Just skimming an article about Charlie Sheen's legal trouble (don't ask me why)

[frameofmind6]

Ugh -- I can't believe Two and a Half Men is the top-rated sitcom on TV right now. That's just depressing. But then I still can't get used to the idea of NBC being pretty much in the tank these days either -- all through the nineties they had all the best stuff (Friends, Seinfeld, Frasier, Will and Grace...), so I'm just used to them being "the good channel" and all the others struggling to keep pace. Actually, I guess I would still call NBC "the good channel," personally -- a lot of their stuff is crap, but the only show I actually follow these days (The Office) is on there, as well as a couple of other shows I sort of wish I followed but have never gotten into, like 30 Rock. Sitcoms are in a bad way overall right now though -- it's sad, for a sitcom junkie like myself...

(*sigh*)

Ah well -- the genre will regroup and rebound eventually, better than ever. It always does. Meanwhile, I think I'll put on an old episode of M*A*S*H...

Comments

[patchcat.livejournal.com]

Go to CBS on Mondays. Watch The Big Bang Theory. Laugh at the hilarity that is four nerds trying to be cool. You will be very glad that you did. ^_^

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

I've thought about trying that one (I love characters that make nerdy jokes, so I figure that might be the place to look... *grin*), but I've gotten mixed impressions of it from what little I've seen peripherally. Couldn't tell if it seemed clever or just obnoxious. I saw one of the guys from it on Craig Ferguson a few weeks ago though, and he seemed funny -- have to give it a shot sometime. Thanks!

[replicantangel.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Gross. I like Jon Cryer (how can you *not* love Duckie???), but that show made me want to stab my own eyeballs with sporks the one time I actually watched it. The type of people that watch it are not people I know, apparently.

Sitcoms in general have gotten really stale for me. I don't do the awkward humor thing that seems to be in vogue right now. I watch Glee and am thinking of catching up on Chuck to watch that (but mostly because of Adam Baldwin, who I'm in love with). Otherwise, I'm all about the one-hour dramas. And Project Runway, which is starting not to suck as much as it did last season. :P

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

Duckie!! Lol -- I never realized that was him. Haven't seen that movie in ages...

Yeah, the awkward humor thing works for me when it's done really well, but if not it just gets annoying. The Office is the only American sitcom I can think of that really does it well -- all the others seem to me to be trying to hard to copy it without really understanding it or doing something new with it. I think all the networks are just kinda desperate to find a few dependable, long-lasting cash-cows right now, so there isn't a whole lot of room for creativity and genuine experimentation on the production side. Too much money riding on everything to make it worth the risk. I've also realized (having been on this BBC kick lately) that the American TV industry is really dependent on these long, involved, continuing series, whereas pretty much everything in British television seems to be done on a much smaller scale -- six episodes for a season, maybe another six a few years later if it proves popular and the people involved feel like doing it. I have a hard time imagining how that kind of model would work in the US -- I think a standalone six-episode sitcom series with no promise of an ongoing plot would get completely lost in the sheer volume of other stuff out there to watch -- but creatively speaking it's a much more flexible, less demanding way of approaching a series. And if you hit on something really successful, like the British version of The Office for instance, I imagine the returns are huge compared to the initial investment (it's only about 14 episodes long in total, which is just over half of a single American TV season).

Rambling, sorry (*grin*). This subject fascinates me -- someday I want to write a book on the history and evolution of the sitcom. Don't know if anyone would publish it, but it would be worth writing just so I could read it...lol...

I've been told by several people that I should watch Glee, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Chuck is another one on my list -- I think I rented a disk a year or so ago, but I had to take it back before I got to it. I used to watch Ugly Betty, but I fell out of touch with it sometime last season -- I think that one's just been canceled anyway. It's ending after this season. Beyond that (and The Office, of course), I really don't watch anything that's currently on, except Stewart/Colbert, and various news programs (mainly Keith Olbermann and BBC America). Sitcoms are my main thing, so if there aren't any good ones on, I don't really watch TV, I guess...lol...

[replicantangel.livejournal.com]

The Office is too neurotic for me. (I also disliked Seinfeld, so yeah - I'm just weird about my humor, lol.) I'm divided about whether longer or shorter series are better, but I think that it's best not to have it really involved from beginning to end like some series these days. I am never going to watch Lost. I'd have to start from the beginning and go in order. That is a freaking *chore*. On the other hand, I desperately wish that there was more to some of the BBC shows I've watched - even if they ended well, which they often don't. LoL.

I watch such diverse shows. It's probably more about the characters for me than anything. That, and it can't be heavy-handed with the writing. That drives me nuts.

Either way, I seem to find something to watch, regardless of what's on! LoL. I'm just a couch potato. Ah well... :)

[frameofmind6.livejournal.com]

Lol -- yeah, I guess I take to the neurotic stuff, being rather neurotic myself (*grin*). I feel the same way about Lost though -- I watched Alias, and it was like a weird sort of love/hate obsession. I mean, I'm obsessive to begin with, but JJ Abrams taps into that quality in a dangerous way. Even after the show turned bad (which was after the first two seasons), I was like a junkie tearing through the rest of the seasons just because I always "had to know." There were good moments, but ultimately I was mostly disgusted with how manipulative and contrived the whole underlying construction of the show was. Haven't had much patience for JJ Abrams ever since.

I always have something to watch too, but these days it's pretty much either old sitcoms (I don't know how I lived before they started selling full seasons on DVD) or something that falls into one of my weird obsessive tangents, like anything remotely related to Monty Python or Michael Palin... (*grin*)