For me if I had to pick a good contender it would be the UK version of The Office.
I know many tend to debate how Ricky Gervais really fell off and how he repugnantly acts like a whiny centrist edgelord but me personally IMO I actually don’t think he was ever funny not even a little.
His big break through television was just so painful to sit through it’s so charismatically boring the characters are completely generic at best (notably Tim) or straight up insufferably unlikable at worst (especially the protagonist David FUCKING Brent) and most importantly the humour is just embarrassing.
Always seemed like The Thick Of It but without the nuisance tongue in cheek and charming satire.
The US Office is unironically a better show because it understood what path it wanted to take as it went on and stop trying to rely heavily on cringe comedy to focus more on absurdist but still relatable scenarios.
There’s a huge regional and cultural aspect to what you’re saying. You’re comparing slapstick in-your-face American comedy to subtle cringe British comedy. The Office is an excellent example since it is exactly the same script used in both initially. Watching S1E1 for British vs American version is an excellent comparison of styles. I don’t like British comedy particularly and don’t even like The Office, but watching both back to back, I would prefer the British version.
There are a number of amazing British comedies. They are very different to American. British comedies are understated and a bit miserable. Try “I’m Alan Partridge”…such an amazing comedy.
Equally I’ve tried watching Curb Your Enthusiasm with British friends and a large portion can’t stand that for how cringe it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
There’s no superior choice in matters of art and taste. Just different flavours.
There’s a big cultural difference between Curb and Partridge - cringe isn’t universal!
Specifically, Larry in Curb has a distinctly American sense of individualism. He does what he wants and doesn’t care if someone doesn’t like him for it. The cringe comes from his attempts to enforce his own set of unwritten social values on others.
Alan Partridge is the exact opposite - fundamentally insecure and desperate for approval. His cringe comes from lack of self-awareness and trying to fake social status, which is painfully obvious to a British audience with our deeply ingrained sense of class.
Ultimately, taste is taste, but I think that goes some way towards explaining why some people like one or the other but not both.
I can’t watch The Office.
My empathy makes me feel super uncomfortable watching people do socially mean or cringe things. I enjoyed most of Parks and Rec, but I didn’t like the way they treated Garry, and almost stopped watching because of that running gag.
Oddly enough, I devoured The Bear. It’s not high anxiety or intensity that turns me off, it’s the banal meanness that some express that I can’t stand. The Bear is intense, but the characters feel genuine and honest
but the payoff for Garry was SO good.
My aunt Gisela promised to bring me into touch with my father. In reality, she simply darkened the room and, with a lowered voice, gave a bad imitation of my deceased dad. That’s one medium I could do without.
Funny and original comment. Nicely done
Disturbed’s cover of “Sound of Silence.” I like the original Simon & Garfunkel, or at least the more upbeat version of it. And I like Disturbed (see below). But this cover absolutely blows.
Yes, I know the lead singer is a grade A shitbag. I liked the band long before I knew anything about any of it and have since stopped listening to them.
Watching without a laugh track is amazing, it highlights how awful it really is.
Big Bang Theory
I remember it was once described as “a show about smart people for stupid people”. Arrested Development being it’s antithesis in that regard, I guess.
Yeah I hate fake nerds on TV. Big Bang Theory being the absolute worst.
Obligatory Portlandia Nerd PSA (invidious link)
I grew up with actual nerds in the 89s and 90s. No one was like Big Bang Theory. We were not cool.
Blackface for nerds
The worst part is how it’s fans seem to think it’s a love letter to “nerd culture” (whatever the fuck that is) and endlessly bring it up if you dare mention any interest in comics, roleplaying games or anything in that vein. “Oh you’ll love this show, it’s all about that nerdy stuff.”
Was out with a girlfriend’s family and one of her mom’s friends once and my girlfriend mentioned she had been playing D&D with a group of people from her college. Her mom’s friend immediately started cackling and was like “It’s just like the big bang theory!”. No other context about what happened in her games or who she was playing with or anything. Just the simple fact that she was playing it at all was apparently hilarious.
Have a few in mind:
Catcher in the Rye. Holden is insufferable and I found it baffling that adults expected me to relate to him as a teen.
Grease aged very poorly and I do not understand the hype (is it because John Travolta is wearing tight pants?)
Family guy. The ship that launched a thousand cringe as fuck “adult animation” shows. Yes, I’m salty as hell about it.
A lot of the hype about Grease is nostalgia, no doubt about that.
But a lot of the rest is that a loooot of the songs are both catchy and very easy to understand. The movie also forms a social dynamic that is easy to understand for kids.
We learned to sing “Summer Nights” in school, and then friends and I would sing the song over and over, adding more and more childish humor that we found hilarious (because…kids). We also instantly got the implied social dynamic (boys just want to get sex, girls want to have mushy romance).
Family guy has always been bad, I lived through its peak and it was so painful
Oh you think that’s bad? What about the time I fell off of that elephant and broke my ankle in 75 places while a monkey played la cucaracha on a tambourine?
(wince) “aHHHHhhh!..(wince)…Aaaaghh!!.. It’s in my raccoon wounds! :(”
It terrifies me that there are people walking around out there who feel seen by Holden Caulfield.
Or to reference another overrated work: John Galt. Lol
A big part of why many of the things in this thread haven’t aged well, is because a lot of what made these shows original and unique was copied to death following the fame of the original.
If you weren’t there for the original release of a piece of media, there’s a good chance you’re not necessarily seeing it in the context where the accolades make sense.
Seinfeld basically invented the 3 camera sitcom and a lot of the key tropes in the format. If you go back today having not watched it before, the vast majority of it just comes across as a boring sitcom, because every sitcom to follow took notes from the way they did Seinfeld.
It’s the same with the UK office, it basically invented the modern mockumentary format as well as the cringe comedy era that followed (and gave us things like peep show). If you look back now without that context, it just looks like a generic combination of both those things.
Just to mention it, this is literally named the Seinfeld is Unfunny effect on TVTropes
I think the bigger issue is that most of the show isn’t that good. Less than half the seasons are good, and the lows from the bad seasons are really low. Watching it on a streaming scenario exposes this a lot more than reruns of the good parts.
Seinfeld didn’t invent the three camera sitcom, but it was important in creating modern sitcoms that didn’t have a lesson to learn at the end of redeeming protagonists.
Ahh so THAT’S what they meant with the whole “It’s about nothing!” thing…
Dune.
It’s Y/A trash that had the benefit of coming out a long time ago and so being ensconced in scifi culture.
I’ll give that it is interesting for its world, its one unique aspect, but the actual plot - chosen-one special boy’s dad dies and so he immediately becomes the married leader of a group of locals and stages an insurrection against the antagonist in revenge - is so worn out you can barely turn the pages.
But I’m sure back when it came out, all the adolescents were drooling over the piles of teenage wish fulfillment.
Y/A wasn’t even a genre when it was written
And there is so much to that series of books in terms of complex topics that are dealt with in subtle ways that I don’t understand how they think it is Y/A.
To be clear, I only read the first book because I was not interested in reading more (read: actively annoyed that nothing interesting happened).
As for YA, that’s easy. It falls over the tropes (which, to be fair, it could have been early/first in). This post had been a favorite of mine for years, the “Protagonist” section is 2 for 3. Where it does somewhat lean out of the genre is its world, which is not just thinly-veiled school or the like.
As for what we actually see in the first book, though, we get an often-told YA story that happens to occur in an exceptionally well-thought out world.
Dave Matthews band. Also, any “jam” band in general.
100% with you on this.
I just don’t get the appeal at all. I knew a couple that were all about String Cheese Incident. Finally listened to their stuff…fucking 15 minute long songs of fairly standard 90’s ironic music zapped by bloat ray. Hard pass.
I’ve seen String Cheese Incident live a few times at a festival. It was honestly a pretty good show, and I think that’s pretty much the only way jam bands work. When everyone’s a bit high and dancing and the band is playing off the crowd, it’s great.
I listened to a couple of their tracks at home, and had no interest in listening to any more. Jam bands are only good live.
That’s a fair point! Thanks.
Well, that’s just what the ass-crack bandit would say to throw us off their trail, isn’t it…
Clearly they don’t have two ears connected to a heart
Dont forget what they did on the Kinzie Street Bridge in Chicago.
Ok, what did they do?
Dumped a bus load of shit and piss off the bridge onto an architectural tour boat full of people.
none of the band members were in the bus at the time
The shit and piss they dumped out of the bus didn’t appear from nowhere. Even if he didn’t dump it himself dave matthews supplied the shit and piss for it to happen.
