After seeing all these people who are convinced this finale was a great episode, I decided to run my tape again. Who knows? Maybe I was laughing and didnt know it.
Nothing doing. I watched and watched and the most I'm aware of was a slight smile. And I became much more aware of the laugh track, too. And it did not synchronize with anything funny in the script. It was almost as if some technician was sitting there, counting seconds: one-two-three, punch the button, one-two-three, punch the button. I challenge anyone to note each laugh track laugh and then stop and look at what was said just at that moment. Actually, they could have programmed those laughs on a computer.
I admit to being puzzled. How could it be that UN-funny by accident?And so now I'm starting to think it was made deliberately unfunny. As if they were saying "Years ago audiences would turn us off unless we put quality on, but the standards have dropped so much we could win our slot with anything at all." That the whole thing is not an attempt at comedy at all but a statement on the FAKE comedy which has replaced the original thing. Newton Minow once called TV the "great wasteland" and a recent article on him said it was not better now. Oddly enough, when he made the original statement, there were things on like Omnibus and Ernie Kovacs. Try to find something on commercial TV at that level now. You can't.
So the laugh is on us. As TV watchers, we no longer have any taste or standards. We sit there grinning, waiting for any garbage to be put on our table which we will gratefully gulp down with a silly grin.
Well.....yes and no. Just the revulsion expressed here shows that maybe this view of society is shallow. It is the world as seen through the lens of marketing types, while meanwhile people with working minds are sitting out here waiting for some kind of quality which is less and less available, with cable and satellite TV perhaps making the situation worse by enlarging the amount of content that must be televised. How can you have high standards AND fill all those hours? You end up with the Springsteen conclusion: 50 channels and nothing on.
Then you have the paradox that the stars of this drivel are being paid surreal sums of money for being in it. Take the whole thing and you have a culture out of whack.
So a hypothesis might be that this episode isnt funny because it never was INTENDED as humor. Instead, they wanted to show us glimpses of yesteryear and then present the final episode as an example of the mindlessness that pervades our culture in ALL areas. Perhaps there is a question there: Why do you even have the TV ON? Not that the marketing department will tell the buyers of the commercial time this.
Did you notice what idiots the network execs were this time. Play a tape of this meeting and then when Russell Dalrymple met with Jerry and George. This group of NBC execs are mindless, giggling idiots. Again, maybe Larry David has pull a major practical joke on NBC with this script.