has there ever been a sitcom where there was a birth that went according to plan? It seems like the writers write in characters getting pregnant just so they know that they have one guarenteed episode that they don’t have to worry about filling. When Malcolm in the Middle started doing the pregnancy story, the only solace I had left in the show is that I knew they were going to have it go off without a hitch, and not have the whole episode be about the labor and birth, just to show up all the viewers who were expecting a crazy pregnancy story. This show has a history of doing things like this, which is what set it aside from most other sitcoms. Nope - Lois had to have every person she knows show up at her house, have Hal stuck 1000 miles away trying to get home in time for the delivery, the ambulence getting lost so that she can’t get to the hospital, and her son Francis doing the delivery. This was the last episode of the show I ever watched, feeling heartbroken.
The one final laugh they had was not ever saying the gender of the baby until the start of the next season, and naming it Jamie (but it was only spoken, so you could have assumed it was a female Jaime)…which I’m sure drove thousands of watchers batty over the summer. Infact, if you don’t believe that some people could care so much about the gender of a new baby on a television show, I’ll point you to the time when my mom (who was a huge fan of this show as well), called me right after the next season’s premiere ended and said “so it WAS another boy!” to which I said “you still watch that show?”
Another thing I do have to give this show credit for is having the most realistic looking sets since Roseanne. Those were the only two family sitcoms with rooms that looked like a family actually lived in.
I wrote an article for my site on female robots in fiction, and a part of my research I did some Googling and came up with several sites about a robotic woman built by the Air Force who lives with an Air Force shrink in his swinging 50s bachelor pad. Bob Cummings played the doctor, Julie Newmar played AF709, the doll.
Being a 50s show, they could never have dealt with the sexual issues that a female android would have brought up in any natural or direct manner, so the show HAD to have been creepy on a number of levels, too.
The episode that really bugged me was when Carrie wants to try online dating, but confesses she has never been online, and doesn’t know a thing about email! This occurred, when?, 1999? Several years into the internet boom, long after any self-respecting trendy Manhattan writer (who totes around her laptop everywhere she goes) would have been using it. The only plausible reason for this plotline was to flash the AOL logo over and over and over and over…Ugh.
And as for trite sitcom plotlines, how about when – Character A does something nice for The Boss, Then The Boss seems to overlook it, Character B coaxes A to write a nasty letter to The Boss a nasty letter, then The Boss comes through a produces a n overly-generous “thank you” gift, but in the interim character C has mailed the letter! So, Characters A & B must pull off an elaborate scheme to break into the post office/mailroom/Boss’s office in order to retrieve the letter before he reads it!
No, no. Food porn would be footage of people eating. And eating. And eating. With close up shots of the food going into mouths, chewing, and swallowing, and sound effects. “YUM!” “O MY GOD THIS TASTES SO GOOD!” “O! I NEED MORE GRAVY!” YES!" Slurping. Finger-licking. Moisture on chins. That sort of thing.
Back on topic:
I tell you, there are so many stupid sitcom plots I can’t think of a single one. But here are the shows that have the most inane plots in general that I can recall watching:
Who’s the Boss
Full House
The Brady Bunch (still the all-time champ I think)
Three’s Company
Any “doppelganger” episode (a.k.a “prince and pauper” ep.), especially if it invovles children.
You know the kind: Character A meets someone who looks exactly like him, except that he wears glasses! The total strangers who aren’t related but look exactly alike and come up with the brilliant ideo of switching places at home/work/school. Hilarity ensues.
Another one that I hate is the guy is about to drop out of school because he thinks the he’s too dumb. Of course the guy does have one interest in which he’s an expert. Major character tells him that he’s not dumb, it’s just that the teachers have failed to interest him. He says, I can teach you about <subject> in three minutes. and then related the subject to the guys interest through lame analogies. Right at the one minute mark the light bulb goes on. The major character always says, “see, you just learned.” The studio audience goes wild!
Man, I hate Sex and the City although they did wrap it up well. The Carrie character is the most vacuous, narcissistic idiot who ever lived. My wife loves the show so I’ve seen most episodes. I can only take pleasure in mocking Carrie and sticking up for all of the male characters until my wife makes me leave the room.
Well, you’re talking about HARD CORE food porn there … I was talking about SOFT CORE food porn, being the genteel person that I am. you know, photos of luscoius foods all spread out across a page, inviting you to eat them … cherry pies with a wedge pulled out so you can see all that moist, gooey goodness oozing down to the crust … cold beer bottles just dripping with moisture … y’know, kinda like Playboy.
Gooey? Oozing? Dripping? Sounds more like Hustler to me.
I think Playboy’s food mag would show very dry, tasteful shots of delicious mounds of whipped potatoes or hot fudge sundaes shot through a vaseline-coated camera lens.
Yeah, I was just thinking about the Brady Bunch ep like that. Peter meets a new guy at school who looks exactly like him but, yes, wears glasses. So they decide to have twinboy pretend to be Peter at the Brady house and only Alice seems to notice that “Peter” is acting odd. Then of course, they both end up having dates at the same time, both at the Brady’s house, and twinboy is late, so Peter has to keep going back and forth between the front room and family room entertaining both dates.
Naturally of course, the girls are completely forgiving when the truth is revealed and even Mike and Carol let the fraud go with just a frowny look.
And don’t forget that one episode of Three’s Company. You know the one, where one of the roommates - I forget which one - overhears one of the others on the phone and thinks something tremendous and tragic has happened, only to find out at the end it was a complete misunderstanding. Oh, what humor!
I will say, there was one funny bit in The Nanny when Fran ate something (sushi maybe?) that was very spicy and it cleared her sinuses, momentarily lowering her voice an octave.
This doesn’t sound like the Sex and the City I’ve been watching. For one thing, they don’t actually talk about sex that much; the talk is generally about dating and relationships. Charlotte is supposed to be the relative prude of the group, so I’m sure there are examples of her freaking out over the sexual requests of a boyfriend. I remember one episode in which Carrie freaked out that a guy wanted her to pee on him. In another, Miranda was put off by the idea of performing oral sex on a man’s anus. Is it really ridiculously unrealistic that there are sexually active women who aren’t interested in engaging in these sexual practices?
> “Time pornography” – I love this concept. Reminds me of another that I came
> up with – “food porn,” i.e., most cooking shows.
Yeah, but there’s a difference. Cooking shows seem to overtly be about food pornography. They claim to be teaching people to cook well, but I suspect that only a minority of the people watching them ever cook that food. The others, in so far as they do anything about it, go out to eat that sort of food.
A lot of shows are greed pornography. They teach you that you can have everything, owning a lot of stuff that you will probably never conceivably be able to afford. A lot of other shows are just plain pornography, showing you scantily clad women (and occasionally men) hotter than anyone you will ever meet, let alone ever date. These two sorts are pretty overt though.
More subtle are the “fat, dull guys without much money who have hot babe wives and a gang of wacky friends” shows. I can’t come up with a word to describe these, but this is a sort of fantasy too. The time pornography shows are the most subtle though, since they never come close to mentioning what fantasies they are servicing.
