What is the appeal behind this? I don’t understand it.
Examples of shows in this category I would say are:
Curb your Enthusiasm
Breaking Bonnaduce
Seinfeld
The Surreal Life
I don’t get it. Why do we want to watch people who are genuinely horrible people. These shows tend to be about narcissistic people who don’t really care about anyone but themselves. The action is predicated on situations that one would never get into unless they were a raging asshole. Not to say I’ve never gotten into those situations, but I wouldn’t want to watch a show about them.
So what is it about these shows that is appealing? Why do we exalt people who are completely without honor?
Yeah, it’s supposed to be Loser. I never found Woody Allen to be particularly funny. I always thought he was kind of a hack.
Bryan Ekers Not all characters need to be Honourable and Effective all the time, it just seems that there is a class of characters that are just disgustingly vile in a very mundane sort of way. They aren’t compelling and vile like Hilter. They are just the most boring people on the planet, and vile. I don’t see the attraction.
Well…I guess because the world is full of genuinly horrible people? So therefore they’re as good a topic as anyone else? Maybe because we’re all neurotic losers sometimes?
I guess I don’t get the idea that the subjects of art (and I use the term loosely to include sitcoms) have to be likable. But then “Notes From Underground” is one of my favourite books.
Moderator taketh off Official Moderator Hat, and posts as ordinary poster: The comic tradition of the hapless hero is a long-standing one in television, arguably back to Lucy (or even earlier.) That’s the stuff of one form of comedy: people who are ineffectual, or who use bizarre means to get to an end, or exhibit other sorts of neurosis.
As with other traditions, the current era carries it to extreme, even to the point of making the protagonists unlikable. What was clever and innovative a few years ago is trite and repetitive today, so the characters get more so.
But, really and truly, if you met the Lucy character, or any of the other protagonists of that form of TV comedy, would you like them?
Lucy is annoying, which is a different thing from Jerry Seinfeld’s loathsome human persona. I mean sure she’d probably get on my nerves, but she’s a nice person. She’s not someone I hope gets hit by a bus, not to recover in some cleverly comedic fashion about nothing.
I don’t think people on an every day basis are that disgusting. At least not the people I know. Most people I know if they get into those stupid ‘comedic’ situations extract themselves, and don’t try to come up with 50 more lies to get out of it. They apologize for it, they remove themselves from the social grouping for a minute, or any other sort of way to diffuse the situation rather than piling shit upon shit to what’s already a dumb situation.
However, maybe I live in a skewed demographic. I don’t know. Most people I know are pretty honest, and it seems like the plots of those shows are getting caught in one lie, and covering it up with another lie and getting caught with that lie.
I think it’s just a symptom of the fatal illness that’s overtaken the whole sitcom genre. They just aren’t funny anymore and the writers/producers/networks are DESPERATE to save them (because they are so cheap to make) and trying every desperate move they can think of to make them new and “edgy.” It ain’t working.
I watched Curb Your Enthusiasm for the first time the other day, after ordering one of the Season 1 discs from Netflix. I was really looking forward to it.
Well, color me extremely underwhelmed. It was a real disappointment—predictable, painfully silly in places, and without a single laugh-out-loud moment in either of the episodes i saw.
I’ll give it another few episodes, just in case i happened to see two particularly dulkl ones, but if it doesn’t grow on me pretty soon, it’s out of the rotation.
Is it kind of a wish-fulfillment thing? Like mswas says, in real life, we usually solve problems through mundane, decent means. You don’t exactly sympathize with characters in neurotic-loser sitcoms, but you can identify with their urges, and live through them vicariously as they take the selfish route, as they lie instead of taking responsiblity, as they act like spoiled children instead of like proper adults.
I can’t abide the genre, though, so probably I’m just blowin’ smoke.
I think you’ll find all the episodes have six elements in common:
[ul][li]Larry runs into someone who has a completely arbitrary rule or policy, goes on at length about how silly it is.[/li][li]Someone grossly overreacts and heaps oodles of profane abuse on Larry.[/li][li]Larry tells a joke, gets a negative or neutral reaction, continues to harp on the joke.[/li][li]Larry’s solution for a problem comes back to bite him in the ass.[/li][li]Larry’s wife observes an out-of-context moment, Larry falls all over himself trying to explain it.[/li][*]Someone asks Larry to do them a favour which, if Larry is seen doing it, could be embarassing. Larry is seen doing it.[/ul]