Let me explain: In old-time domestic situation comedies the main couples usually spent a lot of time cutting each other down. It happened on the Jack Benny show, on the Honeymooners, the Flintstones, etc, etc. The female often made wisecracks about her dumb lunk of a man. The man mocked the woman’s propensity for shopping. The viewers/listeners were still to believe they cared for each other.
This kind of thing still happens on “The Big Bang Theory”. Howard & Bernadette, Penny and Leonard - the members of the couples rag on each other.; usually it’s Penny or Bernie finding some cutting thing to say about their nerds.
BUT - apparently(from reading discussions about this show) people don’t find this funny anymore. Viewers aren’t convinced the women care about the men after hearing the barbs.
So, is this a general change in taste in our modern era, or is this just more nitpicking by snobs who dislike BBT?
It can be funny if both partners think it’s funny. For instance, my husband and I do this but the rules are clear - if it’s something the other person is sensitive about it’s off limits.
Some of it probably just that there are a lot fewer longtime spouses/couples on sitcoms, since family centered comedies have been replaced by Friends clones or workplace comedies, where the cast is generally young and single, at least for the first few seasons (if the show lasts long enough, a la BBT, they end up in permanent couples, but even then they’re usually in relationships that are just a few years old rather than the classic squabbling old married couple).
Yeah, it was never that funny. It probably resonated with older audiences because divorce was less common and as a result there were a lot of people trapped in loveless marriages, so everyone knew a couple like that.
Its always been funny and lots of people who love each other deeply engage in this behavior. What we see today are tons of over-protected and over-coddled younger people whose thin skin cant take the needling. We also dont see many younger people on TV who are in a long term committed relationship.
In going to be of man out. I loved the bickering in Married with Children, especially because whenever the relationship was tested by outside forces, they backed each other.
Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s not. It was funny in The Honeymooners and Married… With Children, and it’s funny in Modern Family (think Jay and Gloria or Cam and Mitchell). It’s funny when the show is funny. It’s not funny when the show isn’t funny.
Yeah, I was thinking of the same show and also Roseanne where everyone sniped at everyone but still came together if someone was in trouble. Hell, the reason the show was so popular was because people saw it as a “real” family after years of saccharine-sweet TGIF crap.
I find there is a huge, huge gap between people on this one. The world is divided into people who find it acceptable to insult their partners in front of other people, and people for whom it’s utterly a mortal sin. I’m personally in the latter camp, and yet know long term couples, people whio seem to genuinely adore each other, who are in the former. I don’t understand it and am sure they don’t understand me.
I have no idea why some people are A and some B. It’s not necessarily the way your parents did it, as I know counter examples in both directions. It doesn’t seme to be cultural or generational. It’s baffling to me.
Married With Children, the Great Mothership of Sitcoms, is different. Their fighting and all-mutual scorn is the raison d’être of the show; and really includes a disgust and misanthropy for the entire human race.
In other instances it comes from an entirely unjustified sense of personal superiority.
I think the difference is, the loving couples who give each other a hard time are clearly giving each other a hard time, not deliberately insulting each other. On TV, that distinction isn’t really drawn well.
BBT, for example, did/does a great job of showing how a group of close male friends will tease and harass each other, while still demonstrating their deep feeling for each other.
But in the male/female relationships, they don’t do a good job of showing couples doing the same thing- it seems unevenly applied relative to the all-male version. Sometimes Bernadette or Penny is harassing Howard or Leonard about something in jest, and others, they’re just being bitchy and demanding, and the men rarely tease the women back in kind, unlike on the male side. Maybe it’s meant to be some sort of telegraphy for strong female / weak men, but it comes across as mean to me.
BBT is the most popular comedy on TV. People find it hilarious still. There will be dumb husband/shrew wife comedies 100 years from now. The opinions here (and I share them for the most part) do not reflect the population at large.