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The entire first season of Parks and Recreation is pretty much unwatchable in light of the changes they made for the subsequent seasons. In the first season, Leslie is portrayed as this ditzy, clueless bureaucrat, in a way that could never have sustained multiple seasons. I think they were cribbing too hard off of The Office, which was based on the idea that workplace comedy can only be funny if everyone is bad at and/or indifferent to their job. From the second season on, they rewrote Leslie as super-competent at her job, but also overbearing and somewhat naive. It creates a really jarring contrast with the first season which makes the entire first season seem like an extended outtake.
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Jul 31, 2017 15:19
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A lot of you youngins might not know that Ben Stiller had a short lived sketch comedy show in the early 90s. I remember thinking it was hilarious at the time. A few years ago I went back and rewatched it- and while some of the sketches still work, SO much of it is steeped in the pop culture of the time that it's almost incomprehensible. Like, every episode includes 2 or 3 shot-for-shot parodies of commercials that were on tv at the time. I can barely remember most of these commercials, and I pretty much did nothing with my life at the time besides watch tv. Seriously, can anyone who wasn't around in 1991 possibly make sense of this? https://youtu.be/SXmFYSNbtII The U2/Lucky Charms commercial will never not be funny though. https://youtu.be/C2X8zPYhNag
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Jul 31, 2017 15:49
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food court bailiff posted:There's a really recent episode of the Simpsons, from like last year, that was impossibly dated when it came out. Like, it was straight out of the late-90s. Lisa meets a group of rebellious female programmers who teach her that it's okay for girls to like computers, as if that's something that really needed explaining in 2016, and then it follows up this trite revelation from 1994 with a bit of computer illiteracy contemporary to the time when Lisa's project accidentally becomes a sentient AI. This has been an issue with The Simpsons for a while. In the mid-2000s they did an episode where Bart enters a Battlebots-esque fighting robot competition, and I swear it was a good 5-6 years after the brief late 90's fighting robot show craze. Edit: Speaking of virtual reality stuff - there's a really bad Mad About You episode that deals with that. At one point Helen Hunt uses a VR headset to simulate being on a date with Andre Agassi. And with that, I've done it - I've written the most 90s sentence possible. letthereberock has a new favorite as of 16:47 on Jul 31, 2017 |
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Jul 31, 2017 16:40
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I've long theorized that for The Office, the writers worked off of short dossiers for all of the characters. The dossier for Dwight initially described him as a "sycophant". At some point around season 4 or 5 someone was retyping the dossier and spell check accidentally changed "sycophant" to "psychopath" and the writers just went with it.
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Jul 31, 2017 20:12
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SiKboy posted:No-ones ever managed to make a film so bad that the academy took previously won oscars back, and god knows Nic Cage has been trying, but I got a good feeling about Hooper. There has been the rumor that Eddie Murphy was a shoe-in to get a best supporting nom for Dreamgirls but lost it because Norbit came out later the same year. The funny post-script to that story is that Norbit actually was nominated for an Oscar! (For makeup, but still...)
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Jul 29, 2020 05:17
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I like the MCU Spider-Man films a lot, I’m just really bummed they cast Ben Mendelsohn in Captain Marvel because for years I’ve had him in my head as the best Doc Ock.
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Aug 2, 2020 14:21
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As far as Simpsons jokes that have aged poorly I used to love that joke where Homer talks about his cousin Frank who became Francine and then “Mother Shabooboo” then at some point I realized the joke is saying that the only reason someone would be trans was if they had some messed up, traumatic childhood and that’s pretty hosed up.
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Aug 2, 2020 19:55
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Yeah, the whole “countdown until x female celebrity is legal” thing is something I’m glad seems to have gone the way of the dodo, at least I think. There’s no way I’m googling if there are any Jojo Siwa countdown clocks out there. I remember Robot Chicken had a funny sendup of the whole thing. “The Olsen twins - they’re legal man!” “Dude, you’re 36”
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Aug 22, 2020 16:44
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the_steve posted:Plus the fact that you could afford a comfortable place to live with said best friends while working in a steady job that is generally rewarding, or at least not as absolutely soul crushing. The rewarding job part may be accurate, but the living spaces in Friends were incredibly unrealistic even at the time, and even with the lampshading the show did about rent control and such.
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Aug 22, 2020 18:00
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At least one Seinfeld plot line has Jerry performing on The Tonight Show back when it was filmed in LA. The show makes it clear he’s a pretty successful comedian. One thing I will give that show credit for - when George loses his job, he has to move back with his parents. I don’t know how many other shows would show that as a consequence to a career setback. Of course, the show treats it like it’s this humiliating, undignified thing that he has to do it, but the fact that the show even acknowledges that’s a thing an adult may have to do is pretty rare. Funny thing is, when I think about people my age, I’m pretty sure I know more people who have had to live with their parents at some point during adulthood than who haven’t. It just seems like a really common thing with all the economic turmoil of the past 20 years that it’s weird to see it portrayed as such an awful thing, or never portrayed at all.
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Aug 22, 2020 19:16
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the_steve posted:It's easy to forget, but, Friends was kinda groundbreaking for it's time due to its focusing on a "younger" cast. Yeah - I also remember reading that the network initially pushed back against having the group hang out in a coffee shop - because that was considered too young and weird for middle American audiences.
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Aug 24, 2020 00:59
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Home Improvement was consistently one of the highest rated sitcoms on tv for years but I don’t know anyone who is even remotely nostalgic for it.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:03
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Sorry to stray off topic but something that always bugged me about Home Improvement: was “Tool Time”, the show-within-the-show on Home Improvement, intended time be a comedy in the universe of the show, or was it intended to be a legit home improvement show where Tim was just constantly screwing up? I watched that show a lot (because it was on tv) but I’m not sure if they ever addressed that?
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Aug 25, 2020 16:21
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tactlessbastard posted:Murphy Brown is hamstringed by requiring a CSPAM level familiarity with the politics of 1988. I just remember all the mileage they got out of Dan Quayle picking a fight with them. Like, how would you even explain Dan Quayle to someone growing up in the age of Trump? “Why did people make fun of this Quayle guy so much?” “Well he publicly condemned a fictional character for having a child out of wedlock.” “Oh- but did he do anything like openly try to tank the stock of companies he didn’t like, or talk about wanting to have sex with his daughter?” “No, but he did once spell potato wrong and that was a big deal.” “The 90s sound nice”
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Aug 25, 2020 16:49
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Krispy Wafer posted:For a couple of years there, TV networks were grabbing every decent stand-up comic they could to adapt to a TV show. I guess it was an over-reaction to Rosanne and Cosby's success. In the movie Swingers, Jon Favreau’s character, a struggling comedian, says something to the effect of “I came to LA because I heard they were handing out sitcoms to comedians at the airport.” It doesn’t work out for his character in the movie, but the funny thing is given the nature of tv in the time it wasn’t the worst plan.
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Aug 25, 2020 16:54
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hard counter posted:in tim's eyes it was always a genuine home improvement show where he could impress audiences at home with his practical know-how, but, because of his primal urge to overclock everything and constant screw-ups, it came off as a dyi goofus and gallant to in-universe audiences and they loved it under those terms That is the best explanation I’ve ever heard, so thank you for that. Now do Family Matters
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Aug 25, 2020 17:12
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Krispy Wafer posted:There's probably a decent academic paper that could be written on popular cultural portrayal of Nazis over the last 40 years. I’ve always loved the Colonel Klink was played by a Jewish actor who took the whole specifically to portray Nazis as buffoons. There was a show on Amazon this year called Hunters that was about a group of vigilantes hunting escaped Nazis in 1970s New York. I didn’t care much for the show for a few reasons, but my biggest issue with it was the portrayal of the Nazi characters. Almost to a man, they were portrayed as these badass, almost super-human killing machines. I get that you need to make the villains scary and dangerous to create tension, but this show just seemed to take it overboard. The first scene in the series has this Nazi who has been living undercover as an American for 30 years being recognized, so he whips out a pistol and guns down about a dozen people at a party without missing a single shot. And be turns out to be one of the less scary bad guys in the show. The Nazis were evil, they weren’t loving terminators. (And yes, I know the show was intended to be pulpy and not realistic- I’m still not a fan of making Nazis just seem so competent) letthereberock has a new favorite as of 18:34 on Aug 25, 2020 |
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Aug 25, 2020 18:29
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MrUnderbridge posted:He was watching the kid write potato on the board, which the kid did correctly. Then Dan basically forces him to add an E on the end and then congratulates him. So even if it was written down wrong for him (he did have a card in his hand, but should he need that for a third grade spelling?), he didn't recognize right spelling of potato. Again, we are arguing over whether or not the guy knew the correct spelling of potato, while the current president says in front of the world that he is loving with the post office to increase his re-election chances. Just think about that and tell me you don’t want to walk into the ocean.
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Aug 26, 2020 02:53
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BrigadierSensible posted:This may be a bit of a hot take: Best in Show holds up well except for the “shocking” reveal towards the end that two of the characters are *gasp* lesbians! Also, People watching it today may not find Fred Willards stuff as funny as it was then since the whole “2 announcers calling an event, one of them knows what he’s talking about and the other one is an idiot” has become a oft-copied cliche. I remember liking A Mighty Wind when I saw it but honestly I don’t remember anything about it beyond the “HEY WHA HAPPEN!?” scene.
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Dec 1, 2020 13:57
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fartknocker posted:
Not just the viewers but sometimes the American cast as well. One of the funniest bits on the UK one I remember was with Ryan and I think 3 British cast. There was an audience suggestion for a parody of some specific British TV show that I guess was really popular at the time, but it became clear early on that Ryan had never seen/heard of this show and it was all amusingly awkward. At one point one of the British cast just looks at Ryan, and in the voice of the character he was parodying, said “you’re not from here are you!?”
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Dec 16, 2020 15:29
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Season 5 through 7 you can take on an episode by episode basis. Some very good ones but some total crap as well. Season 8 is an abomination- avoid at all costs. Season 9 (and this is not a popular viewpoint, just my opinion) is decent at least for the first half. Pete, Clark and Nelly are all good characters who inject some new blood into the series. Then it goes downhill with inexplicable heel-turn by Andy and the weird meta-aspects that never really make any sense. On the topic of poorly aged media - I was watching some Friends recently and drat, I know it’s been said before, but it just sticks out so much more today how Lily-white and just straight up boring it makes NYC look. I guess with the reduction in the dominance of multi-can sitcoms, we as viewers are less conditioned to accept shows that take place entirely on 3 or 4 sets with the same rotation of extras. When Girls first came out, it took a lot of heat for not being more diverse in its portrayal of Brooklyn, but even in the first season it’s the goddamn United Nations compared to Friends.
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Dec 29, 2020 18:22
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There were 252 episodes of the Simpsons made prior to the one in which Homer is raped by a panda. There have been 441 episodes made since the one in which Homer is raped by a panda. Ponder that
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Dec 30, 2020 14:59
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Sweevo posted:S1 Simpsons is so bad I don't know how it ever got a S2. I guess it says more about everything else that was on TV at the time that The Simpsons looked so good in comparison. S1 probably coasted to some extent on the novelty factor - animation for anyone besides young children was just not done in those days on American tv. It’s a credit to the writers that they improved the quality so much each season from 1 to 4
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Dec 30, 2020 15:13
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Tenebrais posted:
More or less. Married....with Children debuted two years before The Simpsons but it never had the same cultural impact and was generally not considered by critics at the time to be worthy of real critical analysis. At least that’s how I remember it.
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Dec 30, 2020 15:32
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Iron Crowned posted:I'm not really sure that US sitcoms ever really revolved around a family with a wise patriarch. As an antenna user, I get a lot of subchannels, and even obscure (at least to me) family centered sitcoms from the 70's usually have the male figure being a buffoon in one way or another. I do think that the main difference that the Simpsons or Married with Children had over those is a lot of it was ramped up to 11. It’s an oversimplification but there is a narrative that in the 70s, sitcoms got more serious so you had stuff like All in the Family and Maude and Good Times and Barney Miller which all occasionally dealt with some dark poo poo. Then in the 80s it’s Regan’s morning in America blah blah blah and it’s all Family Ties, Growing Pains, Full House and poo poo. The 90s I guess split the difference. Like people have mentioned there are exceptions on both sides but it helps to explain the tv environment The Simpsons was coming into at the end of the 80s.
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Dec 30, 2020 16:33
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Michael Scott is a living example of the Peter Principle. He was clearly a talented salesperson who then got promoted to manager, which he sucks at.
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Dec 30, 2020 20:21
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Copland isn’t a perfect film by any stretch but it’s definitely one of Stalones better ones. I’m curious how it would be received in today’s environment. I don’t recall it being at all controversial at the time for its depictions of corrupt AF cops. Edit: I’m sure you could play Harvey Kitel’s monologue to a lot of real cops and they wouldn’t even get he’s supposed to be the bad guy. letthereberock has a new favorite as of 16:16 on Dec 31, 2020 |
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Dec 31, 2020 16:06
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Dr Christmas posted:Anyone still watch Shameless? It’s final season started a few weeks ago, and it really fell out of everyone’s consciousness. TVIV had threads for it, but not for the previous season. I have this season’s new episodes on DVR and haven’t gotten around to watching them. The intro episode deals with the COVID, and the show’s attempts at headlines stuff have been middling at best. Last we saw Carl, he was looking to join the police, so I’m apprehensive about the blistering hot takes on that. Shameless once ended an episode with the shocking revelation that Carl’s girlfriend had been murdered. Then it never brought this up or addressed it again.
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Dec 31, 2020 19:56
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Kevin DuBrow posted:What the gently caress PYF Media that did not age well or animal sexual assault story
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Dec 31, 2020 21:14
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Schubalts posted:To be fair to the Amazing Race contestants, they were literally in the middle of a race. Don't exactly have the luxury of taking in the sights and sounds when you have to go fast for a prize (which was often some travel package they could actually take their time to enjoy) The Amazing Race had some excellent seasons and some truly dire ones. Yes there were moments of stereotypical ugly American awfulness but also some great moments of nice interaction between contestants and locals. The worst season was definitely the “Family Edition “ where they did families of four instead of pairs. Because of the presence of children, they stayed in the US and really dumbed down all the challenges. The funniest part though was that the lone African American families last name was Black - so we got to see at one point Phil say “Black family - you have been eliminated!” Another funny note about that season - a young Stassi Shroeder, later of Vanderpump Rules (and possible racist?) was a member of one of the teams.
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Jan 24, 2021 01:44
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Sarcopenia posted:
Yeah the whole Bravo extended universe has enough hosed up stuff it could probably have it’s own thread here, though I doubt that many people on SA watch any of it.
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Jan 24, 2021 21:51
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FreudianSlippers posted:I watched all the seasons of Amazing Race with my wife a couple of years back. Except for the Family Edition we skipped that one after one season. Yeah they were chill. That show definitely showed how travel and stress can bring out people’s true natures, even when they run contrary to a reality show narrative. I remember there was one season where one team was two pro-snowboarders who at first came off as totally laid back and fun loving. Then one episode they come across a Buddhist temple: “These people worship false idols? How can they not see how clear the Bible makes it that this is wrong!?” Edit: Growing up in a not-that religious family, reality tv was actually one of my first windows into how rigid a lot of peoples thinking is. The above example is nothing compared to the China season of Survivor, where in the first episode one of the contestants literally broke down crying at the though of entering a Buddhist Temple for an introduction ceremony. letthereberock has a new favorite as of 23:01 on Jan 24, 2021 |
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Jan 24, 2021 22:15
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dads_work_files posted:Cats just don't give a gently caress Then perhaps... you should not gently caress with them?
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Jan 25, 2021 02:33
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flatluigi posted:that movie's in one of the weird cultural situations where all the parodies are riffing off of people's concept of what the original is based on other people's parodies b/c the original just isn't good enough for people to have gone and seen that first Rocky is very similar in that so much cultural reference to it really comes from the sequels. The original is about 90% gloomy and depressing stuff up until the climax. I guess Rambo as well - if you were to ask any random person to visualize Rambo they are almost certainly not thinking of anything from First Blood.
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Feb 15, 2021 14:51
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Oblivion’s script literally had all the lines in alphabetical order because someone didn’t think it through, I don’t think they’ve done that in any other game. That is the most Bethesda thing ever, I really hope it’s true. Now I don’t play a lot of recent games so I’m sure there are exceptions, but it strikes me as strange that video games have had detailed cut-scenes for over 25 years now, and even very recent games it never really seems like characters are talking to each other. Even in purely scripted scenes, the lines of dialogue always seem weirdly isolated from each other and out of context. I don’t understand why if this is not an issue in regular animation, why it’s so hard for games to do this.
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Feb 16, 2021 18:30
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That’s really interesting, thanks! Going by that first example you posted, the first part, with the man and the woman talking, seems to have the issue I see over and over again. Just a little too much dead air and pause between each character’s dialogue. Like, I have a feeling if you closed your eyes and just listened to the audio, you would still know it was a video game cut scene just by those little extra pauses. In real life, people talk over each other, interrupt each other, match each other’s tone, etc. It just seems like this happens very much even in AAA titles. For content - my kids are on a muppets kick lately, rewatching all of the films. One thing jumped out at me in The Muppets (2011) that i never thought about before. There is a scene where Jack Black takes a real, closed fist swing at Kristen Schaal. He misses, but it struck me (heh) as really gross to see a male character take a swing at a female character and it all be treated like a funny joke. I’m not even sure attitudes about violence towards women have changed that much in the past 10 years, but I don’t remember anyone noticing or commenting on that scene at the time.
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Feb 16, 2021 19:13
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packetmantis posted:Fun fact, this guy was Michael Weatherly, noted for NCIS and Bull. Ahem, there will only ever be one Bull, and that is Richard Moll.
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Feb 17, 2021 02:28
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:The Joker movie infuriates me because the whole film hinges on video of Joaquin Phoenix going viral and being picked up for a Tonight Show segment in a time before the internet or vcrs. Where does Robert DeNiro get the footage that he airs on his show? It’s like “character does something embarrassing and it immediately goes viral” has become such a trope that writers can’t resist using it even when it’s not era appropriate. In The Greatest Showman, which apparently is set in the 1850s, PT Barnum kisses a woman who is not his wife and is somehow photographed doing this, and it’s all over New York City that day. I fully expect to see a movie where a knight falls off of his horse and suddenly there are wood carvings of the incident all over England the next day.
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Feb 18, 2021 17:58
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A Knights Tale is an intentionally silly movie. Joker seems to have aspirations of being a serious film for serious people.
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Feb 18, 2021 18:09
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Alhazred posted:Is it? The only times the movie is actually funny is when Ledger's wacky sidekicks is involved and not when Ledger is going to the prom to invent a new dance or whatever. Maybe “silly” wasn’t the right word, but it was definitely deliberately anachronistic. I was just contrasting it to films that seem to be trying to authentically portray a specific time period but end up using tropes that make no sense for that period. Then again, Knights Tale is a movie I saw once almost 20 years ago and though I remember liking it at the time I barely remember anything about it beyond the opening We Will Rock you scene which owns.
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Feb 19, 2021 14:18
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