I think Seinfeld is hilarious. My guess is that it’s one of those shows that was a reaction against the predominant sitcoms of the time, and younger people might not get it because of that. Before Seinfeld, the typical sitcoms in the 80s were mostly family oriented, lesson of the week type shows that always had to include serious / overly sentimental moments. Full House, Fresh Prince, Roseanne, The Cosby Show, Golden Girls, Family Ties, Family Matters, the list goes on. A show about nothing was exactly what was needed at the time.
In order to fully appreciate Seinfeld, you have to be familiar with (a) the characters and their quirks and (b) the series’ backlog, because they’re constantly referencing earlier episodes. If you’re not willing to sit through at least a half dozen episodes, you’re probably never going to find it funny.
(I love the show, my grown daughter hates it.)
My parents tell the story of the two of them going to see Holy Grail and not laughing once. Not long after, when recounting the movie to my mom’s sister (or somebody), they couldn’t finish describing even a single scene without laughing so hard neither could talk anymore.
Joe Pera is, to me, one that you have to be in the right mood for. It’s a very odd, specific place. Sometimes I really like it, sometimes, not.
Monty Python used to be on the local PBS station on Sunday nights when I was growing up. My parents would sit there completely baffled while my brother and sister and I were laughing our asses off. But they thought it was hilarious when we would exchange lines at the dinner table. So maybe they just had trouble understanding the accents.
Despite having lived for a year in the UK, I still don’t understand some of the references in Python sketches. I was clueless as to what the MCC in “The Piranha Brothers” was until a Brit explained it to me.
It’s not a younger thing, because when I speak of love/hate with that show, I mean people of my generation who grew up with it. (I’m 47.) I have no idea if the younguns even know what Seinfeld is.
I work at home, so I have access to these and a lot more as daytime reruns. I liked some of them back in the '80s (I’ll be 68 in January), but I find them completely unwatchable today.
I spent most of the '90s living in Europe, so I wasn’t able to start watching Seinfeld until I moved to Canada in 2011. The only prior exposure I had had to it was a videotape of “The Doll” that a colleague had gotten from her parents in the US.
I didn’t find it funny at all. I know now it was because I knew nothing about George and the realtionships he had with his mother and fiancee.
I’m totally baffled by anyone who thinks Holy Grail isn’t funny. All the Python movies are hilarious, but that one stands out for me as absolutely the greatest. It’s the sort of movie where you’re tempted to describe some of the funniest scenes, but then you get overwhelmed because there are so many that it’s hard to just pick a few.
And a major reason it’s so great is because of that genius of English comedy, John Cleese, who co-wrote and co-starred in the inimitable Fawlty Towers along with his then wife, Connie Booth. I love good sitcoms, and the British ones tend to be the best, but in my opinion Fawlty Towers stands so magnificently above all others that I don’t even include it in my rankings of best sitcoms – it stands alone as a work of genius. I cannot even count how many times I’ve seen the episodes. They are permanently on my tablet so I can pick one and watch it on a whim. I also have the published scripts, and because I’ve seen the episodes so many times, they play in my head when I read the scripts. It just never gets old.
ETA: Holy shit – Connie Booth is 82, Cleese is now 83!
Just watched the trailer for Drinking Buddies. It’s not portrayed as a comedy from what I saw.
No laughs or no jokes? Everything I’ve seen of the Big Bang Theory was painfully unfunny (there actually was a thread here not too long ago about the funniest scenes of all time, most of which I hated), but you definitely know what the writers think are laugh lines.
The group I used to hang around with were all great lovers of Monty Python, but they failed utterly to appreciate Fawlty Towers. I suspect it’s because they had never experienced travelling in the UK and staying at British hotels and B&Bs in particular.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched each episode, and I still laugh at all of them because I recognize the people and situations they’re satirizing.
I can understand how some people don’t get Python humor simply because it’s so bizarre. This applies to Brits as well as other nationalities—I once knew a Scottish woman who thought it was “sick.”
And the granddaddy of them all, Father Knows Best (1954-1960), which was unabashedly moralistic. It was the quintessential and archetypal sitcom featuring the perfect family in the perfect house with a white picket fence. Each week they had a minor challenge which was always happily resolved with a wonderful life lesson learned by all.
Sitcoms like that are probably a large part of the reason that some people would like to go back to life in the 50s. The thing is that even in this idyllic sitcom, one easily finds the kinds of implicit misogyny and racism that were just seen as normal values back then. It’s fascinating to view it through the lens of cultural history.
I also watched the trailer. Despite liking quite a few actors in that film, it really seemed to be about the kind of people I dislike. The characters are making jokes to each other, but I guess it takes more than that for a thing to be a comedy, because I didn’t crack a smile. I can recognize that in their social context they are being funny, but that somehow doesn’t make it broadly funny. Weird.
The first six seasons, where everything was about nerds, science, and cheap sex, were funny. It was when they started being about “relationships” that I stopped watching. Sheldon’s transformation from condescending jerk to sensitive, caring boyfriend was particularly nauseating. I now cannot watch even one episode of the series simply because of the bad taste it left in my mouth.
The thing I remember most about Father Knows Best is that Jim Anderson (Robert Young) was actually kind of a dolt. It was Margaret (Jane Wyatt) who was the more level-headed of the couple.
If I were to pick the sitcom most representative of the '50s, it would be Leave it to Beaver. I would have loved to have had a hardworking WWII vet devoted to his family as my dad, a woman who did housework in a posh frock and pearls as my mom, and a nonabusive older brother to whom I could turn whenever I had a problem.
The series actually underwent a transformation early in its evolution. Jim Anderson actually was a dolt early on, with the title of the series apparently being meant ironically. But he turned into a wise father bestowing wisdom shortly after, and remained so throughout the series.
Says you.
The only episode of FKB I remember in almost its entirety is the one where Kathy becomes Jim Jr’s errand girl in return for him not ratting on her after she broke their dad’s pen. It took Jim Sr forever to realize the boy was blackmailing her!
Yep, I love smutty humor! 
What, you don’t think a nerd coming in his pants while watching a videotape of a panty raid is funny?!?
