So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

LizzieMaine said:

That show really bugged me -- it's all well and good to parody the cliches of the family sitcom, but it should have parodied the clean-cut upper-middle-class cliches of the genre (the 90s animated sitcom "Daria" was a perfect example of how to do this well) without all the dumb working-class caricatures. Satire is supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. If it goes the other way, it's not satire, it's mean-spirited ridicule. Ridicule isn't funny.

This is my biggest beef with too much comedy of the last thirty years. It points downward from a position of privilege toward the less privileged, and that misses the whole point of comedy. Knocking a king off his throne is funny. Pulling the chair out from under the guy who cleans the king's slopjar isn't.

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The Bundys seemed to be launched just as a rebellion against the cheesy Cosby/intact family-"genre". Succesfully, especially in old Germany.

Similar to 1981 in Germany, when Horst Schimanski shocked the middle-aged Tatort-audience! It was a reckoning with the 70s.

Trenchfriend said:

The Bundys seemed to be launched just as a rebellion against the cheesy Cosby/intact family-"genre".

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I wasn't really interested in watching the show, but what little I did see I didn't find particularly funny. By taking stereotypes to the extreme it gave people the ability to look down on a fictional family. Nobody seemed to notice that if the stereotypes were dialed back a little, it was actually the average viewer who was being made fun of and by watching the program they were paying to be insulted.

And I forgot to mention the most important point.
The big difference between original tone and german synchronization (not voice-over!) of US-comedy series.

"Married... with children" and much more "Hogan's Heroes" is relatively senseless slapstick with slapstick-talking and flat-joking, in original tone.
But in german synchro, it's of course a totally other way of talking. The talking is much more earnest and the joking is often very different and badass german style. The synchro often sits perfectly on the acting.

And all that together gives a real change of meaning to the scenery. Sometimes totally different impression. The slapstick is eliminated as much as possible.
Hogan's Heroes got two german synchros. The early, boring first was not succesfull and soon forgotten. But the later second is a synchro of the century and such a thing will probably never repeat. They ignored the original tone and gave the protagonists totally other conversations! And all the slapstick was gone.
You really feel, as you would see a badass german comedy show with curious american-style scenery.

I've often read about the way Hogan and company were handled on German TV, and turning it into broad satire for a German audience is really the only way that show could be done in Germany. In the US it occasionally verged into straight adventure/espionage drama, but that element in that setting would probably not translate well.

Military comedies in general are a good example of how the power balance in satire works: all military comedies are, first and foremost, a satire of the military power structure, and indirectly a satire of any authoritarian power structure. You will never have a successful service comedy where the comedy comes from an aristocratic officer tormenting those under his command -- unless that officer is shown up somewhere along the line as a poltroon, such as was done in "Blackadder." Far more often, you get a structure where you have a non-com like Sgt. Bilko who puts things over on the officers -- but when he tries to con his own men, he always ends up getting it in the neck. If Bilko cons Doberman out of his paycheck in a crooked dice game, it isn't funny -- unless you know Doberman is going to get that paycheck back by somehow humiliating Bilko, who is, after all, in a position of power that oppresses Doberman. But when Bilko puts one over on the Colonel, you don't need to see the Colonel turn the tables on Bilko for the comedy to work, because the Colonel represents the ultimate power that oppresses both Bilko and his men, and seeing that power challenged is satisfying to the audience. (For a show about the Army produced in the 1950s, "Bilko" is astonishingly Marxist in its point of view. No wonder Nat Hiken was in "Red Channels.")

Satire always has to move from a dynamic of lesser power triumphing over greater power, because otherwise the audience subconsciously senses the exploitation going on, and you don't get your laugh. Unless the audience is OK with exploitation, which is sort of the situation you get nowadays.

"Married With Children" would have been a far funnier show if it had taken the idea of satirizing the smug entitlement of the typical '80s bourgeois TV family and making the Bundys a social-climbing super-preppy family who let the shameless striving behind the smiling mask show thru. Think of a show about Mr. Drysdale from "The Beverly Hillbillies," without the Hillbillies and focusing entirely on his home life.

I don’t recall watching an episode of “Married, With Children” start to finish. It aired when I lived without TV; didn’t even own one of things. But the impression I got from what little I knew of the show was of white working-class stiffs poking a little fun at themselves, not unlike Jeff Foxworthy’s shtick. I don’t recall any white working-class stiffs taking offense at it. None I knew, anyway,

I’m reminded of an odd but decent fellow of my acquaintance who for most of his life had been seen as something of a weirdo. He came to embrace it, as though to say, “fine, you think I’m weird, I’ll show you weird. I’ll wear makeup and paint my fingernails and occasionally put on a dress.”

Turned out he was something of a trendsetter.

I thank the TV gods that I have no idea what you're all talking about.

Lean'n'mean said:

I thank the TV gods that I have no idea what you're all talking about.

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One point is, that the Bundys in german synchronization were more bad-ass joking than in original tone. That brought the enormous succes in Germany. It was a revolution in the comedy genre. People talking, joking, ranting and swearing realistic, like they do at home behind the doors.
Kelly was "pumpkin" in original tone and "dumbass/dimwit" in german synchro.

Gee, a lot of negativity for Al Bundy and family!

I saw, and loved, the show back in the late 1980s and Al Bundy was an cultural icon for me. I was working, pre college, in a supermarket and taking cr*p from customers and management so the show made sense to me and I thought it was very funny.

I lived in Germany and we didn't get US AFNTV so had to put up with American shows on German TV dubbed into German. While it certainly helped me to learn the language I hated the stupid German voices that my favorite characters 'spoke' in. Went back to Germany a few years ago, watched some local TV and same old thing! Give me the 'pumpkin' version anytime!

We had a German exchange student with us for a year and his preconceived notion of the "typical American Family" to build upon was the Bundy family. Although he was pretty sophisticated for a 16 year old, I think that he really did anticipate that his host parents would be at least a little Al & Peg. We found that more amusing than offensive when we found out, and we all had a good laugh over it.

I got him back, though, when I nicknamed him, "Uter," after the German foreign exchange student on the Simpsons. As a self respecting Prussian, he was of course outraged at being tagged as an overweight chocolate gobbling Bavarian.

Him: "Ach! Dat is a STEREOTYPE !!"

Me: "A stereotype? On the SIMPSONS?? No way."

The kicker is that, in Germany, Uter is Swiss: chocolate obsessed, lederhosen clad and overweight ties into the German stereotype of the Swiss.

As a German, I would think, that Roseanne's family was more near to reality than the Bundys, from the 80s/90s perspective?

LizzieMaine said:

Far more often, you get a structure where you have a non-com like Sgt. Bilko who puts things over on the officers -- but when he tries to con his own men, he always ends up getting it in the neck. If Bilko cons Doberman out of his paycheck in a crooked dice game, it isn't funny -- unless you know Doberman is going to get that paycheck back by somehow humiliating Bilko, who is, after all, in a position of power that oppresses Doberman. But when Bilko puts one over on the Colonel, you don't need to see the Colonel turn the tables on Bilko for the comedy to work, because the Colonel represents the ultimate power that oppresses both Bilko and his men, and seeing that power challenged is satisfying to the audience.

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Bilko was a favourite of my Father, but I could never get it, that is, until Top Cat came along. Bilko in cartoon form.

Lean'n'mean said:

I thank the TV gods that I have no idea what you're all talking about.

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You're a kindred spirit, it's all gibberish to me to.

Trenchfriend said:

One point is, that the Bundys in german synchronization were more bad-ass joking than in original tone. That brought the enormous succes in Germany. It was a revolution in the comedy genre. People talking, joking, ranting and swearing realistic, like they do at home behind the doors.
Kelly was "pumpkin" in original tone and "dumbass/dimwit" in german synchro.

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German "bad-ass" humor can make all sorts of unpleasant stuff hilarious. I'd love to see an ironic German synchro of "Queen For a Day". Perhaps directed by Rosa von Prauenheim. That would be a hoot!

I feel like getting dry cough. Anyone on the other side of the Atlantic, too?

The Chicago Sun Times issue this morning appeared with pink sheets in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Day.
Fine, but to decipher the resultant script was near impossible this dawn, so I chucked the paper.
I heard on the radio last nite that Kansas City Quarterback Patrick Mohomes got kneecapped;
and, the Chicago Teachers Union rejected the last city offer.
Sitting at Starbucks waiting for the train sipping coffee without the paper seems unnatural.

Harp said:

The Chicago Sun Times issue this morning appeared with pink sheets in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Day.
Fine, but to decipher the resultant script was near impossible this dawn, so I chucked the paper.
I heard on the radio last nite that Kansas City Quarterback Patrick Mohomes got kneecapped;
and, the Chicago Teachers Union rejected the last city offer.
Sitting at Starbucks waiting for the train sipping coffee without the paper seems unnatural.

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In the pre-internet days, the inter-dealer financial markets published daily "offering sheets" aggregating all the dealers' positions (what they owned). These were, effectively, pamphlets using onion-skin paper with small print and cheap ink - they were meant to be used that day and tossed (although, most firms kept them to have a historical record of prices - hence, they'd be piled up in corners of trading rooms everywhere). The worse part though was that they were printed on different colored paper - pink for penny stocks, yellow for corporate bonds, blue for municipal bonds and green for something I forgot.

One of my first jobs on the trading desk was to go through these sheets each morning to highlight offerings that matched our long or short positions and do a first "vetting." None of them were easy on the eyes, but the blue municipal bond sheets with black small and smudgy ink were the worst. I had 20/20 vision in those days and still kept a ruler and magnifying glass in my desk as, sometimes, that was the only way to tell an "8" from a "3," etc.

That was in the '80s. It is absolutely amazing where we've come. I can now sit in my house (as I do, since I work from home) and pull up all that information and more on-line, updated in real time and sort, aggregate, etc., to my heart's content.

Good relaxing strategy:

Cup of tea and little french songs.

It used to be a common thing to print the early editions of newspapers, coming out around 9pm on the night before the date on the masthead, on pink paper, or at least the front and back pages, to make it easy to tell them apart from the various editions issued later in the day. Later editions might be printed on other colors -- the "Peach Edition Racing Final," the "Green Streak Stock Final," "The Blue Streak Sports Final," etc, and these colors varied from city to city. But the early "Pink Edition" was a standard, at least among city papers in the East, well into the 1950s.

Man, trillions of chestnuts! I had to go slalom around the trampled/overdriven mess on the way to supermarket.

Fading Fast said:

In the pre-internet days, the inter-dealer financial markets published daily "offering sheets" aggregating all the dealers' positions (what they owned). These were, effectively, pamphlets using onion-skin paper with small print and cheap ink - they were meant to be used that day and tossed (although, most firms kept them to have a historical record of prices - hence, they'd be piled up in corners of trading rooms everywhere). The worse part though was that they were printed on different colored paper - pink for penny stocks, yellow for corporate bonds, blue for municipal bonds and green for something I forgot.

One of my first jobs on the trading desk was to go through these sheets each morning to highlight offerings that matched our long or short positions and do a first "vetting." None of them were easy on the eyes, but the blue municipal bond sheets with black small and smudgy ink were the worst. I had 20/20 vision in those days and still kept a ruler and magnifying glass in my desk as, sometimes, that was the only way to tell an "8" from a "3," etc.

That was in the '80s. It is absolutely amazing where we've come. I can now sit in my house (as I do, since I work from home) and pull up all that information and more on-line, updated in real time and sort, aggregate, etc., to my heart's content.

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The internet age has brought the world closer than ever before. It has decimated retail shopping, but it has improved lives through countless benefits. There's something that is easily forgotten, especially when you see squillionaires that made their squillions because of the concept of www. One man, one man with a vision, who made the early computer, that man was Alan Turing. Far from getting rich through royalties, he got persecuted because of his sexuality. Turing took his own life aged just 42.

The wheel turns and life changes, lessons are learned, well sometimes lessons are learned. Nowadays same sex couples can get married in our country. But what about Turing's computer. Step up Tim Berners-Lee, who in 1991 came up with the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee could have amassed a fortune that would rival the economies of some countries, but he he didn't, like many a philanthropist before him, he patented the idea and then gave it to the world for free.

Newspapers once had multiple editions, but getting those editions to the streets was a logistical nightmare, but no more. You might read your newspaper online, but if you still like the hard copy, chances are it's not the product of the paper that you are reading. Here in the UK, national newspapers can, and do, download their entire content to local newspapers, who then print it off. So much easier, and distribution so easy that it's given to carriers rather than a dedicated newspaper fleet. Deadlines are now in the early hours rather than the night before, and all because of Tim Berners-Lee generosity. I should be grateful, but the internet is a double edged sword and I sometimes hanker for what was. There's no pleasing some, is there?