My thoughts exactly. My wife is a teacher, so I was hoping for the same thing because I hear all her stories. When that first episode started with the golf ball thing, it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen.
As always, the television show about teaching is almost, but not quite, completely unlike teaching. The problem is, they require that you forget that in order to find most of the jokes in any way funny.
It seemed rather bland, but I’ll give it a few more tries. Some good sitcoms started out slow.
Yep, the exact reason I watched the first episode. And the last one I’ll watch. Guess I’ll go back to my Coupling DVDs…
The part that bugged me the most is that Jerry always seems to have plenty of cash available. He is able to lend Elaine $5K for the apartment, he buys his parents a Cadillac, he owns a Saab, he has $1500 in his pocket in the laundry bag…Perhaps he is independently wealthy from something else; otherwise how can a stand-up comic be that flush?? /hijack
Well remember he’s Jerry Seinfeld in the show not schlubby unknown comic (not THE unknown comic though). This is Jerry PRE-tv show but Seinfeld was still a pretty promient stand up at the time. I remember a lot of episodes at least mentioning that he had just gotten back from a tour or was leaving on a tour. A lot of the stand ups I know (who aren’t even near Seinfeld notoriety) go through periods where they are really flush (post tours) and then dry spots where they are struggling.
Oh and “Teachers” was painful to watch. Painful. I couldn’t even make it through the teaser.
If I want funny classroom antics I’ll watch old episodes or Drexel’s Class or Head of the Class… or even Welcome Back Kotter.
I just read a biography of Seinfeld and the show itself.
He was making up to $50,000 a WEEK before the show.
When I am queen all sitcoms will be filmed in mockumentary or reminiscence form to prevent disasters like this from happening. When is The Office coming back?
Actually, when I said “laugh track” in the posts above, I was referring to the studio audience laughter. I’m pretty certain sitcoms don’t use artificial laugh tracks anymore.
Just because there’s a studio audience doesn’t mean it’s not artificial.
Shows “sweeten” audience laughter with canned laughter. It’s obvious when they do it.
It’s based on the UK version. Of course, we all saw what happened with Coupling. I’m guessing The Office was a fluke.
I turn it on for Sarah Alexander (call me crazy, but has her accent gotten a bit more upper-crust since Coupling?), and Tuesday’s episode was a bit better than the pilot (aired last night and last week), but it’s still nothing special.
E.
And I’m pretty sure this one did use an artificial one. I’m no expert, but after watching Cheers, Frasier, Friends, and the like, which were filmed before an audience, I can sort of tell the difference.
Of course, I could be wrong on that. In any event, I doubt I’ll be watching any more episodes to make sure.