I thought I was the only one who liked Curb Your Enthusiasm, Judith! Larry David’s such a childish asshole that you just can’t help but laugh. My favorite episode is the Crazy Eyez Killah one.
Crazy Eyez: Are you my nigga?
Larry: Yes, I am your nigga.
I love Larry David because he cannot help but completely fuck up any situation he gets himself into. Then he refuses to take responsibility and then comes the rage. I have never seen such pure, unadulterated rage in my life.
And he has done the unthinkable and made Richard Lewis funny.
He was the inspiration for the George Costanza character on Seinfeld, after all.
I love seeing the ads for all those really dramatic Will & Grace episodes. They’re hilarious. The acting is just delightfully terrible.
ditto judith prietht
Are you my Caucasian?
I didn’t think MASH was a sitcom though, was it?
It seemed to be consistent with balancing comedy and drama (“dramedy”).
Much as I loved the Cosby Show, they would occasionally get preachy and sappy. If they’d used a lighter touch, it might have worked, but there were times when they went for the baseball bat, and they lost me. I can’t remember specific episodes, but I do remember feeling angry when they tried those manipulative plot devices.
I rarely watch TV these days, and I avoid “Very Special” episodes like the plagues that they are.
I remember reading somewhere that experienced Hollywood screenwriters referred to such moments as the “moment of shit.” It seems fitting.
It’s even more amusing when you imagine some grizzled chain-smoking writer thinking of the “moment of shit” whenever you’re watching some hoary old episode of “Blossom” where the main character was to be rescued from an opium den or something.
Col. Henry Blake
Anyone here remember different strokes? Every episode had a moral but my two fave shows were
Creepy store clerk molests Arnolds friend in a shower. WTF???
Kimberly is abducted and held for several days (or maybe just one day I barely remember)
I was 8 or so at the time and I thought it was totally creepy and weird.
I usually cringe at even the suggestion of “Very Special Episodes.” But like others have said, I haven’t minded when Futurama, the Simpsons, and Scrubs get serious.
For my shocking confession, I was watching the Fresh Prince of Bellaire with my roommate in grad school, and they had an episode that ended up being “Very Special.” Will’s father came to visit, and promised Will that they were going to go on the road together. The final scene involved Will finding out that his dad had left without him, Will trying to act tough, and then just breaking down. It was a shockingly good scene. I just sat there staring at the screen, and then looked over at my roommate, who had actually teared up a little. I guess it caught us both off-guard.
I’ve never seen this episode but my wife swears that the ep of Roseanne where Becky gets drunk (roughly age 14, IIRC) was excellent and showcased Lecy Goranson as a fine actress. I know, that last part sounds unbelievable, but that’s what she says.
When I turn on a sitcom, I want to be entertained. I want funny. If i wanted something dramatic I would put on a drama show like ER or West Wing.
I don’t like when the shows “dumb you down” and try and educate you about everyday happening and preach to you. I really despise Boston Public.
One thing I hate is the Inevitable Gun Episode. Some character starts carrying a gun, and tragedy ensues. It’s usually a matter of it going off accidentally, and killing, or at least wounding, an innocent bystander. Or a toddler picks it up and plays with it, but then they don’t die.
Anyway, one show that I thought handled the subject a lot better was South Central. I will dispense with spoilers, because I can’t imagine anyone will ever see this show if they didn’t see it when it was on :(.
Andre (16) is taking the bus across L.A. to see his girlfriend. His dumb friend Rashad invites himself along, and almost immediately provokes some homeboys on the bus, prompting them to ask, “Where’s your ghetto pass?”
“Right here,” says Andre, lifting his shirt to reveal a handgun tucked in the waistband. His mom bought it for self-defense, thinks he doesn’t know where it is or even that she has it, and doesn’t keep track of it herself.
Back at Andre’s house, he recreates the Taxi Driver mirror scene, to Rashad’s amusement. Meanwhile, Deion, the 5yo foster child, walks in and stops in the doorway, without either of them noticing. Now, in a typical sitcom, this would be the foreshadowing that Deion would get hold of the gun, with tragedy, or at least a good scare, resulting. Instead, they fade out on a closeup of him, tense and fearful. The implication is that in his short, miserable life, he’s seen enough guns already, and now this house is another place where he won’t feel safe.
Later in the episode, Andre and his SO, Nicole, are at a party at the co-op, one of those alternative-to-drugs-gangs-and-booze things. After a while, another couple of homeboys (the same ones? I think not, but anyway) try to muscle their way in. In a non-dialogue long shot, we see Andre produce the gun again, and they back off.
So does Nicole. She’d thought Andre was different, you see, not just another wanna-be gangbanger. She risked her parents’ wrath by sneaking out to see him, and now it looks like they were right. Grudgingly, she allows him to escort her home on the bus, but never says a word, and in subsequent episodes, she’s still not taking his calls.
In the final scene, Andre returns home and sits with his mother in the living room, who still doesn’t know he has her gun. Morosely, he asks, “Why does it seem, sometimes, like the wrong thing is the only thing to do?..I’m gonna do the right thing.” Fade out.
I thought that was brilliant. Not the typical guns-are-bad message, but rather that guns are bad in society. They didn’t force a histrionic climax; they let it play out the way it would in real life.
Other than that, though, I don’t care for VSEs, especially when they involve one-shot characters. Another thing I hate is the Inevitable Pregnancy Storyline, but that’s another thread.
I always thought the serious episodes of All in the Family were incredibly well-done, and certainly ground-breaking, in that no sitcoms ever dealt with issues such as rape, divorce, etc. before.
For some reason the episode where Mike and Gloria and the baby moved to California, and Edith’s death were always the episodes I found hardest to watch, even though I loved them both, because you so rarely saw the emotional, loving, non-caustic Archie. Watching the tears roll down his face as he looks out the window as Mike, Gloria and the baby leave for California was one of the saddest moments I’ll ever remember in a sitcom.
Could some tell what the VSE of the Simpsons was?
To me, the VSE is a sign that they writers have run out of comic ideas and are getting desperate.
I don’t think they’ve had one definitive VSE. But they have recycled the “Homer and Lisa try to bond with each other” plot numerous times. The pony episode, the one where they snuck into the museum together, the one where she spent spring break at the plant, the one where they were in isolation tanks, the one where he hired a detective to follow her…I don’t like reset buttons, either.
Once in a while, though, there’s a good one. Like the All in the Family where Gloria gets pregnant and, right as Archie’s accepting the idea, miscarries. No preaching or moralizing or stiff-upper-lip comments about how life goes on, just a loud-mouthed old man holding his daughter while she cries. Incredibly touching television moment.
The premise of some shows is just well suited to balancing the funny and the dramatic, and the premise of others…isn’t. Scrubs and MASH lend themselves to blending the funny and the serious, because they’re about people who rely on humor to get them through their inherently serious situations.
Shows that rely on people being in contrived situations or on slapstick, though, those should never, ever do VSE’s.
Hmmm … I hate soppy stuff in sitcoms. But then again, if I don’t like it, I don’t watch it.
If it happens to be a sitcom that I usually watch and it starts getting all moral and/or deep - then I lose interest. It’s just the way I work. Doesn’t interest me in the slightest.
That’s why I tend to stick with programs like seinfeld and curb your enthusiam. Just in your face humour, and the characters don’t care about consequences. But I did use to enjoy “secret life of us” over here - it dealt with everyday life, but it was really raw.
I do like the “very special moments” in simpsons though. I tend to look over “bad” episodes and ones where they get a bit moralistic - because afterall - it is the simpsons. I even cried once =/ … I was drunk though =D
Not so much VSM(oments), but along the same lines, is anyone else totally squicked out by the “Oooooohhhhh” reaction-track when characters kiss? It embarasses me to no end, and I usually change the channel because I’m suddenly feeling like part of a vast, sleazy, voyueristic pack.
YES! YES! I actually remember laughing my ass off at that episode. (“The New Leave it To Beaver” had a similar episode where the children had to deal with the death of a great-aunt who’d never been seen before but died just before she was to arrive- uh, how big of a hole is left in a kid’s life when a great-aunt s/he doesn’t even known dies?)
The one special-episode I always wanted to see of a show: Screech gets humiliated and rejected one too many times and comes to Bayside with an Uzi. As long as Zac is caught in the crossfire, the writers can do what they will with the rest of the episode.
BOY MEETS WORLD was another show that was a shallow silly sit-com until the last few years when they decided to deal with death, rejection, poverty, global warming and WMDs with a hysterically inept cast. You can practically see William Daniels rolling his eyes in some episodes.