I felt that friends and Seinfeld, which were apparently considered two of the best sit-coms ever, were just terrible programs, with lame premises, terrible actors, and poor writing. One only needs to look at the careers of each and every actor associated with these programs to see the lack of real talent here. Of course these shows aren't here to showcase the juggernaut like acting skills of their participants. These people are just tools for a larger scheme.
Sitcoms are strictly vehicles for prime time marketing, nothing more. Twentry or Forty-two miutes of filler banal filler material that exists only to help sell you toothpaste and automobiles. Useing pleasing images and humor to ease people into susceptible moods in order to try and sell something to them has been going on for centuries, and the television is the perfect vehicle for it. Distraction, misinformation, misdirection. After watching Kramer barrel in and fall over and Jason Alexander (the worst actor in the business, hands down) prattle on about some meaningless experience in a cab, people are not thinking about their bank accounts and trying to budget their money, or worse for the marketers, any sort of fear inducing tragedy.
Anyone who has ever read anything about marketing understands that the best way to sell something to anyone, is to make them feel relaxed and at ease, and then create a false sense of need for whatever product they are trying to push. The former is imperitive for the latter to occur. A person who is thinking about the war or about their stack of bills is not going to feel comfortable about deciding whether or not they want to plop down a down payment on a new Volkswagen. I find it interesting to watch one hour of news, and follow it up by watching one hour of sit-coms, and noticing the (very) different trends in what is being marketed during each hour.
While the news is on, you get commercials for:
Medicine
Financial Corporations (Merril Lynch etc)
Other programming on the station
More medicine.
While during the comedy hour you get:
Automobiles
Family Vacation offers (Disney mostly)
Jewelry
Department Store commercials
Of course there is some bleed over, but the commercial strategy does make a shift when you leave the news realm and enter the comedy realm. The big ticket items start to appear while the station is trying to make people forget about their worries and their day at work. I guess they figure mostly older folks and seniors watch the news, because the medication commercials are BRUTAL during the news hour. I can't count how many times I am watching the news, a commercial for Medicant X comes on, and I quickly fire around the prime stations and there is a medical commercial on EVERY station. You will be hard pressed to find this occuring while Raymond and Jerry are goofing around in their apartments. These marketing people are absolutely on their game, and are professionals of the highest skill. The average concumer mind is NO MATCH for these people and their multi-tiered, multi-million dollar ad campaigns. These people ar brilliant, and the sit-com is the most reliable vehicle for the most return out of the public, save maybe the Super-bowl, but I don't know if even that mega-marketing machine can compete with the likes of a show that has any given viewer in front of it five days a week for years, locked into the plodding symbiotic rhythm of recycled slapstick and advertising. This is the real Matrix, the real electronic shackles of society.
Welcome to the desert of the real, and it's only $19.95, with mail in rebate of course.
And before I get a flame about how people can like firends and I why did I post all this nonsense in a thread where people just want to express their opinion. I am just expressing mine. Of course if I wanted to watch friends or any other series, DVD would be the choice, as the marketing is removed. Guess I just felt like spewing some info today.
Check out this article about the marketing rampage that was the Friends finale.
Buzz Marketing
Until next time, I leave you with a simple guide for assertaining whether or not a TV show is worth watching:
Watch a show if:
There is a girl who does karate in it.
Joss Whedon wrote it.
There are cool gadgets in it.
It has purple haired double agents in it.
The truth is out there, but the black oil isn't.
It has cowboys in it, and gunfights.
NEVER watch a show if:
Jason Alexander had anything to do with it.
There is a hospital in it (this does not include army hospitals in Korea, M.A.S.H was actually a well written sitcom, but it was black comedy, and gets special treatment).
A little kid is the star.
Alyssa Milano is in it.