I agree completely. I don’t understand why anyone would want to watch CSI when Law and Order is infinitely better. (Homicide: Life on the Street was even better than Law and Order but, alas, it’s long gone.)
I kind of like CSI, except for David Caruso.
David Caruso is the incarnation of hideously pompous non-acting.
David Caruso should be cancelled.
I’m not being too subtle, am I?
I remember that show!
I suddenly feel very old.
I vaguely remember The Mother In Laws, but I was pretty young. In fact, I don’t really remember anything about it other than the title and an image of somebody leaning over a Dutch door. :dubious:
I was talking to a local police officer and he mentioned that during some portion of his training, clips of Cops were shown as examples of What not to do in particular situations. That kind of cracks me up.
Also, I notice no one has mentioned Nakita with that dreadful twat from Australia. hummm. I wonder if it’s one of our Ausie imports - I dunno, but it sure sucks ass.
That’s why I’ve always called COPS “Fourth Amendment Violation Theatre.”
Except that an awful lot of stuff from that era is still hillarious - Lucy and Honeymooners still have their moments, and the sketch comedies hold up particularly well. (Steve Allen, Abbot and Costello*, & Jack Benny are among my favourite shows when I can catch them.)
- I love the wordplay in a lot of A&C’s bits - Who’s on First, of course, but they also have one I keep catching, where people are trying to teach Lou about horse-racing and he just gets more and more confused, because they keep talking about mudders, and horses eating their fodder.
I think their age does have something to do with the fact that for the most part the sitcoms are lame, but it’s not just that ‘everything has become obvious’ - it’s more that a lot of the jokes just don’t play well any more because, yes, some have been done to death, but also because it’s not the 50s any more, some things just don’t work any more - they’re quaint and naive, or conversely, sexist, racist, or otherwise offensive.
They’ve also been in syndication seemingly forever, whereas the sketch comedies you mentioned haven’t.
You’re kind of comparing apples and oranges here, though. CSI is more about the forensic science process (after it’s been appropriately “hollywoodafied” of course). You barely see any of the police work and none of the judicial process, as you do in Law and Order (which one of my professors, an actual ADA, can’t stand by the way). That’s not it’s focus and they don’t pretend that it is, so it’s not really fair to compare the two.
I can’t believe anyone hasn’t mentioned Jackass yet.
I’m a teenage male, so i should be a huge fan of this; yet i find nothing funny about half-naked men throwing tennis balls at other half-naked men’s ballsack :eek: nor most of the rest of the shows
Yet all of my friends love it. Huh?
Nobody’s mentioned Saturday Night Live yet? Everyone I know who still watches this show does nothing but complain about how bad it is these days. And that’s been the case for years.
It seems that if a show survives long enough, it develops a kind of momentum, which will sustain the show for years even if the show devolves into total crap.
Good one! Add to it it’s bastard sister MAD TV. God! Convelesing sucks! Last year Comedy Central played SNL all day, now they play MAD TV all day. Thank god for books.
I’ve had precious few interactions with cops IRL, but ISTM that the Cops in COPS seem to go much lighter on the suspects than would happen IRL (since I have been treated about the same as they, well, without the physicality, and that was when I didnt even do anything, imagine how I would be treated off-camera if the cop thought I was dangerous!)
On the other hand, I have noticed the opposite situation: the suspects clearly tend to push the cops in order to try to provoke a physical reaction. For instance, repeatedly trying to get up when the cop tells them to stay down.
I think it would be funny if they did that and the cop, even though the camera was still rolling, gets out his pistol and shoots the suspect in the face and blows his face off. Wrong, but funny. People like the people who push cops to try to get a million dollar lawsuit do no good for anyone.
OTOH if the cameras were NOT rolling, it would be the cops who would have the upper hand. I’m sure no suspects would repeatedly try to stand up when ordered not to, at risk of getting a beating. The cops on COPS don’t do that BECAUSE they know the camera’s rolling.
Interesting responses.
I, for one, really like ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’, though I normally catch it in syndication. I think ‘King of the Hill’ can be brilliant as well. And I’ve been known to, once in a while, watch ‘Charmed’, which is very B-movie-esque and a whole lot of fun like Hercules and Xena used to be.
The show I just don’t understand being on the air is ‘Will & Grace’. What a pile of dung that is!
I’ll admit it. I may be the one keeping Smallville on the air.
I can’t say it’s a great show. Hell, I’d barely call it a good show, but it has such untapped potential! The wrters obviously know the Superman mythos (and throw in nifty tidbits about the rest of the DCU now and again), and they are crafting a good story with Lex and Lionel, and the Jor-El plot, but they still feel shackled by the perceived need to do stupid romantic angst stuff. It’ so close to being an excellent show, but yet, so far.
Wow, I’ve posted several times to this thread, and I completely forgot about Tough Crowd - and I’ve started several threads in the past to bitch and moan about how aweful it is! Good call.
Yeah, MAD TV and SNL are still on, and they cancelled Hardcore TV!!!
Reno 911 and Crank Yankers! God I even hate the commercials.
That’s the reason it’s still on the air, lots of people love and watch it. The point here concerns shows which you can’t find anyone who watches it but it remains on the air. Didn’t watch the show too much but the movie was hilarious.
My Mom and I watch this show. Mainly to laugh at the idiots, and to ogle the cute cops. We also are regular viewers of the Canadian version To Serve and Protect. It’s interesting seeing the old neighborhood and hell, even some of my old pals turn up.*
[sub]*Quite serious. The corner bar was on more than once, saw an old school pal once. We pick out what area of the city the police are in by the scenery. I suspect this might be the answer to your question. People watch so they know what happened to their friends. “So that’s where Johnny went to. He got nabbed by the cops that night he went to pick us up some crack and took your uninsured car”[/sub]