Unofficial Tex Murphy

I apologise in advance here for going into "essay" mode, but this is something which has bugged me for a while.

I've recently been getting into Frasier on DVD, starting with Season 1 and about to start Season 2. I'm really really enjoying it, but the strange thing is, the humour on the show isn't always laugh out loud funny. There's certainly a lot of funny moments which make me laugh, but i'm not doing as much laughing as the audience/laughter track. If the laughter is from an audience, is it queued? It's odd because the constant laughter track makes you feel like the odd one out amongst a large crowd that you seemingly do not fit in with.


I have to say though, along with the humour, what seems to keep me going with the show is the stories and characters that I can relate to. There's some really interesting story arcs operating beneath the main plots, the actors are settling into their roles really well and the dialogue between the characters and situations is believable.

I talk to a few of my friends about Frasier and they don't follow the show as they feel the humour is too archaic and subtle. To an extent, I agree with this. Yes, the humour is subtle and at times predictable. Personally, I experience more laughter with Seinfeld, Becker and Two and a half men. But I still love the show. Plus, the more i'm getting to know the characters, the more I find i'm appreciating the humour. But with the people I know, they seem to think that the show lacks appeal due to its humour because it's not "funny".

If you watch sitcoms, what is it that keeps you watching? Is it just about humour? Am I missing the point of Frasier in not finding all of the material on the show laugh-out-loud funny? And what is funny anyway? For something to be humorous, must it elicit laughter as much as the canned laughter would suggest?

I personally think sitcoms are getting horrible.

This is my opinion...

Back in the golden era of sitcoms: Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, etc. most of the stories were about a group of characters each with unique qualities, but all relatively intelligent in the own right, and you would often have one or two over the top and quite moronic comic relief characters thrown into the mix (Kramer, Bulldog, Joey, etc.). The appeal was the close relation to real life situations, coupled with irony and humor to emphasise the bizarre.

These days to take a look at a lot of the comedies out there: Scrubs, 30 Rock, Arrested development, etc. They have flipped the whole character dynamic around 180 degrees and made the bizarre the norm. Instead of having many relatively smart characters and one or two idiots, you have 50 idiots often surrounding one relatively sane character, who is more often than none only slightly less idiotic than the rest. They get into situations that NOBODY WOULD EVER get into because they are just so ridiculous. It's so called appeal is about making the viewer feel smart by making the characters as ridiculously dumb as possible. I just get frustrated.

What I find funny is the stupid things that can happen to relatively intelligent people... not the stupid things that happen to stupid people, I just want to say "serves you right" in that case, rather than actually laugh.

That's my $0.02

-Cub. =o)

I'm more of a fan of the "All In The Family" or "Married With Children" type of Sitcoms... Though I'm also a fan of shows like "Wings", "George Lopez", King Of Queens, "Home Improvement", etc...

But I do agree with Cub, most of today's Sitcoms are poorly written and unfunny for the most part...
Not to mention a lot of Sitcoms today are pulling unknown and most of the time untalented people off the street to act in them... While you have a few note worthy people here and there, for the most part everyone involved are nobodies... And as Cub said everyone is Stupid doing Stupid things, it's just not funny...

Take Modern Family for example, I'm an Ed O'Neil fan, but just don't find the show funny... Most of the other people are Nobodies for the most part and I find them to be untalented...