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Pow · Posted: Mon May 20, 2024 2:54 am Post subject: Laugh-In

I remember how my family & I found this comedy show hilarious at the time it was first broadcast. Just watched a full episode on Youtube. I don't know if it happened to be a weaker entry in the series, or was it reflective of their usual shows. All I can say is that if the rest of the episodes are similar to the one I saw, this show has aged very, very poorly.

Bud Brewster · Posted: Mon May 20, 2024 1:54 pm Post subject:

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Agreed, Mike. I tried watching a few episodes a while back and I was appalled by the sad lack of laughs in Laugh In. But, like you, I liked it back before I became much older and a little wiser.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

Pow · Posted: Mon May 20, 2024 7:21 pm Post subject:

The show can have some laughs here and there, but much of it now falls flat. Tiny Tim singing Tiptoe Through the Tulips still cracks me up. When he first appeared on the show, I thought this must be a hilarious new comedian creating a persona. Similar to what Jonathan Winters (Maude Frickett among many other characters), Cliff Arquette (Charlie Weaver), and Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman) did in their colorful careers. Wasn't until later we would discover he really was a peculiar bloke and what you saw was the real deal. By all accounts though, he was a very nice gent.

scotpens · Posted: Mon May 20, 2024 11:06 pm Post subject:

With Laugh-In, it's truly a case of "ya hadda be there." When the show debuted in 1968, nothing like it had ever been seen on TV. Laugh-In did away with the structured conventions of variety TV that had their roots in vaudeville. Instead it gave us a nonstop, machine-gun-paced stream of quick sketches, blackouts, musical numbers, one-liners, and non sequiturs. It was "absolute television" -- it couldn't have worked in any other entertainment medium. It certainly owed much to the experimental TV of Ernie Kovacs a decade earlier.

Of course, I must confess that Laugh-In will always have a place in my heart because Goldie Hawn was my first celebrity crush. The girl was skinny as a flagpole, but so goddamn cute. Shoot, her daughter is 45 now!

mach7 · Quantum Engineer Joined: 23 Apr 2015 Posts: 362

Laugh-in was part of the comedy renaissance of the '60s but suffered from the US tv dogma of the variety show.

While quirky and silly I don't really remember it being truly ground breaking.

It was fast and non sequitur at times but, to me at least, never really made the leap to truly unique.

It was no Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Pow · Posted: Tue May 21, 2024 12:41 pm Post subject:

You hit the nail right on the head, Scotpens. It was a TV show very much of its time & place in history that worked wonderfully then but not so much now.

"You can testify but you can't win. We all know you're guilty as sin. Here comes da judge, here comes da judge, order in the court 'cause here comes da judge."

scotpens · Posted: Tue May 21, 2024 1:02 pm Post subject:

mach7 · Quantum Engineer Joined: 23 Apr 2015 Posts: 362

Well then I guess groundbreaking Doesn't mean good.

It was like a pair of polyester sans-a-belt pants. Briefly in style, but not necessarily worthwhile.

A link between Laugh in and Star Trek.

The 3rd season of Star Trek Roddenberry was promised The Monday night at 8Pm time slot.

NBC took it away late in the scheduling process to give to their new toy, Laugh in. Star trek ended up Friday at 10PM and Roddenberry quite producing it.

55 years later who's laughing now......