“I wish that life came with a laugh track. That way people who can't see how funny life really is can at least pretend they get it.”
Tony Figueroa
We are the only country in the world that uses laugh tracks on comedy shows when they are not filmed in front of a live audience. It seems like it's done just so the stupid people won't feel bad, or dare I say, stupid when they don't get the joke.
I have a friend whom once missed pronounced “Sit-Com” by adding an "H". He paused when he realized what he just said, and responded with, "You know what? Freud once said, there are no accidents".
The fate of the Sit-Com is uncertain. This is sad, painful, and concerning to me.
Sad, because my goal in life is to write, produce and star in my own sit-com.
Painful because most of the sitcoms that we have left are just bad. It's painful to even watch them. No new ideas, bad acting, and bad writing. Instead of a plot they string together a bunch of sexual innuendoes and call it “sophisticated”. That's not a sit-com. That's a burlesque show.
For example, the girl with the large breasts is dumb and the girl with the small breasts is smart. But the girl with the small breasts is still jealous of the girl with the large breasts because she has large breasts. I guess that's more sophisticated than what we did in the old days when the blond was dumb and the brunette was smart. Or we see, Enter smart black guy. He greets stupid white guy. Within a few seconds we hear, “You know, some of my best friends are black”.
All of this concerns me, so I have to ask, “Where are today’s Norman Lears, Larry Gelbarts and Susan Harriss? People who used comedy to talk about war, prejudice, and the issues of the day”. Now don't shout out your answers, it’s a rhetorical question. I know where they are. They're telling stories in coffeehouses. They're making underground comedy albums that make fun of the current administration. They're in 99 seat houses doing controversial plays. They’re everywhere just not on TV. Why? Some say that it’s the dumming down of the TV viewer who would rather see a bikini clad girl in a tank filled with electric eels or a guy eating goat testicles than something that requires them to think. In the process, this puts talented actors and writers out of work. Others feel that in this current political climate anything topical especially when it is mocking or criticizing the current administration is considered dissent, treasonous or just down right Un-American. We can debate this forever, but the third and most practical reason is that this is a business and topical sit-coms do not do well in syndication where the money is.
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