I don’t mean that the joke just isn’t funny, I want to know a joke that almost makes you want to fast-forward through the scene.
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I feel like the cursed inverse of this is The Orville, where they’re divorced and then drama and jokes about being divorced is half the show. It was in what I saw of season 1 anyway, it was so relentless I couldn’t stand another minute of it.
If you can stand a bit more, the show does become a lot more than what those first few episodes imply.
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Yet somehow I still love Married with Children.
It works in that show because the entire family are losers, and they all get mocked by all the others, regularly.
True equality, lol.
I think Married With Children has managed to come through unscathed because of Ed O’Neil and who he is as a person. He’s so much the opposite of Al Bundy and has always been very open about that. The show as a result falls into that same category as South Park or All in the Family; We understand that the jokes are meant to be satire via absurdity; It’s so over the top and the actor is so different in real life that we just get it.
Compare that to something like Home Improvement, where we know that the humour isn’t meant to be absurdist, and we know that Tim Allen really is a douche.
This is why I avoid watching all commercials in America which inevitably take this trope to the extreme every chance they get. Usually referring to the man who is a doddering incompetent who must be ordered out of his “man cave” to perform some sort of yard or mechanical chore to prove his worth.
How rude they are to Jerry in Parks & Rec. Doing a rewatch of it now and wow it is way worse than I remembered, and starts way earlier. It’s not a flanderisation thing, there was a season 2 joke that made me have to pause and go online just to see how many other people felt the same way as me.
I find it funny because of the sheer absurdity of it. There’s absolutely no reason to dislike Jerry. He affable and unassuming, a good family man and just generally a good guy. Yet everyone inexplicably hates him, even Chris. It’s makes absolutely no sense and that disconnect is what makes it funny to me.
If they hated him for a reason it would be mean spirited. Instead, it’s just over the top silly and fits in with the humor of the show.
The bit where Leslie throws his painting in the lake is one of my favorite moments. It’s just so exorbitantly stupid that it makes me laugh.
Personally I don’t have as much of an issue with when they’re poking fun at him per se, but when they denegrate or damage things he has clearly worked hard on and put a lot of passion into, that’s crossing a line for me. It becomes incredibly mean-spirited.
There are two examples in this compilation video. One at the linked time, and another at 6:33. Especially with how happy he is to see Leslie in the second clip until she destroys his art. It’s honestly heart-breaking. The pie to the face that came a little bit before that was also hard to watch and really felt mean. Dunno if that’s because of how cold and calculated it was (vs the more usual off-the-cuff comments), or because it was a physical act rather than verbal, or something else. But I didn’t like it.
Ok, the time stamped one is pretty rough. They don’t usually play his reaction with such honesty.
7:20 part got to me
It feels cringe (to me) cause these type of people are often bullied in real life work places, again with no real reason.
It’s the opposite of the Lil’ Sebastian thing, where there’s that horse that everyone idolizes for no discernible reason. Although with that, there’s the one character who doesn’t understand why they do that, so maybe that’s what the Jerry thing needed? Or perhaps that would have made it even sadder lol.
Yeah, that would ruin the joke. If everyone hates him it’s farcical. If one person likes him then everyone else becomes a monster.
“no discernible reason”!? I would murder everyone in this room to bring Lil Sebastian back for 5 minutes.
hi ron
Agreed. The only redeeming thing I can give the writers credit for is that they gave him an amazing family life. Even though he is the office punching bag, he is much more fulfilled outside of work than any other character is. That, and he also does love his job.
Definitely agree. I know it’s supposed to be a joke “he’s such a great guy we hate him” but it’s physically hard to watch.
I was kinda uncomfortable with his interactions with Chris. Chris was my favorite in the show and even his meanness towards Jerry was off-putting.
This sorta works for Tobi Flenderson in The Office tho
I think it works there because it’s just Michael Scott that despises him, everyone else sees him as fairly normal from what I recall.
Tobi really is a lonely creep tho. Sometimes Michael goes way too far, and its ironic because they’re not super different in terms of being socially awkward and loners
Watching Parks & Rec for the first time, and I also noticed this. IMO it’s missing something, maybe if only one of the characters acted that way towards him or something it would be better. He’s pretty much Meg from Family Guy, and I never really cared for that dynamic either.
Pretty much every segment of Jerry’s stand up routine in Seinfeld. I have no idea how that man became a famous comedian.
Because that shit was actually funny 35 to 40 years ago. It just didn’t age well.
Tastes change.
His stand-up was bad back then too
40 years ago in the UK it was shown at 8am as a filler program when nobody was watching, because it was so painfully contrived
No I watched it back then as a kid and though maybe you need to be 35 to like this.
Recently age 35 not my thing still.
I don’t find Jerry funny, like at all. I like Costanza but I adore Kramer
Yeah Jerry was such a whiney twat.
Still is
Jerry was a straight guy in the show, is funny because he is not funny. He’s just a normal guy with a few good observations
He’s there to anchor the show
Like Larry David is way funnier
Idk if you’ve seen the last seasons of curb but like, it does not really age well either
How so?
Idk, he just comes off as mean and a boomer
All tv shows named after the main character are better without that character (spin-offs excluded obvs).
Seinfeld
Dawsons creek
Rosanne
Ellen
Exception that proves the rule
Columbo
Another exception: Archer
Buffy the vampire slayer
Film spin-off
What ?
BTVS was a film first, so I’m claiming spin-off. But you are right, that show would be less without her.
Bond spin-off?
Homage maybe, but not a spinoff :-)
Yeah. I’m stretching my rule as much as possible. I’m basically trying to exclude all characters that have already been audience tested. Parody is sort of included in that.
Ha ha, fair enough, I admire your determination to make this rule stick!
Another counterpoint though - Quincy ME. Oh course you could argue that it’s not all that good even with Jack Klugman’s crime solving coroner.
Oh, another one - Father Ted!
I don’t think Frasier would work without Frasier
Cheers spin-off. Doesn’t count.
E.g. joey, young Sheldon, mork & mindy.
Was it supposed to be funny? I thought the joke was that he was a terrible hackneyed comedian.
Product placements in it are terrible too
“Drake’s coffee cakes …”
The show has brought a lot of cringey memories to my life 🤢
It will be legen… wait for it… dary!
I couldn’t agree more. The idea seemed to have been “Hey, lets take a joke that was just luke warm at best to begin with, and then over use it in an attempt to wring every single spec of amusement out of it until our audience gets physically sick when they hear it”
Still a fun show though!
It is kinda brilliant though, the way they set it up.
If you don’t like the joke, you can always fall back to the meta level: this is a 40-something dad recalling how dumb and cringe-worthy he and his friends were in their 20s.
Yeah it’s not really supposed to be “funny”. It’s just Barney being corny because that’s who the character is. (When he’s not being a sociopath with women.)
Plus Old Ted is an unreliable narrator.
Tap for spoiler
Old Ted is trying to justify to his kids why he wants to bone one of his best friends’ ex wife,
The show really should be renamed Why I Want To Sleep With My Old Crush.
Sometimes that can happen with a joke - like it’s kind of mid when you first tell it, then you keep pushing it and everyone hates it, then at a certain point something breaks and it becomes the funniest thing ever for some inexplicable reason. Not saying that’s what happened with with this joke necessarily, but it is possible! Old Family Guy used to do it quite well sometimes I think.
“Did you do a little turn on the catwalk? Yeah, on the catwalk? Did you do a little turn on the catwalk, Lois?”
What show is that from?
How I Met Your Mother.
I tried, but I could not get into that show.
Same. Every episode I watched was trying too hard to make the guys relatable because “look at what dorks they are when it’s just the guys! Haha! Isn’t this funny?!”
Also it felt like a much worse version of Friends.
None of the characters were particularly interesting or like able.
How I Met your Mother
I hate how in Disney family sitcoms as well as some cartoons, there’s always the stock dumb kid that gives the majority of the humor, and it’s humor that gets old.
And they get dumber and dumber by every season
The example I think that got me to dislike the trope was in Austin and Ally. The character Desmond was eating a muffin with the muffin wrapper on, and one of the characters mentioned you “have to remove the wrapper before eating it”, so he removes the wrapper and throws the muffin away and starts eating the wrapper because that’s how he interpreted their advice. And I’m thinking has there ever been a teenager who didn’t have some instinct on how to eat a muffin.
Art imitates life
One character I actually really like because he makes fun of the trope (at least in one episode), is Barry from American Dad!
I grow tired of how all the Pixar style movies use the same facial visual gags. They’re all kinda samey.
Better than Dreamworks, though
It’s all the same crap to me.
Here’s the opposite; a joke that I love from a sitcom I hate: “Secret elixir, huh? Well, I’m usually more of a bourbon guy, but when push comes to shove I don’t know what the hell’s in that either.” - Charlie Harper, “Two and a Half Men”
That’s one good joke from one insufferable show.
A mix of grains consisting of not less than 51% corn, water, yeast and oak. That’s what you need to make bourbon.
Some of the Scrubs jokes aged badly. I can’t remember any specifically, but there was some anti-gay humor and stuff like that. The show I still appreciated enough to get through a rewatch recently and still mostly enjoyed, but some of the individual jokes were hard to sit through. Wish I could remember one lol.
Ha! gaaaaaaaay
Aged badly as well.Same with Futurama. Kif repeatedly reacting disgusted at Zapp’s more homoerotic antics or singing a pro-trans song, do not seem to sit right when watched with a modern eye.
I never saw those moments as Kif being homophobic. I read it as a subordinate being repulsed by the idea of seeing his commanding officer naked.
Yeah I am pretty sure this is the intention of the writers. Showing yourself naked to your subordinate is not “homoerotism”, it’s harassment.
I only remember one instance of Kif being homophobic, when Zapp says Lee Lemon is filling him with “other emotions that are weird and confusing.” Not wanting to constantly see your commanding officer naked isn’t homophobia.
And his annoyance when Zapp sang a name-swapped version of Lola was about how Zapp is acting toward Leela by doing that rather than the subject matter of the original song. Zapp even replaced the trans subject with a cis one, what could a transphobe even be objecting to?
Here’s the Lee Lemon clip:
No one is naked. Kiff is reacting to the statement itself. The nudity comes later and isn’t reacted to.
Here’s the Lola clip:
Note that before Zapp even mentions Leela’s name, the patrons are already sickened by him singing it. Kiff doesn’t react here, so I might have confused a memory, but still, that’s quite a reaction by the audience, no?
I was giving the Lee Lemon thing as an example where I agree Kif’s reaction was homophobic, saying it was the only such example I could think of.
The patrons are responding to the way he’s performing. Zapp is broadly a parody of Captain Kirk and this scene was a reference to William Shatner’s infamous spoken word cover of Rocketman, at least until Zapp fully broke down and started wailing the name of the woman who hates him. The only reason the song is Lola is because that’s a famous song you can easily swap Leela’s name into.
I swear I remember a Kif reaction, too, by the way.
On arrested development I skip the story arc of episodes related to Maeby tricking people in to thinking her mom is trans so they can be awful to her.
There is a lot of casual transphobia that was common at the time, but I just can’t fucking stand those scenes.
Isn’t she just doing that to try and stop Steve Holt from being attracted to her mum instead of to her?
I don’t think she was trying to get people to be nasty to her particularly, just trying to distract Steve.
Maeby: And the worst part is he thinks he’s passing.
Yes, her motivation was make Steve Holt not interested but fundamentally the joke is that Steve wouldn’t be attracted to trans woman, which is what happens. Which honestly makes the whole joke worse.
And even if you don’t care about that, Maeby’s motivation doesn’t matter because she still uses transphobia as a way to harass Lindsey behind her back.
I honestly find the whole thing so upsetting and not even remotely funny.
Yeah, fair enough. It’s not a joke that has aged well, certainly.
This is in a lot of shows and not just sitcoms, but I hate contrived argumentative dialogue that’s set up so that the protagonist always gets the last word with “witty” responses/comebacks. It’s like watching a “I’m the attractive Chad and you are the ugly NPC” meme in real time.
Any kind of overt and heavily pushed version of their stereotyped personality is the joke.
Hawk Tua
Not a sitcom joke (yet…) but wow yeah. A moderately funny joke for about a day, but the memes have been tiresome since.
The poor girl allegedly lost her job as a preschool teacher over it, too.
https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/hawk-tuah-girl
Know Your Meme says the firing is a false rumor. I don’t even know that she works at a preschool… because I have not and will not research that… because I am lazy.
I don’t even know that she works at a preschool
Probably not. The source for that was the same hoax Facebook post that announced she had been fired.
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Tupoah Country Tribune is a satirical site. The picture you linked is about halfway down this article:
She’s apparently making a small fortune selling merch.
Oh that’s good to hear. And somewhat surprising, considering how easily memes get ripped off by random strangers for profit.
The poor girl allegedly lost her job as a preschool teacher over it, too.
I genuinely don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that information. It was an outlandish thing to say and arguably funny. Plus, she knew she was being recorded and maybe even signed a release.
Am I supposed to be angry at the person interviewing people on the street? Other people for sharing it? Her former employer? Myself for laughing?
It turned out to be from a “satire” news company (scare quotes because I just don’t see how it was satire…it’s not poking fun at any institutions or beliefs or advocating for any particular action), and not a real story.
But it’s worth investigating how we feel about it anyway, because stories where something similar has happened have also been true.
I think the people doing the interviews are the lowest scum-tier “influencers”. I hate that they exist, I can’t understand who’s watching them. They’re not producing anything of value. But they’re not doing anything morally wrong, in my opinion.
The blame here lies 100% on the employer. What she’s doing when not on company time or in company uniform are none of the company’s business. It should not be legal and is definitely not ethical for an employer to take any disciplinary action for something an employee does that has no connection to their business.
the terrible transphobic storyline in arrested development
Wait, which one?
All sitcom dads being fat, slobbish and painfully stupid and unaware of anything to do with housework, children, or common sense but somehow they all have long-suffering yet weirdly hot wives who just roll their eyes and somehow don’t file for divorce.
The Simpsons
King of Queens
George Lopez’s show
According to Jim (Belushi)
Last man standing (Tim Allen)
Home improvement (Again Tim Allen)
Everybody loves Raymond
The entire premise of every one of these shows is HAHAHA DADS ARE IDIOTS HA HAHA
You forgot Married with Children which was one of the first
Absolutely, one of the first and best examples.
I have to admit though, I do actually love that show haha
My friend showed me IT crowd for the first time and I loved it, but then we got to That Episode
Which one is that one?
The one where Matt Berry’s character freaks out and dumps his girlfriend after finding out she’s trans, and we’re meant to be sort of on his side
The episode may have aged badly, but I disagree we’re supposed to be on his side. Absolutely everything he does is batshit insane…
Ah yes. There’s actually quite a lot of jokes that feel more controversial in retrospect but yeah that one’s pretty bad
I am completely done with the “male character says something chauvanistic, female character slaps, that’s the joke.”
Futurama did it quite a lot, Leela hit Fry a lot, Amy hit him a few times. I done with shows that do that. I see that joke happen again I’ll stop the playback right then and there and cancel whatever service I’m watching it on.
sue the showrunners & writers for all they have
