Things you hate IV

You luuuuurve her

 

Dislike

 

Ugh. Her 'comedic' intro and outros on OC are sickening. There was one where she pretended a banana was a phone. I made my wife watch it again because it enraged me so.

 

yes I can see the similarity.

 

I feel the same way about Ricky Gervais. I prefer a cold delivery to a self-congratulatory and condescending one.

His stand up is closer than he thinks to the religious preachers that he mocks, lacking nuance, novelty and wit.

 

I agree RG loves himself just a little bit too much and just can't hide the fact. Funny and talented though he is.

 

But of course that worked perfectly for the David Brent character.

Anyway, he's nowhere near as guilty of this as McIntyre.

 

Agreed though I think he's closer to the Brent character than he realises.
100% agreed re MM. Can't bear him as I've posted before.

 

I’m not sure if MM is that smug. His confidence seems a bit put on.

I just don’t think he’s very funny.

RG thinks he’s much more clever than he is and looks down on others, as if everyone else is David Brent.

Which is exactly what David Brent does.

 

...and you're right !

 

His character in Curb was pretty close to what I think he's actually like.

 

He’s insufferably smug. And also not funny

 

There's a very interesting bit in the HBO "Talking Funny" where RG*, Seinfeld** (don't find funny), Chris Rock (funny) and Louis CK (funny) sit discussing the 'business'. It's when they all start talking about their early days in stand-up and RG admits he never did as he was on a BBC trainee producers course:



You can sense that the three others really want to say something but bite their tongues.

*I don't find RG's stand-up very interesting, the majority of his TV stuff also leaves me cold but he can be forgiven everything for the "The Office" (on TV - the film was ****) and the first two seasons of "After life" - they're masterpieces. This is the "Elton Defence" as Ben Elton gave us his glorious standup/rantsin the 80's, "The Young Ones" and "Blackadder II-IV".

**I've seen quite a bit of Seinfeld's standup which just didn't click with me. I've tried a few times with the TV show but it just leaves me cold. Now because of my "Seinfeld"' experience I've steered clear of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" but after much ridiculing by friends I finally succumbed and tried the new season (11) and I was hooked. I'm currently working my was backwards through the rest (on S03E06) every single one has had me genuinely laughing out loud.

 

Curb is all time, so much of it and the quality doesn’t really drop too much.

 

I loved The Office. Ricky Gervais' stand up are patchy and I really disliked After Life as it was so preachy. Bits were very funny, but there were large chunks where it was him just going on about his take on stuff, as though you should find yourself nodding in agreement with how wise he was.

Watched 2 episodes of Curb and just found it to be one of many American sitcoms that is raved about and ok, but just not that funny. Borderline cringeable in parts in the wrong way.

 

I only started watching curb due to recommendations on this thread and like you have worked my way though the lot.

 

Loved the office and his stand up shows but have steered clear of After Life based on the few clips I’ve seen and the copious Twitter noise about how deep and meaningful it is and RGs constant retweeting fans posts about how great he and the show are.

 

The Office is one of the best TV shoes in history, as a result I then absorbed everything Ricky Gervais did afterwards (I was aware if his stuff before as well) love extras almost as much as the office and his first couple of stand ups, as well as his podcasts with Steve and Carl. I’m much less a fan of his later stuff, having seen everything he did at the beginning I’ve noticed him repeating a lot of his early stuff, for example in his early stand up he tells a joke about a 97 year old being scarred for life, he then repeats the same joke in Aftelife. There is also a sketch he does pre office about getting someone to tell a funny joke but mixing up the person and the joke ends up being really inappropriate, he does the same joke on one of his more recent stand ups. Similar with the office film, a lot of regurgitated ideas that suggest he’s run out of ideas more recently, and he’s hoping fans of his recent work won’t be aware of his earlier stuff.

 

You’re totally wrong about “Seinfeld”, of course.

 

"The only reason that you don't understand our music Seinfeld is that you don't like it". Now where have I heard that before? I've tried but it doesn't 'click'.

Much the same for RG's stand up and he deserves a slap for his "M o ng" stuff. That isn't me preaching that SEND is some 'untouchable' subject for comedy - "South Park" manage to do it hilariously with Jimmy, Timmy and Nathan. RG's very much a 'one-trick pony' as far as I'm concerned and the trick's landed successfully twice...

 

Curb your enthusiasm is great - the early ones best of all.

 

I don’t really like RG’s standup.

I recall watching the second season of Seinfeld at the time and not getting it, but I now think it’s one of the best ensemble comedies ever made.

All horses for courses, isn’t it? Almost all of the stuff posted on the TV thread is of absolutely zero interest to me.

 

I got into Curb before Seinfeld because I was kid when Seinfeld came out, I went back to Seinfeld because of curb and found it hard to get into and like initially but I need up loving it. Similarities between Breaking Bad and BCS, in that if it wasn’t for BB I probably would’ve given up on BCS if it was just a standalone show.

 

I'm sure most of the suggested watches on here are actually made up.
However I do recommend "Stranger within" on Prime, "Summer transfer window" on Sky Atlantic, and "Moog is amongst us" on Paramount COGs.

 

The Office was a genius idea, but the content quickly became stale and is therefore overrated as a show. It certainly hasn't aged anywhere near as well as shows given half the credit at the time. But maybe I'm biased by the fact I watched the Office quite late, after I had seen more of Ricky Gervais, and subsequently found it hard to detach DB from RG. Although, RG even admits (even though I'm sure it was fake modesty), people turned to the office for David Brent but stayed for the love story.

The US Office takes a while, but eventually far surpasses it (incredibly rare for a US remake of a British show).

I stopped watching Afterlife as it felt incredibly preachy. There are entire scenes full of Gervais giving his simplistic opinions on complex matters, where the other character asks stupid follow up questions to try to make the audience feel that RG is far smarter than he is. Show don't tell: don't try to ram emotions down my throat with recycled characters at every opportunity.

Extras is great though.

 

I’m not sure I can agree on the office, it consisted of 14 episodes, I’m not sure how the content can become stale over such a short period of time. It covered everything it needed to brilliantly and there was no drop in quality at all. It’s over 20 years old and is still on the forefront of a lot of peoples minds even to this day. It gets quoted on here almost daily.

I do like the US office, but beyond the first few episodes it’s a completely different show to the UK version, to me it’s never been a case of which is better, they’re just totally different shows.

 

That it only lasted for 14 episodes is evidence that it was getting stale. They tried to refresh it and created a film, which predictably fell flat. They ran out of room, because cynicism can only get you so far before it gets tiring.

 

That wasn’t why it was ended at all, RG has been quoted a million times as to why it ended. Each episode is stand alone brilliant culminating in the Xmas specials which tied it all of perfectly. The whole idea is you’re left to make up your own mind about what happens, Brent also having his moment of realisation.

The film was rubbish, but how does that take away from the original series?

There are 201 episodes of the US office, how can something with the same premise not be stale after 180+ extra episodes?

 

I agree. Nothing "stale" at all about the office. Every episode was perfectly constructed and he simply moved on to other things. Extras was also great and I do like his one-man stand ups too. Very funny but you can tell he's already starting to like himself a bit too much. Had to stop following him on twitter due to all the self-congratulatory re-tweets and "greatest fans" tweets which basically made up 33% of my twitter content.

 

The UK Office didn't get stale because of the idea of a docu-comedy in an Office. It became stale because the whole show continued with too much focus on David Brent, whose schtick became old pretty quickly, and the decision to not break from the relentless cynicism and futility, which pinned in their editorial choices.

Predominantly they were able to adapt better because they had a better culture on set. They blended writers with actors, encouraged improv and directorially were a lot more adaptable. For example, Michael Scott is a good salesman, but a terrible manager, which gives a lot more space for character development and makes him a lot more likable, allowing you to empathise with him when he continues to be poor at his job.

They also made Michael a lot less central. Everyone was over David Brent himself after 2 series (also why the film flopped), but the US Office was a much more of a collaborative endeavour, which is evidenced by the fact the show was still good after MS left.

 

You are genuinely the only person I’ve ever heard say the UK office went stale.

 

Have to say that I enjoyed the film a lot.

 

The Office printer.

If it has less than 20 sheets of paper in it it reports as empty, but if you put more than 50 in it jams.
If the output tray has anything other than a spec of dust in it it reports as full and jams.
If it feels like it it jams.
Halfway through a print it's just stop for no aparent reason.

If any of the above happens the computer that was talking to it will bing at you with an error and need to be restarted before it can see the printer again, but others on the network can print to it fine.

Monumental piece of crud.

 

Seems appropriate: