![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Revisiting Arrested Development as it's being rebroadcast on IFC, I'm reminded how absolutely mind-boggling it is that a steaming lump of shecky-shecky stand-up schtick like Seinfeld managed to stay on the air for almost a decade, with legions of dimwits dully mouthing the catchphrase of the week around the water cooler and hurf-durf laughing like they've said something just hilarious, oh my GAWD.
You know, maybe it's just too hard to watch a brilliantly-written comedy without a laugh track. I mean, you people have jobs and mortgages and important things to worry about, like the manufacturers of Crocs going out of business and which emasculated overmarketed idiot pop star will be best to stave off sexual curiosity in your girl children. Hell, I'm with you there—it's just crazy hard to know when to laugh without someone pushing a button on a panel to make robots laugh the way you're supposed to laugh. God forbid I have to draw on my own experiences, interests, and personality to know what I find funny. Time is money, people!
What do I know? People sat on their big asses and guffawed like hyaenas at Everybody Loves Raymond, which I watched a time or two out of curiosity, before having to switch off the television and lie on the floor with a cool damp towel across my forehead. That experience, at least, was useful to me as a writer, giving me an essential understanding of what drives people to suicide, but I'm still a little damaged and twitchy in the aftermath. It's not that I'm some effete middle-class borge who haughtily claims "oh, I only watch PBS" (and admits to watching Project Runway as if it's some hip and naughty, naughty little vice instead of yet another tiresome habit of effete middle-class borges)—I have seven episodes of Jackass on my DVR, for pete's sake. It's not dumb humor that makes me despair—it's humorless humor.
It's just, well, you watch something like Arrested Development and suddenly, it's so clear how very, very tired most TV is. I mean, there are people out there who still think The Simpsons is "edgy." Can you really name one edgy thing you've seen the writers on The Simpsons do in, say, the last five years? The once-rich characters have drifted aimlessly, being rewritten to suit one celebrity product-placement episode after another (hint: they're ALL celebrity product placement episodes now), the plots just plod, the dialogue is just one wannabe catchphrase after another or one more we're-so-clever metafictional rehash that's not nearly so funny as the writers think.
So Homer gets dumber for twenty years, that crazy Jerry gets in another zinger, and everybody still loves Raymond even though he makes me want to hurt small children and then myself, and Arrested Development goes off the air in three years. I'll give you one thing—it makes American politics make perfect sense.
Now my head hurts again. I'm going to get in the tub and read a book, and maybe drop the toaster in the water, too.
Huh huh, master of my domain!
Hurf-durf, yadda yadda yadda!
Har har, close-talker!
Where do they come up with this stuff!?
Hurf-durf, yadda yadda yadda!
Har har, close-talker!
Where do they come up with this stuff!?
You know, maybe it's just too hard to watch a brilliantly-written comedy without a laugh track. I mean, you people have jobs and mortgages and important things to worry about, like the manufacturers of Crocs going out of business and which emasculated overmarketed idiot pop star will be best to stave off sexual curiosity in your girl children. Hell, I'm with you there—it's just crazy hard to know when to laugh without someone pushing a button on a panel to make robots laugh the way you're supposed to laugh. God forbid I have to draw on my own experiences, interests, and personality to know what I find funny. Time is money, people!
What do I know? People sat on their big asses and guffawed like hyaenas at Everybody Loves Raymond, which I watched a time or two out of curiosity, before having to switch off the television and lie on the floor with a cool damp towel across my forehead. That experience, at least, was useful to me as a writer, giving me an essential understanding of what drives people to suicide, but I'm still a little damaged and twitchy in the aftermath. It's not that I'm some effete middle-class borge who haughtily claims "oh, I only watch PBS" (and admits to watching Project Runway as if it's some hip and naughty, naughty little vice instead of yet another tiresome habit of effete middle-class borges)—I have seven episodes of Jackass on my DVR, for pete's sake. It's not dumb humor that makes me despair—it's humorless humor.
It's just, well, you watch something like Arrested Development and suddenly, it's so clear how very, very tired most TV is. I mean, there are people out there who still think The Simpsons is "edgy." Can you really name one edgy thing you've seen the writers on The Simpsons do in, say, the last five years? The once-rich characters have drifted aimlessly, being rewritten to suit one celebrity product-placement episode after another (hint: they're ALL celebrity product placement episodes now), the plots just plod, the dialogue is just one wannabe catchphrase after another or one more we're-so-clever metafictional rehash that's not nearly so funny as the writers think.
So Homer gets dumber for twenty years, that crazy Jerry gets in another zinger, and everybody still loves Raymond even though he makes me want to hurt small children and then myself, and Arrested Development goes off the air in three years. I'll give you one thing—it makes American politics make perfect sense.
Now my head hurts again. I'm going to get in the tub and read a book, and maybe drop the toaster in the water, too.
