Friday, August 21, 2015

i'm sick of it already

CBS's relentless promotion of its "Modern Family" wannabe personifies the adage, "Familiarity breeds contempt."
Posted by at

8 comments:

Sheila said...

Amen, Joe. I thought I was the only one. I cringe now whenever I see it - which is often!

7:29 AM
Kiki said...

Life in Pieces looks just awful. I only watched Modern Family a few times (oh, the joy of not having CBS ABC NBC but international channels!) and thought it was insulting and stereotypical. The flouncy gay guy! The Latin spitfire! (oh, I bet Rita Moreno is thinking "if only I were 70 years younger, I could have been that Sophia part") Ed O'Neill seemed to be the only one who keeps his integrity.

8:04 AM
Charlotte said...

To Kiki: I disagree. Ed O'Neill is an embarrassment on the show and yet everyone treats him as if he's some elder statesman among actors.

9:20 AM
b. tompkins said...

From the glimpse that I have of him in the ads, James Brolin looks frightening, as if he's straining to be funny.

10:38 AM
Brian Lucas said...

The network sitcoms are all pretty bad and even the ones that start off promising ultimately take a nosedive. I'm thinking of "The Big Bang Theory," which was so fresh and original during its first two seasons. Now it has morphed into just another variation on "Friends"/"Seinfeld." Personally, I'm weary of sitcoms about people just sitting around and hanging out.

10:47 AM
joe baltake said...

Excellent point, Brian. You couldn't be more right about "The Big Bang Theory," a show that I once compared to Howard Hawks' "Ball of Fire":

http://thepassionatemoviegoer.blogspot.com/2009/08/pleasant-surprise-chuck-lorres-hawksian.html

But it's lost its glow - another example of a show that should have gracefully bowed out a year or two ago but has now clearly worn out its welcome (undeserved Emmy nominations notwithstanding).

11:21 AM
Brian Lucas said...

Thanks. I'm also fascinated how a good show can debut and go on for a couple years without anyone acknowledging it in the media or any sizable audience watching it and then, as soon as it catches on, gaining attention and a wider audience, it almost immediately starts to go downhill in terms of quality and originality. "Seinfeld" may be a rare example of a show that improved with age (except for its final season when it was straining), but that's the only one that comes to mind.

11:26 AM
joe baltake said...

Brian: I'd add "Roseann" to your one-film list of a show that got better and more accomplished as time went on - again, except for its final two seasons or so when it was, as you put it, straining. "The Big Bang Theory" started to nosedive, in my opinion, when they decided to give Sheldon a romantic interest, something that never made sense, given the character's intense nerdom and sexual ambiguity. That made about as much sense as marrying off Howard. It's as if its makers felt compelled to bring some normalcy to its characters. And making Raj possibly gay remains a head-scratcher. But as you point out, as these dubious changes were made, the show's audience grew.

11:33 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)