But for alert reader Patricia, this raises a question:
I find myself wondering what other MST fans find funny, beyond MST itself. What do they immediately think of as “funny”: Monty Python or Saturday Night Live, Carol Burnett or Jerry Lewis, Keeping up Appearances or South Park?
I find myself wondering that too!
Ever since I was little, one of the primary obsessions of my life was the study of comedy, comedians, humorists, what’s funny. I’ve read and enjoyed everything from Mark Twain (and he wrote some short essays that are laugh-out-loud funny) to John Kennedy Toole, Woody Allen to Chris Miller. I’ve seen funny movies of all kinds. Some seemed funny at the time but don’t age well (as a teenager I remember LOVING “The End”; I rented it again recently and it left me cold and a little pissed off); some (“Bringing Up Baby” and “Office Space” come to mind immediately) get funnier every time I see them.
There are some comedy franchises that people insist that I MUST see because they are brilliant and…meh. Two examples of that would be “Red Dwarf” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I watched them both with great expectations of hilarity and I just wasn’t laughing. All I can say is “sorry.”
Monty Python (and their forebearers, Cooke and Moore) are the kind of British comedy I love (btw, check out Shout Factory’s wonderful “Secret Policeman’s Balls” collection for more stuff like that). “Are You Being Served” and Benny Hill not so much (though when Benny rattles off a classic bawdy music hall tune, you may find me smiling).
I am male, so the Three Stooges are funny to me (it’s a biological imperative), but really we’re talking Curly and early Shemp; the rest is just dreck. Similarly, I am a huge Marx Brothers fan, but really we’re talking about their last three films for Paramount (“Monkey Business,” “Horsefeathers” and “Duck Soup”) and their first two for MGM (“A Night at the Opera” and “A Day at the Races”). The rest are a little thin on the laughs.
Let’s see: Musically there’s Spike Jones, Alan Sherman, Stan Freeberg and Tom Lehrer and Weird Al, a list that that I think represents a continuum of funny songs.
On TV I STILL enjoy “The Simpsons” after all these years, I find Family Guy a subversive delight (though I have to admit that the shock value wears off on repeat viewings) and I should tell you my story about South Park. When I first encountered it I instinctively HATED it. I agreed with Kevin Murphy who, at that time, called them “profane Colorforms.” It just seemed like they were trading on the immediate laughter that comes from a little kid yelling profanities.
But I came around, and what did it for me was the South Park movie. I took a shot at the video store one day and rented it and found myself doubled over with laughter. I then went back and checked out the show, and discovered that it had grown over the seasons, and that there were more funny episodes than not.
I am plagued by guilty pleasures: When BBI would mock “Friends” I would cringe: I giggled at it more than it probably deserves. I am ashamed to admit that currently that spot is occupied by the low-brow “Two and a Half Men.” 
I am not a fan of comedy that tries to get its laughs by making its audience cringe in embarrassment or laugh at somebody’s humiliation (so “Borat” and “Bruno” leave me cold). That said, “The Office,” which trades largely in embarrassment humor, cracks me up. I’m complicated.
I like a lot of the Adult Swim stuff, especially “Robot Chicken.” I don’t watch Saturday Night Live, but that’s mostly because I’m usually doing something else at that hour on a Saturday and I never think to Tivo it. But back in the day (the Eddie Murphy-Billy Crystal-Chris Guest era) I loved it.
Speaking of Chris Guest, I love all his unscripted movies, from “Waiting for Guffman,” to “Spinal Tap” to “Best in Show.”
I could go on all day, but that’s probably enough. Off we go.
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Just about all of the old Zucker brother movies:
Kentucky Fried Movie
Top Secret!
Airplane!
Airplane 2 The Sequel
Naked Gun
Naked Gun 2 1/2
MST3K, Britcoms, Python, Ricky Gervais, Naked Gun movies, Reno 911, Airplane, Blackadder, Caddyshack, Christopher Guest movies, the Goons, I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again, the Goodies, those crisp Ealings Studios comedies from the 1950s …
This is a great topic. I enjoyed reading what people enjoy. Here’s some of my fave raves besides MST3K:
PG Wodehouse (I have all his novels)
Monty Python
Black Books
Jeeves & Wooster
The Three Stooges
Ernie Kovacs (too bad he was only mentioned a couple of times)
The Bonzo Dog Band/Vivian Stanshall
A Confederacy of Dunces
SCTV
The Odd Couple (TV show; surprised that no one has mentioned it)
Bob & Ray (ditto)
Dr. Demento (double dittos)
The Producers (original version)
Jean Shepherd (besides A Christmas Story; he also a radio show for over 20 yrs., published books, short stories & columns & was also responsible for one of the great literary hoxes, the I Libertine affair)
Rodney Dangerfield
The moment that I laughed the hardest was the final ten minutes of Eddie Murphy’s Raw where he described his family of having to wear & eat the products that his father made @ the toy factory.
Finally, for a future topic, how about what celebrity riffer would you like to have seen on the SOL w/Joel/Mike & the bots?
What a brilliant topic this is! Lots of stuff to check out that I haven’t seen (Eddie Izzard especially), and lots of funny memories rekindled.
Most of the things I’d list have already been listed ad nauseum, so I’ll just say that fellow Python/Office fans should give “Flight Of The Conchords” a try. One of the best shows I’ve seen come out in quite some time.
Alexei Sayle of the Young Ones and Alexei
Sayle’s Stuff. “The first thing to go on
a comedian is………………………..
…………………………..timing.”
I forgot Psych, I love Psych and Scrubs!!!!!!! :wink:
Old TV: I was weaned on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers. Has anyone mentioned the old Batman TV show? As a kid I didn’t get much of the humor, but it’s in there. Not overtly. Sort of tongue-in-cheek. The Carol Burnett Show. I hated Laugh-In. Sanford and Son had its moments of comedic candor, such as when Lamont gets a ticket and Fred, in traffic court, says (and I so ultra-quote): “Look at this place. There’re enough niggers in here to make a Tarzan movie!” Remember: that was acceptable on TV in the 1970s, but not today. If you get a chance, watch the Chuckles the Clown episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Chuckles, dressed as a peanut, gets killed by an elephant. The funeral sequence is a classic. Anyone bring up MASH? Yes, I know it was a based on a war, but it had some VERY funny moments, any episode with Colonel Flag was a scream. Great MASH line (delivered by Frank Burns): “Do you have any papers to prove these are your papers?” All in the Family is a classic example of using malapropism in comedy.
New TV: Curb Your Enthusiasm really makes me squirm. It’s aversion comedy, something you hate to watch happening but feel compelled to watch. I never could stand Everybody Loves Raymond. Ray Romano’s standup was pathetic. It was obvious he was playing it safe to get a sitcom that turned out to be more boring than watching bees collect pollen in slow motion. Family Guy…hmmm. I don’t know what to make of it. There’s too much formula at play, yet on occasion it’s humorous. The Simpsons has a better handle on writing actual stories to accompany the gags. I’m in the minority who finds Friends and Seinfeld funny, but not every episode of either. I pick and choose. Brand spanking new: Nurse Jackie. Yes, there’s blood, but among the blood are some good laughs, too.
More later.
Randy
Well, I didn’t look at the site over the weekend, so I’m very late, but here goes:
Monty Python
Peter Cook (here’s the Frog and Peach sketch)
Mr. Show
SCTV
SNL 1986-1992
Jonathan Winters
Airplane!
Network (best black comedy ever)
Marx Brothers
Office Space
The Birdcage
Christopher Guest movies
The Jack Benny Program (holds up very well today)
Fibber McGee and Molly
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me
Fawlty Towers
The Odd Couple
The Simpsons up till about season 8
Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman
Fernwood 2Night
All in the Family
M*A*S*H
Good Neighbors
Frasier
Futurama before the movies
The first 3 seasons of Married with Children (some of the best TV writing ever)
Jack Paar
Craig Ferguson (Ferguson is today’s Paar)
Psych
Chuck
The O.C.
Douglas Adams
David Sedaris
John Irving
I dislike mean-spirited humor such as Borat/Bruno, Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
(Full disclosure: I’m a female)
Movies & TV:
Arrested Development
Flight of the Concords
Beer Fest / Super Troopers
Old School
Grandma’s Boy
Extras / The Office (UK version)
The first three seasons of The Office (US version)
Napoleon Dynamite
Hot Fuzz / Shaun of the Dead / Run Fat Boy, Run
Dodgeball
The Anchorman
Team America
Classics:
Monte Python
Animal House
The Blues Brothers
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Ghostbusters & Ghostbusters II
The Great Outdoors
Vacation / Christmas Vacation
Groundhog Day
Caddyshack
Seinfeld (early episodes)
The ‘Burbs
Stand-Up:
Brian Regan
Jim Gaffigan
Tom Papa
Not Funny:
Family Guy (Mostly– but the first half of the “Surfin’ Bird” episode was hilarious)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Sasha Baron Cohen
Seth Rogen
Margaret Cho (“Beautiful” was not pretty)
This list is probably not complete, but you get the picture.
Oh, I left out Stephen Colbert, who is a genius and one of the greatest impromptu performers ever.
And also very funny, by the way.
Humor for me depends on the time of day.
Always funny: Monty Python, Get Smart!, Fawlty Towers, SCTV, Weird Al, Dilbert, Far Side, Office Space, Team America, Jeff Foxworthy, MXC (Season 1 and 2), Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead
Sometimes funny: Benny Hill, King of the Hill, South Park, MASH, Simpsons, Steve Martin (post The Jerk but pre everything else), WWE, Star Trek, Leslie Neilson, Zucker Bros.
Never funny: Political humorists/commentary, Joe Rogan, Dane Cook, Waylan Brothers
Adult Swim has been mentioned collectively a lot, but only a handful of shows have been addressed, despite their respective quality being all over the place. AS is currently my main TV routine, as I loved Space Ghost and the Toonami Midnight run in the late ’90s, so I was naturally a charter Swimfan. In general it started out strong, but laid some real clunkers of late.
Venture Brothers is indeed their best show of all time: hilarious, but also picking the best motifs of action cartoon and comic book pop culture and spinning it into a cohesive mythology; brilliant.
Frisky Dingo tried something similar, and was almost as good, but you have to watch every single ep in order to get the jokes. Ex: In the first season finale, everything that changed over the previous 7 or so eps is undone, including the Annihilatrix being rebuilt by a construction company called “Ret-Con”. I’m surprised no one mentioned it, and heartbroken that 70/30 Productions went under, as they’d only been getting even better after the equally-almost-as-good Sealab 2021.
The Brak Show was also pretty good, even if the humor was inconsistent.
Aqua Teen Hungerforce is one of AS’s best too (yes, it nosedived in quality after the 3rd season, but it slowly clawed its way back up), as is Harvey Birdman. Perfect Hair Forever could have gone on to become their greatest show ever, and considering AS also airs the best variety of anime on American TV, I’m really stumped as to why if failed. I’m trying not to be bitter and negative in this thread, but it really is a crime that a show that clever and well executed only lasted 7 episodes while garbage like Squidbillies, Xavier, and Delocated just rolls on. (To be fair, Squidbillies has had its moments, but most of them were in the pilot. Like Minoriteam and Fat Guy Stuck In Internet, it has a funny premise, but fails to do anything funny with it).
I also love Robot Chicken, even if it’s been hit-or-miss lately, and will always have faith that it will one day become as good as the Twisted Toyfare Theater that inspired it.
I like my humor dark, so Moral Orel was an automatic winner in my book, and built up to a surprisingly touching and optimistic ending. On the other hand, as clever as Tom Goes to the Mayor was, it seriously made me want to kill myself more than laugh, so Awesome Show! Great Job! was a vast improvement. Tim and Eric’s A.D.D. sketch comedy makes me want to hurt THEM instead (much like Conan O’Brien), but the show’s clever weirdness usually makes up for it, no matter how disgusting they get.
I think Superjail has a lot of the same fans as Family Guy, and each show makes me laugh about 2 or 3 times per ep.
Super Milk Chan, 12 ounce Mouse, Drinky Crow, Look Around You, and The Mighty Boosh hardly ever make me laugh out loud, but they all have a nice weirdness that sits on my head and helps me get to sleep.
And speaking of live-action AS Brit-coms, Darkplace is one of my top 10 fav shows of all time, but I don’t think of it as AS because SciFi channel had it first.
I really wish AS could work out a deal with Robert Smigel to produce new episodes of TV Funhouse, which Comedy Central only had 8 eps of. That’s probably my second favorite show of all time after MST3K, and matches AS’s style perfectly now that they have so much live action.
Oh, and just a bit more about their only 2 totally worthless shows, both from PFFR:
Xavier: Yes, I get it, the creators came up with a bizarre Sim that they thought was funny, and decided to just string together a bunch of words that sounded clever in the writing room, thinking that could make for a funny show. All I don’t get is how enough fans agreed with them to warrant 3 seasons. It must just be so cheap to produce they can’t lose money. I seriously gave it a chance. I tried. I even showed it to friends to get their input. And then I had to apologize to every last one of them, something I didn’t even do for the ones I showed Hobgoblins to.
Delocated: (sigh) Reality TV doesn’t even deserve to be mocked, it deserves to be completely ignored. It’s one trend you just plain cannot get humor out of through conventional parody. The only slight exception was Drawn Together, but only because it went off on so many tangents that had nothing to do with Reality TV.
I’m convinced that the only reason anyone watches Reality TV is the subconscious hope of seeing someone actually get killed, despite knowing logically that any actual fatalities would be edited out. If every episode of Jackass featured one moron doing a dumb stunt in which he actually loses his arm and gets his skull shattered and bleeds to death over the course of a few mintes, while some jerk off-camera cracks a horribly offensive joke involving the phrase “self-cleaning gene-pool”, then, and only then, I might just barely laugh. (Man, I got picked on A LOT in the public school system) My point is, if you’re not willing to go to the well of graphic violence, don’t try to get anything funny out of reality TV. It’s THAT bad. Delocated failed to understand this principle, and is therefore not funny.
What’s that you say? Graphic violence is NEVER funny because it violates the ‘bend, don’t break’ rule of comedy? I might agree, if I hadn’t seen the first 3 films of Peter Jackson. Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Brain Dead/Dead Alive each featured 3X the gore of a Lucio Fulci joint, but were better slapstick (splatterstick? Jackson calls them “splattoons”) than any 3 Stooges effort I’ve seen. Most other attempts at the same effect (Troma) produce little to no laughs, so I guess that just shows comedy is an art and not a science.
But then, I often find humor in things others find too bizarre or disturbing. I like Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs better than John Waters’ later color efforts, see a lot of humor in Godard’s Weekend, and as 1 or 2 people may have guessed from my username, Big Meat Eater is the only musical I’ve actually laughed out loud at.
And my favorite comic strips are Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side, the only comic book that makes me laugh is Evan Dorkin’s “DORK” (Milk and Cheese not so much, but he and Sarah Dyer had a hand in the best parts of Shin Chan and Space Ghost Coast to Coast) and for humor in music: Weird Al, Spike Jones, They Might Be Giants, and one Best of Dr. Demento set.
The Bolem, thanks for bringing up Darkplace. Great stuff.
I love surreal comedy. Buster Keaton is my favorite, followed by Laurel and Hardy. Monty Python, Green Acres and Get Smart are my favorite TV comedies. Then there’s Jonathan Winters, no stand up comedian has ever made me laugh as hard as he does.
I tend to agree with everyone about Family Guy. It is just so badly written. I’ve also never been a fan of 1990’s sitcoms. Fresh Prince, Friends, Seinfeld etc… all bored me. Only Everybody Loves Raymond made me laugh.
mel brooks ‘ Holocaust,the musical’
The Donnor party,the winter years
Industrial accidents,the movie
Lifetimes female circumcision chronicles
Hunting the homeless
PBS liberal love stories,’Me, my girlfriend Stump,and her brothers.
CBS nightly news with Katie Couric
….what do they immediately think of as “funny”: Monty Python or Saturday Night Live, Carol Burnett or Jerry Lewis, Keeping up Appearances or South Park?–my answer is yes!!
Does anyone remember the ABC show from the early 1980s Fridays? I don’t remember much, but I always loved Rich Hall’s Pitkinville bits. And what about the Mr. Show and Mr. Bean?
Nuts, I forgot Saul of the Mole Men, which was great for someone like me who regrets not being old enough to have lived through Sid and Marty Kroft’s puppet shows in the 70’s. I’ve yet to see another spoof that has so much fun with intentional inconsistencies and absurdities. It had everything I like about The Mighty Boosh (Jonny Tambourine=blonde Vince in a stasis tube) an homage to nearly every Kroft show (even Krista from the 90’s Land of the Lost), and some unique gags that I’d never seen done before, period, but were long overdue. A shame there doesn’t seem to be a season 2 in the works, unless you count The Young Person’s Guide to History, which is perhaps the best example of a something being funny just because it’s so weird you can’t even describe it. They seem to be treating that like Perfect Hair Forever though: very few episodes which randomly appear then disappear without explaination.
Oh yeah, Home Movies and Metalocalypse rule as well, showing that Brendan Small is simply hilarious no matter what sensibility he’s going for.
I mentioned DORK before, which contained the original Eltingville Club strips, #5 being the one Evan Dorkin loosely translated into the Welcome to Eltingville pilot about 6 years ago. As nice as that would be as a series, I have even higher hopes for Adult Swim’s most recent pilot, Snake’n’Bacon. I assume there’s a lot of background to that one in comics and possibly webisodes, but there’s no listing for it on IMDB! (well, I haven’t checked in a while…) That show could become the next TV Funhouse if they just give it a chance. Think of it as a cross between Tim&Eric and Robot Chicken, with A.D.D. sketches that actually interconnect, and a fixation on comic book sensibilities instead of toys.
And speaking of A.D.D. sketches, I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures” either (except the song in Radioactive Dreams), but I do have an odd weakness in my otherwise sick sense of humor: I just completely lose it whenever a show jarringly cuts away to random bits of B&W stock footage. Maybe it’s because I watched every episode of Muppet Babies as a child, but whether it’s in a cartoon or live action (say, the end of Duck Soup), toss in some sped-up footage of old cars, tanks, or circus animals, and you’ll find me on the floor hyperventillating.
Funny Stuff:
– Firesign Theater
– Monty Python
– Church of the SubGenius
– Principia Discordia
– Bill Hicks
– George Carlin
– Futurama
– Ren & Stimpy
– Space Ghost C2C
– Andy Kaufman
– SCTV
– Steve Martin (esp. The JERK)
– Mr. Show
– Daily Show & Colbert Report
I think pretty much everything is funny if you really look at it. I mean, even the most nastiest or cruel or out-of-bounds things can be funny. I’m not saying like actual tragedies are funny but you can make a funny joke about it. The kind where when you hear it you cringe, wince and laugh at the same time. I think that’s what makes MST3K funny. There are so many references outside of actual humor/movies that you have to be kind of well-rounded to get a lot of them and a lot of the jokes are pretty macabre. I like that aspect. Also, the humor of the movies themselves isn’t really humor. I mean, most of the movies were serious or horror, not comedies (I have trouble believing Hobgoblins isn’t a comedy) . They are funny because of ridiculousness I suppose. So maybe that’s what I like, ridiculousness.
Dr. Jane Seymour Medicine Quinn
I always interpreted Gypsay as saying “… Medicine QUEEN”, but now that I see it typed out “..Quinn” actually makes more sense ( but I think Queen is a better line ).
Not to be judgemental or anything, just sort of making a concerned observation, but we ( and by ‘we’ I mean ‘you all’ ) seem to watch an awful lot of TV.
Yeah, what’s that all about? We don’t need a bunch of people who watch TV at this site dedicated to a TV show…wait a minute…
I am shocked! SHOCKED! to find that people on this site watch tv shows. That’s it! Round up the usual suspects!
hbo’s short-lived but hilarious “Hardcore Tv” one of the funniest things ever on tv. “Raging Bullwinkle”, “Spamby” and “Pubic Hair club for Men” I hope they release it on DVD someday.
yes yes very funny. I was wondering just about the quantity of viewing, not about the watching of TV itself. I believe that there might be something good on TV somewhere. It’s just that sometime in 1999 I started to lose interest ;)
I do own a television machine, but I use it mostly to watch Marx Bros, Abbot & Costello, Benny Hill, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Monty Python, Andy Griffith and a certian cowtown puppet show we all know and love.
You kids today with your crystal meth and your pop punk.. bahhhhhh
god is dead ? GOOD !
Can I get some love for Bob & Ray?
diskojoe and spotmaker … right on
Mark Twain
Firesign Theatre
The Bugle (podcast)
SJ Perelman
PG Wodehouse
Terry Pratchett
Bill Hicks
Richard Pryor
Maria Bamford
Richard Curtis
Asterix
Phineas & Ferb
Stewart / Colbert
Blazing Saddles
Chuck Jones and Michael Maltese
Keith Knight
Shaun of the Dead
Joss Whedon
Jonathan Winters,Laurel and Hardy,Monty Python,Fawlty Towers,Three Stooges(only with Curly),Marx Brothers(except for their later films),SNL with Belushi/Radner,then with Carvey/Murphy;Animal House,Airplane!,A Fish Called Wanda,George Carlin,Richard Pryor,Young Frankenstein,Blazing Saddles,Weird Al,The Naked Trucker,Frank Zappa,Carol Burnett and Friends,Dick Van Dyke,The Simpsons from season 1 to 8,Married with Children,Malcolm in the Middle,SCTV,Looney Tunes,The Far Side,Space Ghost,The Muppet Show,The Brak Show,Rodney Dangerfield,The Munsters,Andy Griffith Show..guess that’s it..
How come no love for Shemp? I thought he was hysterical! And while not as ironic as Curly, Shemp is a much funnier name.
I’ve always loved material that showed a certain amount of intelligence in the sense that the writers & performers are tossing out humor that plays with the language, pokes fun at cultural mores & symbols, etc. I find most of modern humor to be descended from “South Park” – Potty humor for the young & old alike who like potty humor. Not that South Park is without some merit – I enjoy it in small doses – but it paved the way for lazy comedy writing, the urge to take the easy way out. Things haven’t been the same since. As for what I find funny, my ulnar nerve loves to be smacked by “Seinfeld”, “Mash” (the early years in particular), Early SNL, Monty Python & the Marx Brothers. I enjoy the Simpsons from time to time. More recent shows I enjoy: Everybody Loves Raymond & Frasier.
Actually, I’m not a medium, I agree with you and use the TV machine in much the same way you do. When I was younger, I used to watch TV religiously, but after about 1990, I lost interest (except for that cowtown puppet show), and mainly catch up with things I’ve heard were good on DVD. That’s how I watched Frasier – all on DVD.
I think you need to have consumed a lot of pop culture to really enjoy MST3K, so I expect the show would draw people who watched a lot of TV.
Mike in Portland – I know that when I watch the tapes, I like to keep the computer on to try and look up references that I’m not getting. I guess it’s kind of like homework, but I get pure chewing satisfaction when I can watch an episode of MST3K and follow along with most of the references. I always try to make sure there’s lots of room in my brain for pop culture references (I’ve forgotten all my multiplication tables and most of the alphabet so far).
Being Canadian, I come from a land where Comedy is king. Mind you we’ve had some mistakes in the past (We are VERY VERY sorry about Jim Carrey and Mike Myers… So very sorry.) we did bring you greats such as John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Andrea Martin, Rick Morranis, Dave Thomas, Catherine O’Hara etc. etc.
Some great Canuck humour is always found with SCTV, Kids in the Hall, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Rick Mercer Report
But I also like the following:
Tom Green (In his early days in Canada before the MTV stuff where some of his humour was more performance art than gross outs)
A lot of Adult Swim: Space Ghost, Harvey Birdman, Robot Chicken, Metalocalypse, Venture Brothers
Love love love South Park
Wondershowzen, The Whitest Kids U Know
The Young Ones was a classic Brit comedy, also Bottom. Loved Red Dwarf. Anyone mention Little Britain yet?
Anything “Weird Al” Yankovic touches is gold.
Andrea Martin is a comedy goddess. I got to see her in Young Frankenstein (on stage), and loved it. A different kind of performance from Cloris Leachman in the movie, but they’re very different performers. I had to go see it – I couldn’t pass up the chance to say that I saw Andrea Martin perform live.
Some of those other people Nick-O mentioned are good too.
I like a lot of comedy because I try to have pretty diverse tastes.
Of the old comedy legends I love the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Robert Benchley, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, and Ernst Lubitsch.
I really like comedy that manages to get a reaction out of people; be it anger, depression, discomfort, or joy. To me, being bland is the greatest sin of all. I’d rather be violently appalled by a TV show than stare at it in a dull gaze.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that I love people like Sacha Baron Cohen, or the PFFR troupe (“Wonder Showzen” and “Xavier: Renegade Angel”) who are geniuses at melding satire with offensiveness. “Xavier” in particular has broken just about every of comedy in its quest to become as shocking as possible. And I love it.
I’m also a big fan of the 90s sketch comedy shows like “The State,” “The Ben Stiller Show,” “Mr. Show,” “Kids in the Hall,” and “The Dana Carvey Show.” They all had a nice freewheeling attitude that’s hard to find in comedy today.
Judd Apatow’s movies amuse me, especially the two he’s directed (“40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”) which manage to be funny and surprising honest and truth at the same time.
And of course I love our cow town puppet show. I probably wouldn’t like half the stuff on my list were it not for this show.
Reruns of Full House always makes me laugh. No, wait, that show kills brain cells, nevermind.
I have one name for you:
Steve Urkel :grin:
I love them deeply (in no particular order):
The Python boys
Blackadder
Father Ted
Simpsons, Futurama
French and Saunders
Lliy Tomlin
Mel Brooks’ films from the 70’s
The original version of the Producers (one of the all time great comedies)
Richard Pryor
Fawlty Towers
Joe Keenan’s novels (Nobody else has mentioned him, he’s a sort of modern day Wodehouse)
Woody Allen’s short stories…oh, yeah, and (most) of his films
the original Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies
the Stooges, Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields
the Venture Brothers and Harvey Birdman (the latter is the funniest of the Adult Swim shows, IMO)
I hate them with hammers (aka, ‘People’ who should be executed for crimes against humanity):
Adam Sandler
David Spade
Rob Schneider
Jim Carrey
Benny Hill (Already dead! Yay!)
The Wayans Brothers
Whatsisname the Cable Guy
Fred P from #175. I agree with you. I have VHS tapes somewhere in my boxes o’ tapes of a few Hardcore TV episodes (Raging Bullwinkle is one of the most hysterical bits I have ever seen on TV or in a movie.)
It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia.
John D #190
( not that it matters what I think but ) I find both of your lists to be solid, with one possible exception.
Yes, there is much to hate about Benny Hill. The race & gender caricatures are hideous and I have to ff through them. The later years seemed to be one long girls-in-bikinis joke. The Sound of Frankenstein ( so terrible ), etc.
But there is comedy gold if you dig.. the Egg Marketing Board Tango ( The Dance of L’Oeuf ), his version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ( with his killer take on both Richard Burton and Liz Taylor ), much of the old B&W BBC material, are well crafted hunks of intelligent funny.
Sadly they make up only about half his body of work. And not what he is remembered for. sigh.
( I too am a fan of Woody Allen’s short stories ( notes from the overfed ! ), have you had a chance to hear his stand-up ? )
Crowtdan, I looked up Hardcore tv and they apparently had 8 episodes I only saw three of them and still have them on tape. You can still find a couple of the skits on Youtube. Including “Raging Bullwinkle”, “This Old Whorehouse” and “The Joy of Tattooing”. Still funny even though some of the references are a little dated. :grin:
This topic is so broad, I could write for hours and still not have an exhaustive list. So rather than come up with a list of shows, I’m gonna add a beef.
Curse you, Judd Apatow.
In 1996, I paid money to walk into a movie theater and see Happy Gilmore. I walked out of that theater vowing to never ever ever ever ever again pay money to watch an Adam Sandler movie.
For more than a decade, I’ve had no problems keeping this vow. I was mildly tempted by Reign Over Me, but was able to hold strong.
Now, Mr. Apatow, you’ve come along and screwed everything up. Who are you, Mr. John Hughes Of The ’00s, to cast that overhyped scenery-chewing one-joke pony in the lead role of a movie I actually want to see? How dare you sign Happy Waterboy Nicky Animal Zohan Chuck Deeds Madison to a role that might actually require depth and nuance?
You see, this can only turn out poorly. If Adam Sandler plays Adam Sandler Part XXXIII in this movie, you’ll have ruined your track record and brought shame and disgrace on your family name for generations to come. But if you, Mr. Apatow, manage to work your patented magic yet again, then I’ll be forced to choose between my word of honor and my desire to see another top-notch Apatow film. Or I’ll end up bumming a copy of a Filipino bootleg off my mother-in-law. You’ve turned my thoughts to piracy. Thanks, Judd. Bastard.
I love SNL,the three stooges and monty python but
Mst3k inspired me to get out there and make my own comedy.http://www.earlydaysproductions.com/original%20movies.html
see if anyone thinks it is funny
I loved Arrested Developement, it was a great comedy that was canned way too early. Strangers With Candy was also great.
Love: MST3K, The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, Venture Brothers, Abbott & Costello, The Tick, Dead Like Me, Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, John Cleese, Clint Eastwood, Bill Burr, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Dave Chappelle
Hate: All reality shows
This topic is absoolutely fah-cinating! We are all MST fans, so there should be some consensus on what’s funny, but I see people who hate stuff I love and vice versa! Maybe we can milk this one a little more and boil it down to a list of the most often mentioned things and vote on them. For example, Monty Python, love or hate? Seinfeld, Love or hate? Etc…
For the record I love all seasons of the Simpsons, it’s as funny now as it ever was to me! And I hate Borat / Bruno styled ‘comedy’ where the joke is to embarrass people.
The four that stick out:
MST3k Seasons 4-10
Monty Pythons Flying Circus
David Letterman (NBC years)
Simpsons Seasons 1-10
And I have to second an earlier post that mentioned Mike Nelson’s love for P.G. Wodehouse confirming his status as idol-worthy. Wodehouse is the funniest writer ever, although I could never get into the TV adaptations. For me, it’s all about Wodehouse’s gift with words.
Wow, great topic. I am eagerly awaiting the Arrested Development movie. As previously stated, a show that was canceled way too early.
While tv shows and films were mainly listed, I did see a few stand-up comics mentioned. Does anyone else on here remember and love Tom Lehrer? A dear uncle introduced his records to me when I was young and impressionable, and to this day I still laugh uncontrollably to Vatican Rag and Masochism Tango, not to mention Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.