FACT TREK—The Death Slot (or: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate)

[T'Bonz]

At the time, Laugh-in was funny, topical, and hip.

I loved it. My teenage sister loved it. My parents (in their 30s) loved it.

In a lesser manner was Love, American Style. At the time, it was also funny and modern. I couldn't wait to watch it.

Now, both have aged badly.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Now, both have aged badly.

I recently saw The Knack, and How to Get It (1965). It was reputed to be the funniest and most original comedy of its era. Supposed to have you rolling on the floor. But I was bored to tears.

And I remember Mork and Mindy in first run as just about the funniest thing I'd ever seen. See it now, and to me it just lays there.

There must be something about bold, surprising new comedies that absolutely kills their shelf life. An exception: the Leslie Nielsen movies, Airplane and Police Squad, are probably still hilarious. They have to be.

 

[Maurice]

Airplane! is sort of timeless because it's spoofing a 1950s drama, so it's not got a late 70s cinematic style. In fact, the producers wanted to set it in the 50s and in black and white but Paramount said no. This is why the jet makes propellor plane sounds.

 

[M'Sharak]

Only in the senses I cited. They were similar in that they both experimented with new, unconventional approaches to sketch comedy and using the medium of television in innovative ways. But since they were both trying new things, they naturally tried different things from each other. And of course they differed substantially in tone and style because American and British humor and culture are different. "Equivalent" doesn't mean they were identical, it means they filled analogous roles within their respective cultural contexts.

Both shows drew on approaches to sketch comedy and innovative television techniques which had been pioneered ten years earlier on the Ernie Kovacs Show. The Pythons were also heavily influenced by the humor of Ernie Kovacs' radio contemporary The Goon Show.

One cannot properly be aware of what Laugh-In was for television without viewing it in context as part of the progression Ernie Kovacs -> Laugh-In -> original Saturday Night Live -> everything which came after. For an additional influence on how Laugh-In did what it did, look to the kind of social commentary which tended to turn up a lot in Stan Freberg's work for radio and records in the 1950s and early '60s.

 

[Christopher]

Both shows drew on approaches to sketch comedy and innovative television techniques which had been pioneered ten years earlier on the Ernie Kovacs Show.

Oh, yes, absolutely. My father was a big fan of Kovacs and made sure I was aware of his innovative approach to television and comedy. Another of his successors was The Monkees, which did a lot of playing around with the fourth wall and the medium of television. And you can probably draw a line to Jim Henson, who innovated with television techniques and visual effects in much the same way Kovacs did.

I considered mentioning these things in my previous post, but I felt it would be needless elaboration and rambling, since I was only talking about my idle realization of a similarity between Laugh-In and Monty Python, not attempting to present some broader thesis about television history.

 

[Maurice]

Interestingly, both Laugh-In and Monty Python did the same horizontal mountain climbing up a sidewalk gag.

IIRC a number of the Laugh-In BTS people acknowledged a debt to Kovacs. And you can draw a straight line from Laugh-In to SNL because Lorne Michaels was a Jr. writer on the former.

Laugh-In's biggest technical innovation was in video editing. In an era where 80 cuts might be considered a lot, Laugh-In was routinely doing 300–400.

 

[M'Sharak]

Was that a chicken joke?

 

[T'Bonz]

And I remember Mork and Mindy in first run as just about the funniest thing I'd ever seen. See it now, and to me it just lays there..

Although I liked Robin Williams, Dork and Dippy was so stupid that I couldn't watch it beyond a couple of episodes.

 

[plynch]

Christopher beat me to the Monkees which used many, many quick cuts and set-ups. I think James Frawley won the Emmy for directing their first year.

 

[Maurice]

Cutting on film than was different than cutting videotape. The latter was nightmarish in the late 60s. Each episode of Laugh-In was first cut on a black and white kinescope and then videotape had to be physically cut to conform to that.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Christopher beat me to the Monkees which used many, many quick cuts and set-ups. I think James Frawley won the Emmy for directing their first year.

He did. The Monkees also won the Best Comedy Emmy in its first season, beating out sitcom mainstays Bewitched, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, and The Andy Griffith Show.

And yet one of 1974's worst films got some its worst dialogue lifted and became one of 1980's best, with only one notable detractor.

No idea what movie you mean here.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Laugh-In was gone by the time I was aware of it. I actually ran into a lot of their gags in Marvel Comics (in dialog usually by Peter Parker) and on that one episode of I Dream of Jeannie where Jeannie was tapped to appear on the show.

I hated that episode, it fell very flat for me. So for me Laugh-In became this unfunny comedy that "stole Star Trek's time slot."

It wasn't until I was an adult who started researching TV history (as a hobby) that I realized just how important Laugh-In was to television. I still don't think it's all that funny, but I do recognize how revolutionary is was.

 

[Maurice]

Here's an article I will be linking in the follow-up.
(link)

 

[1001001]

No idea what movie you mean here.

From context, probably Airport 1975.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

From context, probably Airport 1975.

That happens to be one of my favorite movies of all time.

 

[Quinton]

Maurice, thank you for your development efforts on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE—The Crossroads of Time. A treasure of a title!

 

[Neopeius]

Laugh-In was like nothing else on TV when it debuted, and the ratt-a-tatt speed of the thing was unheard of at the time. Like Star Wars, you can't unsee what happened afterwards so it's now difficult to appreciate their innovations in the rear-view-mirror. In a post-Laugh-In world where rapid-fire cutting became increasingly standard it no longer seems fast (in fact, before freeze-frame a lot of people would miss 4–7 frame gag images seen at the bumpers). While researching this piece and its follow up I watched maybe 10 episodes of Laugh-In and a lot of the humor makes use of topical references that are probably meaningless to anyone born after 1965 even as some smaller portion is timeless.

I am so looking forward to this when it comes out. You can bet we'll get the jokes (kind of like listening to Tom Lehrer's That was the Week that Was album in May '65).

My dad had a little leather-bound book in which he typed all his favorite lines from Laugh-In. Pages and pages.

 

[Maurice]

Maurice, thank you for your development efforts on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE—The Crossroads of Time. A treasure of a title!

Um, sure. Usually I end up apologizing for it.

 

[Quinton]

Um, sure. Usually I end up apologizing for it.

Haha, wow. Didn’t expect that answer. Maybe it isn’t the greatest game ever made, but it made kid me pretty happy!

 

[Maurice]

Haha, wow. Didn’t expect that answer. Maybe it isn’t the greatest game ever made, but it made kid me pretty happy!

I just pitched an article about the making of that game to Retro Gamer magazine.