I grew up on shows like “All in the Family” “The Odd Couple” “Barney Miller” “Carol Burnett” “Sanford & Son” “Columbo” “Cannon” “Quincy, ME”.
And I’ll tell you one thing, I could stand to look at them way more than I can shows nowadays. If I see another main character that looks like they just stepped out of Vogue or GQ, I will puke. I see these sorts on television, and I automatically think boring and shallow.
I don’t even give shows a chance anymore. Just looking at them makes me want to turn the channel. Now I stick to cartoons and documentaries.
Everyone says how much better television is written these days, and I guess I will never find out because I can’t relate to anyone on the screen. I look normal.
I want to see normal people.
I hear what you’re saying. I saw an episode of Acording to Jim once (yes, I know, According to Jim has been banned by the Geneva Convention as a cruel and unusual form of torture) and Courtney Thorne Smith was wiggling her butt and talking about how fat she was.
Is ‘funny-looking’ a euphemism for ‘ugly’? Or is it more nuanced?
I’m not really tired of looking at pretty or beautiful people, but I am tired of all the fakeness and near-uniformity. I sometimes have trouble telling actors apart, because, apparently, when you appear on TV you’re supposed to fit the mould as well as possible.
Most of the crew on 30 Rock range from funny looking to eh, average. (Not counting the adorable Tina Fey). Someone already mentioned My Name is Earl. The funniest show on tv, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, doesn’t field many lookers. The Office, for sure.
Now that I think about it, it seems that the more average-looking the cast, the funnier the show.
I don’t know. Jim and Pam are both downright attractive, and any character introduced to be a love interest to a not-unattractive character is always quite attractive (Jan, Holly, Karen). Charles Miner isn’t unattractive, and Kelly (the new receptionist) is very attractive. Kelly Kapoor and Angela aren’t unattractive either.
The Office is better than many shows, I guess, but there’s still a blatant bias towards attractive people.
Based on all the shows 2MC mentioned being from the 70s, I’m going to guess ugly means middle-aged, funny-shaped, white “ethnic types” with New York accents dressed in tasteless doubleknit clothing.
I gotta say, I really don’t mind that people on TV are good-looking. It’s nice to look at pretty people, and lots of the pretty people on TV are good actors.
I don’t enjoy bad acting, but there’s no reason to assume that because someone is pretty they are a bad actor. It’s just as much of a bias to see ‘pretty’ and think shallow and stupid. Especially since the writing on a show (which is the most important thing for how enjoyable a show is, IMHO) has little to do with the appearance of the actors.
What I’m sick of is ‘teenagers’ who are thirty. That’s just stupid, and prevents me from watching Gossip Girl (I know, how horrible).
Frankly, I’m sick of all the ugly people on television. If I wanted to see ugly people I’d look out my window.* It seems like, except for a handful of dramas that I don’t watch, “Reality” television has purged just about all the attractive people from TV. It is so much cheaper to hire some random slob or fat ex-celebrity off the street that nobody wants to hire real actors anymore. It’s a good thing all I ever watched was baseball and cartoons anyway.
I see the general public all day. The general public, generally, is not terribly attractive.
Television and movies are a form of escapism. If the characters on the shows (comedies and dramas) I watch are more attractive than the general population, that’s fine with me.
Watch some reality TV. The Biggest Loser, Hell’s Kitchen, Top Chef, even American Idol- there are as many homely/average/unattractive contestants as there are hotties. More, probably.
In my opinion, every woman you mentioned (with the poss. exception of Kelly Kapoor) is more attractive than Pam, and Jan, Karen and Kelly the new character are light years beyond Pam, who while cute, seems to have a lot of men claiming she is a paper goods Goddess of some sort…
I dont see it, especially with the others I mentioned above in the same cast.
The big difference is that in the old days, Jim would not have been married to someone like Courtney Thorne-Smith. He would have been married to someone like Roseanne.
And putting someone like Brad Garrett with Joely Fisher in Til Death? There’s no way I ever bought her as a slobby housewife who had been married to him for 25 years – particularly since she was 41 when the show started.
