye out for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe tho. Sci-fi sequel to BBT, sadly weekly episodes but quite enjoyable from the 2 episodes I’ve watched.
friends, big bang theory, two and a half men then you switch the channel to find reskin 3737267 of the same old boring ass police show
stuff like this running all the time is why i stopped watching tv ages ago
OMFG cop procedurals. My parents watched so many of those fucking things that I sarcastically wrote an episode of one. Turns out that Federal Agent With Speaking Role IS Mr. Diddit.
The worst part of Big Bang Theory is how bad it makes you feel when people you know recommend it to you.
“What kind of person do you think I am, exactly? And who do you think this show is for?”
Anytime someone told me I “reminded them of Sheldon” I cut that person out of my life.
God, have I been there.
If this happens to you often, then you might actually be like Sheldon…
It’s happened to me a couple times, I think folks use it instead of the term quirky or autistic because the only thing I share in common is autism. In contrast I am a violent misanthropic redneck who radiates trauma and depression in ambient enough quantities that I can instantly pack bond with veterans and Slavs.
Sounds very…sheldon of you… wonder why they may have made that comparison…
I just assumed they thought that’s what science people are like and meant well.
Just like me watching the office
The UK version, the original, is great. The US version is like stale white bread.
Why wouldn’t I want to come home from my gray cubicle job full of annoying people only to turn on a nice gray cubicle full of annoying people
Yep, I never got the appeal.
Me with American Dad et al. They’re just soul-crushingly mean-spirited.
I mean if you understand that they’re satire, then they can be funny.
That being said American dad past season 9 and Family Guy past season 7 have severely declined in quality to the point where they’re not funny to me anymore.
I’ve noticed that with Family Guy in particular, the writers of that really have it in for women.
Wait, WHAT. I thought the likes of Seth MacFarlane were pretty progressive. But I also live a sheltered life. ELI5 please lol
Louis Griffin in particular is pretty bad, but the female characters are very one dimensional, and often portrayed as being very shallow and annoying, whereas the male characters are much more fleshed out and three dimensional.
I’d bet money Seth Mcfarlane doesn’t have a good relationship with his mother.
Thank you for telling me politely
hey, i liked friends
It’s not for everybody and it’s certainly not nuanced or pointed humor at all, but it’s funny and it holds up.
Some episodes have aged excellently. That one where Phoebe dates a cop, who is definitely giving off white supremacist vibes, and Chandler is going around at every opportunity reminding everyone in absolute terror: “he has a gun!”
pointed humor
Nipples did augment the jokes.
I disagree. I grew up watching reruns and I liked it. Recently I tried watching it, and the jokes did not hold up. I’d argue that Seinfeld and Fraiser held up better. But to each their own.
To me the issue with Seinfeld is Seinfeld himself. He’s just a very bad actor and he sticks out like a sore thumb with the other characters. Watching his deadpan face in every episode kills the mood for me.
Huh. I kind of liked it. I’ve only seen a few episodes, I don’t watch a lot of TV, but Phoebe particularly cracked me up.
Phoebe is without a doubt the best part of FRIENDS. And one of the few characters who didn’t punch down at some point as I recall. I feel like Joey probably comes second there, he’s just horny.
Makes sense for Joey, those two were basically the male/female counterparts as “The goofy one”.
*Horny and hungry
I feel like David Schwimmers physical comedy is under-appreciated. Not saying every part of the show is killer but the man is Mr Bean at various points.
Me watching any sitcom
Maybe it’s just nostalgia talking but I feel the Inbetweeners and Fresh Meat still hold up. The former one especially, if anyone wants to know what it was like growing up as a British teen in the '00s it’s basically 100% accurate.
Rewatching Malcolm in the middle right now and shit is hilarious
It’s a classic in our house. It never disappoints!
Hal’s roller skating dance routine for Malcolm lives rent-free in my head.
I like the episode where Dewey is addicted to cigarettes and Hal relapses on coffee because of it
Dewey smoking 2 packs a day lol
Also Reese outrunning the cops in his retry driving test and driving perfectly to the rules while Sum 41 is blasting then getting beat up by the cops but gets his license
With background laugh
I was subjected to an endless barrage of Full House reruns… My sister was obsessed. Oh god… Oh… Just oh god.
I think sitcoms that don’t rely on laughing tracks (Scrubs, Malcolm, Better Off Ted, etc.) are genuinely funny. Else it’s give lor take. I found HIMYM really funny but not Friends.
