That has zero bearings on the shows in question.

Director Elia Kazan turned in his friends in the blacklist era for sometimes being and sometimes merely associating with communists long ago, not only betraying their personal trust to devastating, almost certainly career-ending results, but going against the notion of political liberty this nation was founded on.

Does that make On the Waterfront a bad movie?

"You would be wise to do as mother says, Lane Meyer."

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. could be the worst movie ever made, but if I flick by TNT/USA/TBS and it's on, I'm stuck.

No, but that analogy is horrible. A director could drug up a 13-year old on booze and Quaaludes and have sex with her for all I care and still make great movies. When networks purposefully make puff shows to please the masses that are widely regarded as brainless entertainment, however, it does have some bearing on whether or not the shows fall into the crappy category. For crappy shows, they're pretty good. They're not high brow, that's for damn sure though. In fact, a better title for this thread would be "low brow stuff you love."

no, I meant CRAPPY

low-brow can still be good - example, Married With Children or Family Guy.

If by horrible, you mean wonderful....

You're coming to this with some assumptions, on the one hand, and on the other, assuming they're shared or should be. I'm disagree on both fronts.

Exactly how deep and meaningful is comedy supposed to be in the first place? How many people go to it for that, or have ever done so? How meaningful was the Lucy Show, or the Dick Van Dyke show, two of the medium's standards? You're holding a show like Green Acres up to standards that it's really strange to be judged by and that similar shows are rarely judged by, either.

And there's a darn good reason -- funny is funny. Excellent comic acting is excellent comic acting. You virtually never see sitcoms these days with anywhere near the performance level you find in Green Acres. Green Acres was simply outstanding. I love Norman Lear and what he did for television, but not only Normal Lear is funny or makes programs worth watching. In putting down Green Acres for what it was not, what it never attempted to be, and what it was under no obligation to attempt to be, you might as well blame a fish for not being a cat. It just makes no sense.

I like those Jack-in-the-Box tacos that are 2 for a dollar. I don't ever want to know what they are made of though.

Laverne and Shirley absolutely sucked; not rural, no. 1 show for at least two seasons.

Oh. I never liked it. It was crappy though.

that mcdonalds biscuit looks delicious. i dont think i have ever had one. their mcmuffin is dry, disgusting, unbearable, etc.

Harrah's I salute you! You pulled off a minor miracle.

Thank you WSOP photographers. Whoever you are I you. I always look crappy in my photos but it seems who ever was working the camera at the WSOP events actually took some pics I can approve of. Thank you Harrahs! I'd been hearing a lot of complaints about Harrahs but they managed to pull off something hardly anyone can do, a good picture of me so now they are ok in my book even if I found the WSOP souvenirs to be slim pickings (they were still selling 2006 WSOP tshirts in one of The Rio's stores).

crappy rap music

Isn't personal taste the subjectivity you say is pointless to try and get away from.

I never said they were crappy. A large number of people who are considered experts in the subject have said that. A lot of people who may not be considered experts but whose opinions I respect have said that. Hell, a lot of people have said that. No offense, but I don't think your opinion (or mine) has quite the heft to undo three decades of critical mass to the contrary.

Which is why I mentioned my love for these shows in this thread.

And the writers you mentioned were never, ever considered the literary equivalents of The Beverly Hillbillies. For one thing, there was never any pretension to the "low-brow enlightenment" that the apologists for said shows like to claim (if you try to take this position for Faulkner, as a surface reading might indicate, you reveal a common and gross misunderstanding of Faulkner often assumed by neophytes to the subject). Any contemporary criticism these writers engendered was primarily technical. Also, it must be pointed out that literature is far more susceptible to the vagaries of more formalized and structured critical assessment. Even strictly using this criteria, they were never given the bottom shelf assignment of said TV shows.

It would be ironic, if that were the case being made.

I am not basing anything solely on a lack of social recognition or topical issues. That is one reason the shows were panned, but not the only one.

And, Sparky, I always make up my own mind; I choose not to let the cognoscenti do it for me. I don't, however, consider my subjective enjoyment of anything to be the final law on it's merit. That (again) is why I included those shows in my initial post.

I agree that comedy (using it's popular definition, not the classical and more academic one) is incredibly subjective. As Milton Berle once said,"If you laugh, it's funny".

Dominic made the point that low brow does not mean crappy. The examples he sites, (Family Guy and Married With Children), are/were multidimensional shows whose intelligence and insight used their low-brow lack of pretension to highlight the impact of their humor. They have depth and precision.

The shows we were discussing (The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres)were cardboard cutout shows with broad swipes at humor. As I said earlier, I give more credit to Green Acres for it's self-conscious sense of the absurd and more advanced wit. It's borderline surrealistic characterizations put it a level above it's more hackneyed relatives. But the jokes in both were flat and unfunny filler more often than not.

Married With Children and Family Guy aim for several levels and hit them all. The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres threw it out and hoped for it to stick. The fact that it did stick on occasion does not elevate these shows past what their level of transparent utility. They do not have the genuine and unique perspective displayed by MWC and FG.

The case made based on the popularity of these shows does nothing to dissuade. These shows were in an era of little competition, and, for the most part, what competition there was, was of equally tepid quality. Maybe the fact that such popularity served to stunt the growth of not just quality programming (which seems historically obvious) but social evolution (which is more debatable, but still pertinent) overshadows their real aesthetic merit. Regardless, they probably would not survive in today's programming environment. They certainly would not achieve the level of popularity they had. And it's not just that the viewing public is too informed and has too many options. The quality is simply not there.

The fact you and me and others find enjoyment in these shows does not revise critical or public opinion. The fact is, more people (not just critics or historians) find these shows "crappy" (or more precisely, "stupid" but let's not split hairs) than do not. We are in the minority. I can deal with it. You?

That, respectfully, is Horse****.

Elia Kazan's douchebaggery had no real aesthetic platform. On the Waterfron was not implied propaganda or subliminal advertising. It's creative merit had no social or political implications. Although there is a school of thought that it is a metaphor for his (Kazan's) behavior, it was not a specificity of production or a contingent point of it's release.

The shows in question sacrificed artistic merit for lowest common denominator sandbagging, partly bowing to the reasons NeedsMoreNuts detailed.

Their intent directly affected their aesthetic result. That is a big difference.

Yes, but there is no underlying mystery there. Far less, I think, than you seem to be crediting.

Gimme just a little break here...

An appeal to authority is totally inappropriate when it comes to matters of taste. I'm surprised you are so closed-minded about this and clingy to this idea, especially when you aren't willing to support it with any reasoning yourself. I suspect this is because you know your opinion can't really be argued successfully, as it is only an opinion and nothing like a hard fact in the first place. When a case has been made for having a differing opinion, merely retreating to an appeal to authority is inadequate.

No objection to your loving them or not loving them. I was commenting on your saying they were crappy, which is simply wrong.

What are we, going swimming together? I'm not your buddy.

I'm not sure this is even related enough to what I was saying to so much as be a straw horse!

Ditto.

I've always wanted to be called Sparky! I'm sure people would be more likely to rescue a guy named Sparky from drowning. I know I would!

Then do so rather than falling back on appeals to authority.

Also, if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, quacks like a duck ...

If you're going to say that about Green Acres and praise Family Guy in the same motion, we have different tastes, to say the least. You're also simply going too far in search of your point.

I'd argue too that many of the jokes in Green Acres derived from the nature of the nature of the characters. The characters, no matter how absurd themselves, were each played as though they were on the level and it was some or all of the other characters who were the absurd ones. Absurdity was the underlying fabric of that sitcom's universe. This laced situations with a natural tension and potential for laughs based on as little as a twist of the lip, a sigh, or a hat being adjusted. Much of the humor was closely observed, and I found frankly a joy of performance in the quality of the comic timing and acting. These guys were not just punching a clock or wondering how they were lucky enough to have gotten there. The material was far from filler, unless we want to consider all t.v. filler, and very far from what most sitcoms or even comedies in general aspire to.

Also, conflating The Beverly Hillbillies with Green Acres is kind of dirty pool.

Nah. As noted above, you just aren't paying attention. Maybe it's a knack.

Family Guy sucks.

Who's making it? Besides, you're clearly undissuadable. How do you -- logically at least -- dissuade someone anyway who hasn't made and clearly won't make an argument in the first place? All you've done is greatly undersell a show and a particular type of comedy in general, and make unregenerate appeals to authority. No, we're solidly on the grounds of hashing out our personal tastes here, though you seem to not want to admit it. Dissuadabilityism is not really my field, though, so let's stick to the subject, which is neither your nor my dissuadability.

While not granting your initial premise that Green Acres was anything but its own individual show, nor that it was of tepid quality, it seems clear you are putting a very heavy load on the shoulders of a mere sitcom. It's a t.v. show fer cryin' out loud! Your argument resorts to strawmanning. Green Acres was not made for the purposes of social evolution, nor is there inherently any sort of social mission whatever in comedy that turns it into a failure when it does not accomplish it. Green Acres did not have the job of advancing consciousness, or civil rights, or anything else but being funny. Assigning social obligations wherever one pleases from on high and then decrying their lack of fulfillment is self-indulgent, silly, and out of touch. This is a t.v. show we're talking about, not a piece of legislature or a public trust.

You know what, once in while, I'll eat a chicken sandwich. I hope it won't betray the revolution.

Mere speculation on the one hand and assertion on the other. You are pulling this from an unidentifiable place.

Link?

Link?

You can deal with your own opinion and that of some guys you read? Bravo I guess, but I continue to be surprised that you seem to regard that as if it were an accomplishment.

It's also more than a little silly to take on the "voice of the people" role for yourself, especially when in doing so you are specifically saying you know better than they do.

Anyway, you're certainly entitled to your taste. But your sense of social mission -- whether your own or borrowed from some authority figure -- has no bearing on whether a show is crappy or not.

Your understanding of their "intent," respectfully, is both irrelevant and imagined.

You've invested way too much politics into a half hour collection of situational jokes. So much so that you can't even see it clearly anymore at all. I sense one t.v./film criticism class, book, or favored polemic too many here.

I hope that chicken sandwich doesn't get me shot one day.