The rash of comedies that came after Seinfeld... but there was only one Seinfeld.

But Boyle is completely wasted.

Yeah, I'm happy with that. Stick Becker in the same category.

DUD

bizarrely it has won many awards. Unfortunately I see it alot as my local affiliate sticks it between eps of the simpsons. I spend most of the time scowling at the tv.

I prefer my funny to be "funny because it's ridiculous and could never happen in a million years"

x-post

I mean how many times can we see the husband-as-stupid and in-laws-as-annoying schtick?

it's cringeworthy.

the best character is the father-in-law, frank. he is great. there's an x-files episode he stars in and he's great in that as well.

I kind of like this show. I mean, it IS very repetitive. Ray always does something dumb and his wife is sort of hoity-toity about it. But at the same time, it's all very self-mocking. I wouldn't compare it to Married with Children or Titus or Malcolm because those shows all have a tendency to make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. ELR has its serious moments but not ROSEANNE serious. And yes, the family has problems, but not the level of problems my own family has/had, so it's nice and escapist that way.

I wish Life With Bonnie were a little funnier. When they improv their lines, it can be pretty funny.. but you have a lot to sit through to get to the funny sometimes. Bonnie Hunt is the same as Ray Romano to me .. funny person, dud of a show...

Patricia Heaton is pretty hot, considering she's 45 or something.

like there's some psychological depth that reflects real things -- when ray fouls up the housework she calls him on it as an avoidance mechanism isntead of it being a gag about "oh men are no good at housework!" and etc.

I hate Everybody loves Raymond. Because of this, I haven't seen all that many episodes. I'm not sure I've ever seen an ep in entirety, come to think of it. So I could be missing something, I suppose, but I don't have the patience to find out.

I don't go out of my way to watch ELR, but it seems to be on all the time, so it's not like you have to look for it.

This is another reason why I dislike "Everybody Loves Raymond".

Yes, they are.

How?

How are they considered sitcoms when Arrested Development isn't considered one?

Who said Arrested Development isn't a sitcom? NOT ME. I just think it is an overrated sitcom.

I don't really think of Arrested Development as a sitcom....

-- nabisco, Wednesday, July 25, 2007 7:49 PM (Yesterday)

Can you guys go back to talking about Everybody Loves Raymond so that you're not ruining shows that I actually like?

They're all sitcoms. AD and The Office play with the formula a bit, and AD a bit more than most shows, but 30 Rock is a pretty traditional sitcom.

yeah what exactly defines a situation comedy? When I was a kid I thought it meant a thirty minute long, ostensibly funny show with a live studio audience or (more likely) laugh track. I guess it could be much broader than that. Like, was "Moonlighting" a sitcom?

Nabisco, of course is the authority on such issues, ELR-love and all. :p

AD is a sitcom, but not as we knew it. Laugh tracks are not necessary for sitcoms, but a repeatable situation and attempts to be funny are.

Yeah, generally when I think sitcom I think "laugh track".

I actually remember that specific Frasier episode mentioned upthread, the ski lodge one, as being the point where I thought to myself, "this programme has become fucking shit, and I'm not going to watch it anymore". That must be the most precise, clear-cut example of shark-jumping ever.

Fuck all you guys, seriously.

"Life is like an unfunny version of Everybody Love Raymond"

All those shows are surely "situation comedies," yeah. But it seems sensible to differentiate a little between half-hour comedy shows and the particular weirdo form of the traditional studio-stage sitcom, which is frankly bizarre and highly constructed and stilted and stagey, and has its own strange system of conventions and repetitions that are just plain not really shared by these newish half-hour situation comedy thingummies.

(One main one would be that AD or 30Rock are very much like television, whereas the trad sitcom is still really theatrical -- set up and acted like a play, on a stage, with the sound of an audience laughing around you.)

more "Still Standing" quotes plz

i really like everybody loves raymond. a lot of people i know don't like it, but the more i watch it the more i'm sort of in awe of it. such a great cast...also it's very dark...the treachery of family relationships...some episodes get even more uncomfortable than like curb your enthusiasm to me...lots of anger too.

the only ELR plot I can remember off the top of my head is the episode where the kid writes a story called "The Angry Family" and the whole family goes into counseling; that was pretty funny. But at the end they revealed that the kid had just written it based on a TV show, which was kinda lame.

AD or 30Rock are very much like television, whereas the trad sitcom is still really theatrical

I'm not sure that's a useful distinction, since so much television has always been like theater, either like golden age sitcoms like "Lucy" or just straight-up variety shows on a stage. So what does it mean to be "like television"?

the only ELR plot I can remember off the top of my head is the episode where the kid writes a story called "The Angry Family" and the whole family goes into counseling; that was pretty funny. But at the end they revealed that the kid had just written it based on a TV show, which was kinda lame.

But what if the show was "Everybody Loves Raymond" itself? OMGWTFPDQ TWILIGHT ZONE BOZO BUCKETS

"i really like everybody loves raymond. a lot of people i know don't like it, but the more i watch it the more i'm sort of in awe of it. such a great cast...also it's very dark...the treachery of family relationships...some episodes get even more uncomfortable than like curb your enthusiasm to me...lots of anger too."

this is how i feel. but i am captain save-a-ray all over this thread:

i must be crazy cuz i love raymond AND the king of queens. i love the episodes that are just total psycho-dramas. like eugene o'neill but funny. plus, it helps if yer stoned. or so i've heard. there was an episode where ray and his wife were fighting on the floor and it was some of the best slapstick i've seen in years. plus, chris elliot as the weirdo brother-in-law is priceless.

-- scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, March 4, 2004 2:55 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Link

i've come a long way too. the urge to kill people on t.v. and movie threads on ile is waning in me. it's all good. just don't revive the mad t.v. thread.

ugh. Did I start that one? I very well may have.

heh... I started one of three "I hate Mad TV" threads.

i know where you live.

Look, one big reason people instinctively hate Everybody Loves Raymond is that it's called EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND. EVERYBODY! The natural response is "Well, I don't love that fucker! Leave me out of this already." It's like there's been this galaxy-wide People's Choice Awards that everybody else got to vote in but me.

Umm, Kenan, point taken that lots of television formats are still stagey (like talk shows and whatnot), but I don't see how that muddies the distinctions between these two types of comedy:

One kind = voice-over, quick movements between scenes and settings, montage, pre-planned single-camera work, compression of narrative time -- all these are conventions of TV and, in different ways, film, and can be found in TV dramas and such. The Office is a wild card here in that it is actively aping the form of another TV medium, the reality show

Another kind = actors on sound stage. Multiple cameras get moved between in relation to actors' performance. Very few settings. The whole space between commercials may well be dedicated to one scene in one setting, without time compression, with the writing forced to move the characters in and out of the room as needed. You can't toss out a gag and then run away from it.

I think part of Everybody Loves Raymond's success (especially with older people) had to do with it REALLY going for that three-act theatrical structure, where it could reasonably get through like 7 minutes in real-time with just family members moving in and out of the living room and kitchen -- i.e., traditional old-school play-style sitcom, a style whose conventions are actually eroding as new sitcoms play around with the form more

Neither 30 Rock, Earl, the Office, nor (especially) Arrested Development would make much sense trying to do something like this -- keeping on one scene/stage for an entire segment. They just don't work that way.

PS -- ha, Martin, that's actually ALREADY how the title works -- the hidden bleak barb in the title "Everybody Loves Raymond" is that it's kind of from the perspective of his brother's bitching! (I think he originally said it, sarcastically, in the opening -- like "yeah, sure, everybody loves RAYMOND, ya bastards.")

But they do all depend on familiarity with the characters who will do predictable things, which I suppose is mainly what I was thinking of when I contended that of course they are all sitcoms.

But again, AD is on the edges of that, because it depends on the characters being predictably unpredictable.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000Y47.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Yeah, but that's just true.

yeah I think "Everybody Loves Raymond" isn't supposed to be taken literally, it's not exactly a jovial let's-all-pat-that-party-animal-Ray-on-the-back atmosphere on the show

100,000 Raymond Fans Can't Be Wrong

wow this revive really took it there

the original intro that sets up the title:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Xz6wOAIrX4

season two variation with flying people:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XrYHE9_fRXU

every once in a while there's some really bizarre, almost surreal episodes thrown in that i always find odd/cool...like the one time where robert's new girlfriend is set up as a great/amazing looking/cool new gf...then suddenly at the end there's this reveal scene where her apartment has literally like 1000s of frogs in glass cages in it...

...or the one where marie makes a sculpture that looks like a giant vagina.

lol wait the only one i really remember is kind of similar where someone meeets this really great girl but she ends up like eating flies or something???

Same one, I think -- Ray keeps saying he saw her eat a fly, Robert doesn't believe him, finally flips on a light in her bedroom and sees frogs everywhere. I believe there is also a coda where the fly story is perceived as a cover-up for Robert just being gay.

also louis was talking about stock characters, but that's exactly why i love this show...is that they are very easily identifiable early on as stock sitcom characters - lazy husband, nagging put-up wife, meddling mother, crotchety dad, etcetc, but then the show keeps showing them up as truly bizarre and sort of twisted people over the accumulation of moments and situations throughout the shows run....it's probably one of the shows that most rewards seeing a lot and a lot of episodes on daily re-runs...because there's moments that humanize the "bad" characters and show the more "noble" characters to be just as petty as the good ones...

xxxxxxpost
Sure, I know how the title works in the context of the show, but still, every time I hear it, it bugs me. Especially since, you know, "everybody" DOES love ELR.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/nobodys-watching-the-strange-genius-of-the-fourth,42394/

I still don't want to watch Til Death but this makes it sound a little more interesting.

Bumper sticker i saw the other day: "I'd rather be watching Everybody Loves Raymond".

ha I didn't realize I had started this thread. I must have been in an Alex in NYC mood that day.

I've barely even heard of this show ('Til Death), but wow.

what is the only sitcom to feature two cast members arrested for acts of 'lewd conduct' in an adult movie theater?

Designing Women?

did we have a 'til death season four discussion anywhere on ilx?

almost as bad as friends and what a pretentious title to start with as it is a false statement because so many hate him!

My mum used to love this show.