Page 134 - Sitcoms News Today

>> dont you have a little too much penis to be wearing a dress like that? >> oh, my god. >> 2001, to have a transgender character was pretty groundbreaking, i think. >> i know. i know. i thought they were being very brave. and then of course when i turned out to be married to morgan fairchild, who was -- i really had to get my head around that one. >> you look beautiful, mom. ahem. >> you look beautiful, too, dad. >> what was the writing process like? did they keep updating the script? >> you kn...

Political. >> you still have 50 seconds left, mr. president. >> let me just sum up. on track, stay the course, a thousand points of light, stay the course. >> governor dukakis, rebuttal? >> i cant believe im losing to this guy. [ phone rings ] >> ill get it. >> its the garry shandling show. >> people were taking the old principles of comedy and trying to turn them into something new. we spent years and years watching sitcoms and dramas and talk shows by then, we knew them by heart, that if someb...

Nothing, but thats what they called it. the initial idea was larry david and jerry had an idea of two guys hangs out and talking about stuff. >> listen to this. marcy comes over and she tells me that her ex-boyfriend was over late last night and yadda yadda yadda, im really tired today. >> what do you think she was tired from? >> obviously the yadda yadda. >> larry david and jerry seinfeld, those two minds together, you know, thats just comedy dynamite. >> what do you think did it? can you take ...

Youre ruining this whole family. thats why we laugh. thats why the family sitcom has always prevailed. >> oh, i could just crawl into a hole and die. >> thats the second hole shes crawled into today. >> in the 50s, you get these sitcoms that, frankly, arent really trying to be that funny. >> nobody can make pancakes like mom. >> nobody can eat them like pop. >> these shows are presented by soap sellers, car sellers. they wanted their product to be nice, with no sharp edges, so it couldnt be that...

Boss is a [ bleep ]. if you write a joke about him and everyone laughs at him -- >> is that decaf? >> no, no, its regular. >> suddenly, you go from being his victim to being his captor. the joke is refiguring the scales of justice. >> when you were dismissing some of the staff, did you intend to fire me, too? especially me? im very sorry i troubled you. you little runt! >> early sitcoms were just about home life. i used to make the joke all the time in "ozzy and harriet," what did he do for a li...

>> "the cosby show" in the 80s normalizes the black experience in a way that was super important. that felt more like my family than what i heard the myth of the black family was. >> how are you going to get into college with grades like this? >> no problem. >> huh? >> see, im not going to college. >> damn right. >> we had "cosby show," family ties," and those families were saying, were all basically the same. >> it was a more conservative era, so, you had these upper middle class households who...

>> tuesday night between 8:00 and 9:00 is called the death spot, death to any program that dares to go head-on between abcs "happy days" and "laverne & shirley." >> "laverne & shirley" was one of the few sitcoms that debuted as number one. >> the absolute top number one show this season is "laverne & shirley." a seemingly harmless but essentially brainless exercise in adolescent silliness. >> you have to go all the way back to "i love lucy" to get the same sort of slapstick and physical comedy. ...

Because we had a new cast, but everyone loves us. >> you guys have been so nice to us during our stay. >> isnt that special. >> i am hans. >> and i am franz. >> and we just want to pump you up. >> a lot of things they could do on "saturday night live" they couldnt do on a sitcom. the humor was more daring and more satirical, and it was political. >> you still have 50 seconds left, mr. president. >> let me just sum up, on track, stay the course. a thousand points of light. stay the course. >> gov...

Brutal to numb my sensibilities and blast me into sweet oblivion. >> how about a boilermaker? >> make it a mimosa. >> we had the luck to be able to rotate cast, and every time we put somebody in, there were explosions. >> there was something very special about that setting, those characters, that i never got tired of writing that show. >> sophisticated surveys, telephonic samplings, test audiences. all of those things help to separate winners from losers and make midcourse corrections. but you c...

Watching sitcoms and dramas and talk shows, we knew them by heart that if somebody played on that and parodied it, we got it instantly. >> i appreciate you coming in under these conditions, lewis, i really do. you want to hold the credits? we were going to show the credits and you screwed that up because youre late. >> "the garry shandling show" was aware of the fact that it was a situation comedy. it highlighted the cliches in funny ways. >> are you looking into the camera? >> no. no, i didnt -...