Today in class we watched three clips from different movies/shows. We thought about different types of comedy as well, alternative comedy, anecdotal comedy, black comedy, anti humor, parodies, mockumentaries, and sitcoms. We asked questions like what are the conventions of these smaller comedy genres and what is the tone. First we watched Everybody Loves Raymond. We watched the kitchen fire scene. It was a very simple scene, and it was a slice of life kind of genre/family sitcom. It's about a stupid husband and smart wife that makes wives feel good. There was a laugh track so the show can tell you when to laugh. There was dramatic irony when Raymond is unaware of the fire but we can see it spreading. The kitchen is made to look messy and lived in so the middle class mom audience can watch it and relate to the house. Next we watched, Oh Louie, and once again there was a super annoying overused laugh track and also a dumb husband who is being corrected by his wife. There is situational irony in both this show and Everybody Loves Raymond. Then there is a sort of 4th wall break in Oh Louie and it becomes a video of him trying to make a sitcom and making fun of that genre. Lastly we watched a clip from Louie where his sister is having a baby. It doesn’t have a laugh track and is actually way more funny in my opinion because watching something that has a perfect nuclear family is pretty boring and doesn’t give much depth to characters.
Class today made me think about how when I was a kid I used watch the show Full House every morning at my aunt's house. I don’t remember ever really enjoying that much but I remember feeling more neutral towards it and it was something brainless to watch. Today I tried to watch it again just to see, and now that I know those laugh tracks aren’t really people it made the show even worse than I’ve ever thought of it. Shows that have laugh tracks have definitely been ruined for me by this lesson, but luckily I never watched man shows like that anyway.
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