Be Excellent To Each Other

Actually, now that I've met you I'm happy to agree with Dave.

Bit of a resounding "meh" from me that last episode. And that American stig character is really fucking tiresome.

Agreed, after the awesome start we're back to panto..... but at least 'somewhat rejuvenated" and "higher budget" panto. I did genuinely lol a couple of times, despite the spirit-crushing contrived nature of it all.

I don't mind The American so much, but the celeb dying thing is getting fucking boring already. By ep 12 I am going to kill them all with hammers if they're still persisting with this.

Hoping for better things in ep 3.

Imagine being the poor bastard who just spent years of his working life on some hypercar, sweating over where to use every last hollow, titanium bolt and piece of carbon fibre in order to shed weight a gram or two at a time. And then on its most public debut they put an extra 50KG of lard in it just for LOLs.

I'm sure Clarkson weighs more than 50kg.

Yeah I did think that. Mind you it's often the way with motoring journos.

I remember being so pissed off with Car Magazine when they got their 50-something fat, post prandial office honcho to review the mighty 997.2 GT2-RS, instead of one of their young blades who could've done the thing some justice. IIRC he yarped on about how scared he was of it before quibbling about the interior

I love uber sports bikes like the GSXR but I wouldn't dream of heaving by fat arse into the postage stamp sized seat, less still review or test one. It's a young mans game.

Young men can't afford scary rides

Your Mum says they can.

I really liked both of them so far.

They're really pushing it, aren't they? I see about a dozen adverts a day for this right now.

If you buy anything from Amazon it's also all over the parcel tape they use.

I saw it on the side of a bus the other day.

I assume at some point our illustrious mods will split the Grand Tour stuff out into another thread.

A friend on Facebook suggests the play here, for Amazon, is getting a large demographic of people who previously hadn't set up TV streaming (males over 40, basically) to set up TV streaming. Once they get past that barrier -- buy a Fire TV or install the app for a games console or whatever -- Amazon can more easily sell them more streaming in the future. Canny take.

Only if it ever becomes a different show.

Surely a thread title edit is all that is necessary

Then strip all the Top Gear stuff out!

Anyway, Episide 2. I liked the loud car and the helicopters. It seemed to be paced better, too. The it with the spinny cars wasn't great, but seemed to be there for local flavour.

I liked the bit with Joey from Friends.

I never liked Friends.

More fool you.

Nah, it just grated on me. All of it.

I'm comfortable on my Island of Right.

Mali's right, it was awful. The kooky one with the guitar, the laughter track, the emotional content. Terrible. Bleurgh!

You can stay there with Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump.

Friends was brilliant, fools.

Yeah, I enjoyed Friends too, despite myself.

No. No it wasn't.

Yeah, that makes sense. A whole chunk of people will want to watch this who aren't going to be interested Man in a High Castle or whatever. I get the impression that Netflix doing Gilmore Girls or Fuller House is sort of the same idea.

I think brilliant is maybe pushing it, but I think it definitely had moments of brilliance. There was a prolonged period where it was the biggest show in the world, was paying all the money, and attracted some pretty sharp writers because of it. It was certainly too saccharine and it was often focus-grouped to death. (It also took a while at the beginning to find its feet and move beyond reliance on cliche and trope, as do many ensemble comedies.) But there was still a deep well of very good jokes in there.

Oh, that's a very sharp observation.

I enjoyed Friends.

What thread is this?

The model plane one, I think.

We have Amazon Prime as Mrs H signed up for it, but no way am I watching that boorish thuggish oaf Clarkson or adding to his viewing figures.

Top Gear turned to shit years ago (and very much on his watch), so I have no desire whatsoever to inflict 'Top Gear With More Money' on myself.

It was far better when they actually talked about normal cars in relatively normal ways. When did I stop watching it? Can't really remember, it was when they had that star in a reasonably priced car thing going on though.

Fuck yes. Canned laughter. Nuff said.
That's time you'll never get back, watching that inane shite.

It wasn't canned laughter, though.

Maybe I'm thinking of Cheers.
It's all the same shite to me.

Cheers also had a live audience. They announced it at the beginning of each show, I think.

"Cheers is filmed in front of a live studio audience"

I remember that much from my childhood!

I imagine Hearthly and Cavey are better catered for by Mrs Browns Boys.

It almost never is.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radi ... omplaining

Also, as that article has reminded me, both Blackadder and The Young Ones have laugh tracks. Almost all sitcoms before 2000 do.

Sitcoms are rarely ruined by laughter tracks. They're normally ruined by being shite.

But, y'know, humour is subjective and all that.

Ah well lol.
For me it was shit.

And in contrast, there is The Big Bang Theory. I was never a huge fan to begin with, but I started putting Season 9 (after skipping a few out I think) on through Netflix just as background and a few times, I've had to turn it off a few times mid-episode. It now seems to be just a regular sitcom now that it's all couples and they occasionally shoehorn some geek culture in there. However, it's still doing the same old jokes about Raj/India and Howard being Jewish, and for some reason, Stuart has now become the butt of everyone's jokes and seems to be universally looked down upon.

Not that this has much to do with Top Gear.

True. I can accept that Friends had some good writers and some alright jokes but it never had me actually laughing. I saw a few episodes and it made me just about smile once or twice per episode but mostly it made me feel very very bored. I think the laughter track jars when you're not finding it to be the single most hilarious thing you ever witnessed as the audience seemed to be at every single passable joke. Otherwise you don't notice it. Although with Friends I think it wasn't the laughing so much as the whooping or the "awww" noises.

Yes, I think sitcoms also suffer when longer-than-one-episode story arcs get put in, and then the humour drops away as the focus is lost.

Except for Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Because of the implication.

As I've always been a 'Frasier' fan (other than 'Sgt Bilko', the best US sitcom ever), one of my aims this year was to watch the whole of 'Cheers'. I've got to the middle of series five but am struggling as it hasn't aged very well. The scenes with Frasier and Lillith (and also, earlier on, Frasier and Diane) are about the only reason I might continue to slog through it. And you don't need to watch the backstory to watch and enjoy 'Frasier'.

Because rape jokes are funny?

I think this needs all splitting out into its own "Friends was absolute shite" thread.