The problem with modern American comedy

Something that bugs me every time I try to sit down and watch something like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT or 30 ROCK. Why the muzak in the background nearly all the time? Is it meant to be cute or "ironic" or something? Personally it pisses right off. I'm trying to enjoy a gag, and there's this Hammond Organ or lounge piano shit destroying the scene.

Also, what's with the constant hand-held camera/pseudo-doc feel? Why can't this artifice be more invisible?

Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned 21 year old, but this smug brand of comedy really rubs me the wrong way.

I liked the music from ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.



It was actually one element I was concerned about when I heard (a few minutes ago) that the show would be on Netflix instead of Fox. They'd have to do all new music. I guess they would.

Of course, I haven't watched AD in about five years I'd guess.

I've not seen much of 30 ROCK, though I like the hand-held style of AD. It's THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS meets COPS, etc. It fits with the narration style, and the sudden zoom ins can be great... exclamation marks.

I miss the days of good old tv sitcom like Three's Company, Married With Children, Unhappily Ever After, Family Ties, Night Court, Cheers, Happy Days, Friends, etc

not that crap that passes for sitcom nowadays.

the last great sitcom ever to be aired on American TV was Seinfeld and Friends!!

Seinfeld is overrated.

Frasier isn't, though.

Don't disagree.

RE: Arrested Development. I think it's one of the first modern shows, if not the first, to do the faux-documentary thing. I'm desensitized to it because it's used in several shows now, but I think it fits well. It made for a couple pretty funny gags.

Jack Wade wrote:

RE: Arrested Development. I think it's one of the first modern shows, if not the first, to do the faux-documentary thing.

Thanks, didn't know that. I guess that makes sense looking how long it's been around. I dig the humour and Tobias Fünke and all, it's just that faux-documentary thing that's hard for me to get into. Doesn't the music go against, though? It's strange paradox. It's shot like a bad digital documentary and has no laugh track, but at the last time has this cutesy music pasted over it. That's the same with a lot of these modern shows.

Sharky wrote:

Doesn't the music go against, though? It's strange paradox. It's shot like a bad digital documentary and has no laugh track, but at the last time has this cutesy music pasted over it. That's the same with a lot of these modern shows.

Well, Arrested Development isn't really all that conventional in a lot of ways. It also has a narrator, and, next year, will have a seven-year gap between seasons.

I look at Arrested Development differently than I look at, let's say, The Office. The Office's one-camera, faux-documentary style is blatant. I think Arrested Development is in this kind of gray area between sitcom and one-camera faux-documentary. For example, characters don't really break the fourth wall like they do in The Office, even if the narrator kind of does.

I like the new sitcom about the two broke waitresses. Two Broke Girls, I think its called. My sitcom tastes aren't too high-brow.

Everything else is drek, but this decade is really no worse than any other post-60's decade. 99% of sitcoms have been drek. IMHO of course.

Every broke(n) girl I know has found a solution: that's what men are for.

Jack Wade wrote:

Seinfeld is overrated.

Yep. Curb Your Enthusiasm is great, though.

The faux-documentary camerawork is there to give the comedy an of-the-moment vitality and spontaneity.

Jack Wade wrote:

Sharky wrote:

Doesn't the music go against, though? It's strange paradox. It's shot like a bad digital documentary and has no laugh track, but at the last time has this cutesy music pasted over it. That's the same with a lot of these modern shows.

Well, Arrested Development isn't really all that conventional in a lot of ways. It also has a narrator, and, next year, will have a seven-year gap between seasons.

I look at Arrested Development differently than I look at, let's say, The Office. The Office's one-camera, faux-documentary style is blatant. I think Arrested Development is in this kind of gray area between sitcom and one-camera faux-documentary. For example, characters don't really break the fourth wall like they do in The Office, even if the narrator kind of does.

I love THE OFFICE, but haven't really figured out why it is presented in a documentary, one-camera style. It actually raises a lot of questions. For example: you never see any other camera operators at Dunder-Mifflin-Sabre, so how do the camera people manage to get all those reaction shots? How do they manage to cover multiple story-lines taking place at the same time with only one camera? A lot of things are said to the camera in the interviews about other workers, so you would imagine that those workers would watch "The Office" (on whatever network it is airing on) and know what was being said about them and be angry, but none of that ever gets brought up. Or, none of the schemes and lies the characters have told comes back to hurt them. Michael Scott is on camera in "The Golden Ticket" screwing up an order with an enormous discount scheme, then trying to get Dwight to take the hit, yet nobody at corporate watches these episodes as they come on the air and decide to discipline Scott?

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT is its own beast. It can't really be compared to much else, and I think if they had tried to make the show more conventional (with a laugh track, three cameras and a sound-stage set) it would have completely neutered the show. And it was a show that you really needed to see from the beginning to understand the jokes that came later, because many of the jokes were call backs to previous episodes or, you had to actually watch the show to get the visual gags; it wasn't the type of show you could listen to in the background while ironing a shirt, or else you'd miss quite a lot.

Sharky wrote:

Something that bugs me every time I try to sit down and watch something like ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT or 30 ROCK. Why the muzak in the background nearly all the time? Is it meant to be cute or "ironic" or something? Personally it pisses right off. I'm trying to enjoy a gag, and there's this Hammond Organ or lounge piano shit destroying the scene.

I'm with you on this one. I can't stand it when poorly composed music is inserted after every scene, in a desperate attempt to make it quirkier or funnier. It's a lot like prompting the viewer to laugh with a laughing box, except with music.

I'm not a fan of either 30 ROCK or ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. I do enjoy CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, though.

I'd rather watch a sitcom that only features Don Rickles making fun of people.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

Jack Wade wrote:

Seinfeld is overrated.

Yep. Curb Your Enthusiasm is great, though.

Ditto.

Larry David vs Michael J Fox was something else.

Mr. Brown wrote:

I'd rather watch a sitcom that only features Don Rickles making fun of people.

you speak my language. Though it was a running joke on the roasts (or kind of one) that the Master was notorious for the string of failed sitcoms. :)

oh to be as sharp at that age.

Harmsway wrote:

The faux-documentary camerawork is there to give the comedy an of-the-moment vitality and spontaneity.

Well, for me it just comes off as forced and self-conscious. It's the direction getting in the way of the comedy. This is television, not cinema.

There was a great bit in Arrested Development where I believe Michael and Gob were talking about their conversations being recorded, when all of the sudden you see the boom in the shot for like three seconds. It's one of those little things that make the mockumentary style really work on that show in particular.

Under my regime, gigantic screens will be placed in every city and will play Seinfeld 24/7.

All who don't like it will be shot.

Sharky wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

The faux-documentary camerawork is there to give the comedy an of-the-moment vitality and spontaneity.

Well, for me it just comes off as forced and self-conscious. It's the direction getting in the way of the comedy. This is television, not cinema.

I hardly notice it, to be honest.

And I'm not sure it's fair to say it gets in way of the comedy, since it often enables it, allowing the actors great freedom to improvise, allowing for fluid staging.

Harmsway wrote:

And I'm not sure it's fair to say it gets in way of the comedy, since it often enables it, allowing the actors great freedom to improvise, allowing for fluid staging.

And allowing me a headache.

Comedy is subjective, so you can't please everyone.