This story might possibly be unique in my experience. There have been lots of times when I didn't get something and consequently did not like it. I don't recall any other time when I didn't get something and I also loved it.
Why the laugh track? The story isn't a comedy. The laugh-tracked parts aren't jokes, and it certainly didn't feel like the story was being mocked. The faux sitcom thing made no sense at all, but, I've got to say, I think it was perfect. It just felt right. I feel like it was brilliant satire of something, but I'm not sure what.
I loved the symbolism of the robot in the story. As adam pointed out, it doesn't work very well if taken literally because building a robot is quite a lazy and impersonal way to go about apologizing. But I think the robot is pretty obviously a symbol of the way our deeds live on after us. One good deed has a ripple effect that can end up helping people you don't even know in ways you would never think of. Good deeds are robots going door to door. It's very common to see the evil side of that idea illustrated in fiction, with some evil deed becoming some kind of curse that just won't go away, but it's not nearly as common to see good given the same power.
The other moral in he story (it's a very moral story) is that acknowledging our own mistakes makes us better. Mr. Sinclair benefitted from receiving an apology, but he also benefitted from giving one.
I think I might have figured out why I liked the laugh track so much. It was funny in itself ("He said it again!"), but maybe it was supposed to be a satire of our culture and the way we perceive art? The story really isn't a comedy. It's actually a pretty deep parable with a lot moral content for such a shotry. But the producers of The Sinclairs don't get that and neither does the audience. They don't understand it as anything other than ten minutes diversion. Rather than contemplate the character arc as Mr. Sinclair goes from giving petty apologies of "insufficient value" to taking responsibility for his real wrongs, they just laugh that the robot has his own catch phrase.
We, The People, don't get good art because it just takes too damn much time to actually think about what something
means. Give it a laugh track so I can respond to cues without having to think. Make "insufficient value" into a catch phrase so I don't have to think about what, exactly, made the value insufficient.
The real brilliance here is that this meaty satire was tacked onto the story without diminishing it in any way and while remaining completely lighthearted. It was like you added a whole second layer, a metastory about the story without distracting from the story.
It reminds me of how Shyamalan stuck a cynical movie critic in Lady in the Water to critique the story he was in, but even better, because it was more subtle.
Or maybe you're just lucky, Norm. Maybe you didn't really mean any of that brilliant stuff. Maybe you just stuck it in on a whim and here I am overanalyzing.
I also loved how you handled the guinea pig harem story. The background music made it into a satire of our own copulation-obsessed culture and the skit part mocked the press.
Awesome! I've given up on saying "best episode ever" because it's impossible to choose, but A+ job on this one.
Classics 17 (EP 76) - Apologies All Around
