Other than a little bit of Seinfield (and South Park if you count that), I can't stand sitcoms. Here are some of my main gripes with the whole genre.
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1. The humor in sitcoms focuses on obnoxiousness rather than real wit or creativity. Basically you're not laughing with the characters, you're laughing at them (if you're laughing at all and not just thinking to yourself "um... what the f-"? was that?).
I could set though an entire episode of Friends or the Gang Bang Theory without laughing once; on the flip side I've laughed more at scenes in films like Pulp Fiction or the Wolf of Wall Street, which aren't even in the comedy genre.
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2. The shows typically feature very weak, wussy male characters (paired up with much stronger and more competent female characters), and often this the case with the romantic couples as well.
Nothing's grosser to me than Ross and Rachael as a couple in Friends, the guy makes Ray Barone look like Vin Diesel in comparison - it's like she's dating her teenage son, or like if Queen Padme and Jar-Jar Binks had become a couple in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. *vomits*
Interestingly this is similar to a theme a lot of cheap porno films have (not that I'd know I'm just sayin' - lol ). You might have a dorky, overweight pizza guy having attractive women fighting over who gets to sleep with him - so I think part of it's trying to appeal to a fantasy that some men with lower self-esteem have (that they can act like a total putz and still magically have hot women lining up to do them). And if this is the male demographic that these shows are catered to, then that's even more reason for me not to watch them.
3. Laugh tracks - I don't need a bunch of scripted laughs "telling me where the funny is". If a show's genuinely funny then why do i need to be told that I"m supposed to laugh? Shouldn't I already be laughing? It seems like a cheap trick if you ask me. If you have some spare time, search for "Friends with no laugh track" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" with no laugh track and tell me what you think.
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Not to be a snob but I really feel that the sitcom genre as a whole (at least circa 90s and ownward) is really the bottom of the barrel as far as comedy goes. Good comedy to me is a good stand-up routine, or even a non-comedy film which features funny actors. Not some old man yelling "Holy Crap!" in every episode accompanied by a laugh track telling you it's supposed to be funny (since you wouldn't even know otherwise).
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1. The humor in sitcoms focuses on obnoxiousness rather than real wit or creativity. Basically you're not laughing with the characters, you're laughing at them (if you're laughing at all and not just thinking to yourself "um... what the f-"? was that?).
I could set though an entire episode of Friends or the Gang Bang Theory without laughing once; on the flip side I've laughed more at scenes in films like Pulp Fiction or the Wolf of Wall Street, which aren't even in the comedy genre.
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2. The shows typically feature very weak, wussy male characters (paired up with much stronger and more competent female characters), and often this the case with the romantic couples as well.
Nothing's grosser to me than Ross and Rachael as a couple in Friends, the guy makes Ray Barone look like Vin Diesel in comparison - it's like she's dating her teenage son, or like if Queen Padme and Jar-Jar Binks had become a couple in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. *vomits*
Interestingly this is similar to a theme a lot of cheap porno films have (not that I'd know I'm just sayin' - lol ). You might have a dorky, overweight pizza guy having attractive women fighting over who gets to sleep with him - so I think part of it's trying to appeal to a fantasy that some men with lower self-esteem have (that they can act like a total putz and still magically have hot women lining up to do them). And if this is the male demographic that these shows are catered to, then that's even more reason for me not to watch them.
3. Laugh tracks - I don't need a bunch of scripted laughs "telling me where the funny is". If a show's genuinely funny then why do i need to be told that I"m supposed to laugh? Shouldn't I already be laughing? It seems like a cheap trick if you ask me. If you have some spare time, search for "Friends with no laugh track" or "Everybody Loves Raymond" with no laugh track and tell me what you think.
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Not to be a snob but I really feel that the sitcom genre as a whole (at least circa 90s and ownward) is really the bottom of the barrel as far as comedy goes. Good comedy to me is a good stand-up routine, or even a non-comedy film which features funny actors. Not some old man yelling "Holy Crap!" in every episode accompanied by a laugh track telling you it's supposed to be funny (since you wouldn't even know otherwise).