'Whitney' on NBC HD - Page 5

"Something with Smurfett's chin..."

I don't understand the numerous posts complaining about the laugh track. Every single comedy show since Abbott and Costello has had a laugh track. I just watched a recorded episode of Big Bang Theory, and its laugh track is way more noticeable. Maybe folks don't like the re-engineering of live audience laughter. I actually miss some of the true tech tracks, like the dude with the high voice who cackles hysterically.

Because it's obvious that they're messing with it, but worst of all its a show with a laugh track on a night, and on a network, with a ton of great comedies that don't use one. The other shows on Thursday night just highlight how unfunny Whitney is and how you don't need a laugh track to get people to laugh.

It's my feeling that if one notices a laugh track, they probably don't think the program is funny, whether they realize it or not.
It's that way for me, if I'm laughing I don't notice the laugh track, if I'm not laughing I notice a laugh track and resent it.
When I watched the first episodes of Whitney I detested the laugh track, only after about the third episode I realized it wasn't my cup of tea and bailed.
From what I've seen of Whitney Cummings on other programs I think she can be funny and I'm also marginally liking Two broke girls(which Whitney has a hand in) but Whitney itself never gelled for me. Maybe if it lasts and the census is better I may revisit it

At this point the only conclusion I can come up with is that "they" just need SOMETHING bitch about Whitney since they can't find anything else... This is also coming from the people that watched :friends... rolleyes: : put on flame suit :

Nah, if you read the thread you see plenty of valid complaints. Like the entire show appears to be two people doing standup. Terrible supporting cast. I wonder where NBC is going to move it in January when 30 Rock comes back. Does NBC have another night of comedies?

I'm enjoying this show, but I'm kinda with you on the supporting cast. I don't know who thought Jack Donaghy's assistant was talented enough to play a major supporting role in another show, but they need to be fired. That guy is literally painful to watch. Seeing him act is like watching a cheesey showcase production in a basement 99 seat theater where terrible actors desperately hope to be discovered by agents but never are. On the other hand, I'm enjoying Rhea Seehorn's character. It's nothing new. We've seen the loudmouth opinionated drunk female friend before. Kim Cattral and Christine Baranski have done the part better. But she still cracks me up.

Despite the shortcommings of the supporting cast, the scenes with just the two leads make me laugh enough to stick with this for a while.

Yeah, his little 15 second appearances on 30 Rock is about what he's good for. I remember him annoying me on Weeds as well.

+1

There's definitely some hidden agenda going on, but I can't put my finger on it.

To the best that I can tell, both Whitney and her critics are liberals, so I don't think it's politics. Although I find it unusual to see a lib like Whitney constantly wearing a Glock necklace, so maybe it's an anti-gun agenda thing.

Or perhaps the "tell" is bringing up the other NBC sit coms and that they're trying to hide an anti-NBC agenda.

Or maybe it's just insider jealousy of someone that has been so extremely forunate to have landed two shows on TV when others can't even manage to get a pilot made.

Whatever it is, it sure isn't that they just don't like the show. Because in that case they'd just stop watching and posting about it.

no agenda here. just a matter of your sense of comedy. i watched 3 eps and had to dump it as it never made me laugh, and they use that awful laugh track after viturally every line recited on the show.

i like whitney, i think she's talented, smart and funny, but this sitcom is not working for me. that's all.

Moves to Wednesdays at 8PM beginning in January: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...2#post21212032

There you have it.

Granted, I watched one ep via OnDemand & decided it was lame.

No personal vendetta....just found it to be a weak sitcom cliche and very out of place amongst the rest of NBC's Thursday comedy lineup. Move it to CBS on Mondays & you'd hear less bitching, I think. That is the kind of sitcom I see in Whitney (but still wouldn't watch).

Might be less ire cast Ms Cummings way come January, when the show moves to Wednesday to make room for the returning - and far more fitting for NBC Thursdays - 30 Rock

There is an agenda among many critics, and it is all orchestrated by the most covert levels of governments throughout the world. Scary stuff.

their agents are secretly disseminating their agenda throughout avs.

I agree that the show doesn't fit in with the other NBC Thursday night comedies. IMO, it's much funnier.

Phew good riddance to that laugh track on Thursday night. Will be nice to get 30 Rock back.

The ladies doth protest too much.

Funnier than The Office this season, that's for sure.

Hey, I was watching a Seinfeld rerun last night [it was the first time I've stumbled across one of the HD remasters and it looked so good that I kept watching].

I'd recommend it as a really good show, but it had a laugh track, so I'm sure everyone here would hate it.

No... I don't like Seinfield because it @#$%ing sucks... or... I have to be on a drug to get it...

Listen to the laughter in a Seinfeld episode. It's live. It feels real. Listen to the laughter in Whitney. It's fake. It starts on a dime, and ends on a dime. Incredibly fake and their placement of the laughs after jokes no one in their right mind would find funny is downright pathetic. And Seinfeld's laughter was so real that they had to start telling the audiences to stop screaming for Kramer every time he burst through the door. If they were faking it, they could have just Whitneyed it and removed it post-edit.

So the issue with Whitney isnt an audience. It's that it's essentially a fake audience responding to a poorly written show.

+5

Take mr wally's +5 & multiply it by 10000. When a laugh track is real, it sound & feels natural (although I have never been a huge fan of a comedy telling me when to laugh..'cuz good comedy does not need to).

I do recall seeing SEINFELD in the past when edits during the episode made the live laughter obvious.

Canned laughs? Good enough for a McSitcom, maybe.

I watched the British version of The Office and have watched the American version since day one. I haven't really enjoyed it for quite awhile but I kept hoping it would get better. I finally deleted it from my record list a couple weeks ago.

Why, Whitney, why?

Great episode, @$%&ING HILARIOUS. lol

Lmao! @#$%ing. Hilarious!

Whitney doesn't fit the Thursday night lineup very well primarily due to the nature of its comedy. It's the three-camera sort of sitcom, whereas Community, Parks and Recreation and The Office are one-camera types, like little movies. The multiple camera kind with the live audience has different writing, and, at its best, the interaction of the cast and audience ramps up the experience.

Whitney's advocates like it and think it's funny, but it has lazy writing and requires a certain percentage less writing as the cast sort of waits for laughs. It's delivered like a stage play. New Girl has a setup that could have been shot three-camera, but Zooey is smart, and requires fast jokes, one right after the other. Ditto Cougartown.

Friends and Seinfeld and various comedies going all the way back to The Honeymooners made the audience-actor relationship work. Maybe if Whitney had funnier writing its overly insistent laugh track would not be so maddening. NBC constantly airs little promos for Whitney yet let a far wittier show, the Hank Azaria show that aired right after Up All Night (and whose name I cannot recall) die a quiet death. Its committment to Whitney I find truly baffling.

O.o -.-