9 TV Shows Masquerading In the Wrong Genres
7. Mike & Molly
Alleged Genre: Comedy
Actual Genre: Apocalyptic Fiction
Back when televisions were introduced to the homes of Americans in the 1940s, do you think that anyone imagined a day when the general public would embrace a sitcom about two morbidly obese blue collar workers who break tables, joke about calorie counting and trade unfunny one-liners about pubic hair hygiene with their family members? Probably not, and for that -- not to mention Mike & Molly's impressive lack of humor, Movieline award this CBS sitcom a new home in the apocalyptic fiction genre. Enjoy!
8. The View
Alleged Genre: Talk show
Actual Genre: Japanese game show
You never know what you're getting when you turn on The View, aside from four to six women talking over each other for five minute intervals in between commercial breaks. (In fact, maybe you can deduce that you are watching a Japanese game show when you are relieved to finally see that Metamucil ad.) Barbara Walter's morning variety hour includes a mix of original stunts (Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar walking out in the middle of a segment with Bill O'Reilly), drunken midgets, Holocaust arguments, verbal knife play (the Hasselbeck-O'Donnell split screen segment of '07), accidental comedy and quizzes galore. America, your own daytime Japanese game show.
9. $#*! My Dad Says
Alleged Genre: Comedy
Actual Genre: Whatever the opposite of comedy is.
Sh*t My Dad Says, the Twitter feed: Funny. $#*! My Dad Says, the CBS series starring William Shatner which was recently renewed for a second season: Not at all funny. Here's looking towards early second season cancellation, folks.
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Comments
"Whatever the opposite of comedy is."
Tragedy.
Since I can't get to YouTube from work and I don't watch "Hoarders" regularly, I did not know about the cat corpse story. I didn't think anything in this article could be worse than that until I read that "Sh*t My Dad Says" was renewed for a second season. Blech and double blech.
By the 1950s America was ready to embrace a sitcom about one morbidly obese blue collar worker...
I was thinking the same thing. And wasn't the first big star of a sitcom show overweight? She ran her own studio. Her name and show escape me at the moment.
Lucille Ball was not overweight.
You forgot one that's even more obvious than Nurse Jackie:
Breaking Bad
Alleged genre: Drama
Actual genre: Comedy
OK that does indeed make a lot of sense dude.
web-privacy.edu.tc
Glee
Alleged genre: Musical-Comedy
Actual Genre: Torture Porn.
You forgot LOST as well.
Alleged Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Actual Genre: Soap Opera (with a touch of smoke monster & ghosts)
I would have never pegged The View as a Japanese gameshow until now. The only thing missing is someone being unceremoniously dumped into a pool of water every now and again.
I totally agree with Nurse Jackie. Whoever thought that treating this show like a comedy is a good idea is seriously screwed up.
Did you get the Jersey Shore - Antropological Study idea from Bones?
I would have never pegged The View as a Japanese gameshow until now. The only thing missing is someone being unceremoniously dumped into a pool of water every now and again.
i've never laughed during Hoarders---i would classify it under horror.
Nurse Jackie is funny, but it's very black humor, and it isn't funny often enough to be technically a comedy. Isn't there a genre called "dramedy"? I believe Gilmore Girls was known as a dramedy.
Most current non-theatrically filmed comedies (those aren't "tracks", they're real people laughing, silly ill informed detractors) are incorrectly identified as situation comedies. Most of them, such as Modern Family or Always Sunny are more in that Dramady genre.
Lost never claimed to be a sci-fi thriller. From day one the writers said it was a character drama, that has some sci-fi and action bits in it
Yes, a character-driven thriller/drama - I remember that's how it was described in one of the early interviews I read, but a lot of shows/movies never come out precisely on screen as they are described by the creators in interviews (some of the time they are misleading unintentionally). Also, there's a difference between a soap opera and a character-driven drama, which I'm sure you already know.
Fact is, if you take away the sci-fi/thriller mythology elements - LOST becomes nothing more than an Island-set soap opera (a lot of hardcore fans I know admit this and it's not neccassarily a bad thing either). Throughout the first 4 seasons, we these band of plane crash survivors - who are trying to build this little society and trying to learn to live together, learning to love and care for each other whilst awaiting rescue and dealing with their personal issues, meanwhile, there is all this mysterious supernatural/sci-fi danger around them - doesn't that sound like an Island-set soap opera to you (minus the sci-fi/danger elements)?.
But what made LOST, LOST was the freaky sci-fi/thriller mythology elements, obviously the characters and their inter-relationships were a big part of its appeal and popularity, certainly its initial appeal anyway (and the show and its web of mysteries would have been meangingless without rich characters), but the mysterious mythology elements is what kept LOST as a sustained hit. LOST continued to be a sensation because of the mysteries, everybody wanted to solve them (even my grandmother did lol). Not the soap operatic drama between characters. I doubt the show would have been as globally popular without the mystery thriller elements.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to criticize LOST by calling it a soap opera, like I said, being a soap opera isn't a bad thing. I'm just saying, at the beginning, the show came across as this equally balanced character-driven soap operatic drama & mysterious extraordinary thriller, then descended into a wierd sci-fi/full-blown soap opera show around Season 3 (some would say earlier) because the writers had no end date, so they kept having to pad stuff out and added needless emo/angst/soap operatic elements for the characters. For example, they went tediously overboard with the love triangle and the Jin & Sun story and dragged them out, too much back and forth with the characters which is a thing soap operas do A LOT. There was other stuff too. Just to be clear, Season 3 was for me when it got full-blown soap opera.
That was just my observation from watching the show. To each their own I guess. My sister loved the fact that it got more soap opera-y as it progressed. I didn't mind it to be honest, but I think it applies to this article.
Whoops, left this part out.
The basic point I was trying to make was that the sci-fi thriller/mythology elements was window dressing for the fact it was a soap opera from the description I gave you about the show from the first 4 seasons (in the 2nd paragraph). Even though those elements became the trademark of the show for fans, it didn't try to hide the fact that it was a soap opera at heart about these characters and their issues. But for me, it got too soap operatic as it progressed. That's my point.
Hmm it seems like your site ate my first comment (it was extremely long)
so I guess I'll just sum it up what I wrote and say, I'm thoroughly enjoying your blog.
I too am an aspiring blog blogger but I'm still new to everything.
Do you have any tips for first-time blog writers?
I'd definitely appreciate it.