Good Times
What's Happening
Sanford and Son
Jeffersons


To me, THat's my Mama was different from the sitcoms above because they did not have a UNIQUE character. They closest to unqiue character THat's My Mama had was Junior and he was not seen much in either of the episodes I watched. Cliff was reserved and laid back. The Mother was kind of the same. It was a MELLOW type of African American Comedy. On the Flip side,

Jeffersons had Smart talking Florence, Loud Mouth George Jefferson

Sanford and Son had Fred the Jokester Sanford, and Aunt Esther

What's Happening had RERUN with his dancing and Shirley with her smart talking toward customers

Good Times of course had J.J



So there was no REAL CLOWN in That's My Mama which I Think is the bigggest Difference from the other African American Comedies.

It seems like you're saying that Black sitcoms need a "clownish" character to be funny. If the difference between That's My Mama and those other shows was that TMM didn't have a "unique" character that's one thing. But I don't think it's necessary to rely on a "clown" for a show to be considered funny or not. Maybe That's My Mama simply wasn't that funny of a show, period.

Originally posted by vashti1999
It seems like you're saying that Black sitcoms need a "clownish" character to be funny. If the difference between That's My Mama and those other shows was that TMM didn't have a "unique" character that's one thing. But I don't think it's necessary to rely on a "clown" for a show to be considered funny or not. Maybe That's My Mama simply wasn't that funny of a show, period.

That's what I've been telling him.

Originally posted by vashti1999
It seems like you're saying that Black sitcoms need a "clownish" character to be funny. If the difference between That's My Mama and those other shows was that TMM didn't have a "unique" character that's one thing. But I don't think it's necessary to rely on a "clown" for a show to be considered funny or not. Maybe That's My Mama simply wasn't that funny of a show, period.


No i wasn;t saying that black shows need a clown to be funny, i'm just saying that was the difference between TMM and all the other black shows. Maybe during that time viewers LOOKED for a black sitcom to have a clown and when they didn;t they turned the channel. I don;t know for sure because i was too young at the time. But the Cosby Show is one Black Sitcom that made me laugh and it did not have a clown.

Originally posted by Brian Damage
That's what I've been telling him.


I was asking you why wasn;t it funny compared to GT, S&S and the Jeffersons and you could never answer the question. There was one line in one of the episodes that made me laugh. A guy was in the chair getting a shave and the guy who was shaving him, Earl, was saying it's something wrong with his heart. Earl was talking about being in love but the guy getting a shave thought he was saying he had a heart condition. so the guy in the chair said to earl-"Wait a minute, you were putting a razor across my face and you have a BAD HEART?-LOL that was an example of Dry Humor