#sienfield

I'm kinda tired of seeing those posts about "People: you should watch [sitcom]" "me watching [sitcom]" [Patrick Bateman gif]. There's not a ton of them but still... At first I thought it was just shitposting but I'm starting to think they're seeing it as serious criticism. A few at least.

It isn't and if you think it is, I think you're misunderstanding those shows. Now, I'm not saying there's a deeper literary value to Friends or that you're missing a layer of subtext in Modern Family or something but (in my opinion) you're judging a fish on it's climbing skills.

Those sitcoms never had as a goal to draw more and more people in. They weren't doing their best to be inventive with the characters and shake off the mold. Instead they did exactly the opposite: they stuck to the characters as they stood. The mold was a feature and not a bug.

Their fanbase stuck to them because of the feeling of familiarity. If you enjoy the show, you probably like the characters as people. Tuning in (or whatever iteration of it you did and/or do) felt like the diet version of hanging out with friends. No hankering for the next point in the plot, no curiosity about the continuation of the arc, just a bunch of people you like going about their lives while the world around them contorted itself like a Russian gymnast to put them in interesting situations. You could roughly scetch out the character's response to everything in the episode if you got told it beforehand.

Now back to the reason why "I'm not laughing at this show so it's a bad comedy show" is, in my biased opinion, not a valid criticism: They're not written to have overt humor in them, at least as their cornerstone. They're written for the in-jokes, which become in-jokes through the laugh-track or just plain repetition. The positive emotions from the show rely on you being 'buddy-buddy' with the characters so if you think Monica is a bitch, you're not gonna like Friends. If you think Sheldon is a human-zoo-version of a scientist, the Big Bang Theory is going to elicit more groans than laughs. If you don't find Kramer's spasm-y mannerisms endearing, you're losing at least a quarter of the show's 'fun' (more on a 'bad' episode). If Paralta is not your kind of person, Brooklyn 99 is not going to be comedy but torment.

“RESPECTIVUS” For the Rest of Us” A New Holiday Coming Soon

In 1966, Maulana Kereuga, a member of the Black Panther Party (the one that Forest Gump messed with), invented a holiday to celebrate African culture in the United States. “Kwanzaa” became the alternate secular Christmas for some black Americans, but not all. The citizens of Africa think Kwanzaa is a made-up hot-mess of a holiday and had never heard of it until the late 60s. They celebrate…