THE PACK Message Boards

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

oooooooooooook, that was weird. But funny. sort of

I didn't know Jon was so...depressing!

But I have to admit, it WAS hillarious.

Eh. . . You know, I knew Jon was a hopeless case already. The problem is that without Garfield's comments, Jon is exactly that: hopeless. Characters like Jon are foils; they are not fun by themselves, but can be "made" fun of by more witty characters. By themselves, it's just irritating and sad.

That's why I hate The Office with a passion unrivaled. Instead of making ridicule of Michael the very second he demonstrates even a slight hint of stupidity and making the show funny, all the other characters just stand around in silence and let him dig himself deeper and deeper until it is painful and irritating to watch as opposed to funny.

Terastas wrote:That's why I hate The Office with a passion unrivaled. Instead of making ridicule of Michael the very second he demonstrates even a slight hint of stupidity and making the show funny, all the other characters just stand around in silence and let him dig himself deeper and deeper until it is painful and irritating to watch as opposed to funny.

I utterly ADORE The Office, and just for that reason. A lot of people seem to have extreme views about it (Love, or Hate it, choose one.), and I think that's because the humour is so different. There's no punchlines to work off of, you just have to take humour in the situation.

Actually, there are punchlines. The difference is that, instead of Michael saying or doing stupid yet believable and another character delivering the punchline, Michael delivers the punchline in the form of a statement or action that is too stupid to be believable, much less funny. . . Then promptly follows that with a second punchline that is even more unbelievably stupid, followed by a brief silence and then another statement by Michael that makes it even more painfully obvious that his character is an idiot, etc., etc.

It almost feels the writers think their audience is too stupid to follow a conversation, too stupid to get the joke with just one punchline, so every time Michael delivers a punchline, he hammers it down over and over again. It's like every punchline gets followed up with "Do you get it? Isn't that funny? Huh? Get it? Want me to explain it to you?"

Lets make a comparison. If comedy great Jeff Dunham were a sitcom, traditional sitcom format would be:

Daddy D: "You the ho!"
Jeff D: "No I'm not."
Daddy D: "What do you do for a living?"
Jeff D: "I entertain people."
Daddy D: "You the ho!"
Jeff D: "No I'm not a ho."
Daddy D: "Why do you do what you do?"
Jeff D: "Because I like what I do and it's the best way I know to make money."
Daddy D: "You the ho!"
Jeff D: "Wait, what if I said I did it only because I enjoy it and don't care about the money?"
Daddy D: "You the dumb ho!"


That same routine in The Office format would be:

Jeff D: "Hello, I'm a ho. I am a total ho. I am such a great big ho. Can you believe what a total ho I am? Get it? Well, I'm a ho. I'm a big fat no-doubt-about-it ho. Are you laughing yet? Dammit, I can't make it any more obvious to you idiots what a great big fat ho I am! I'm such a ho! Get it?!"
[scene change]
Daddy D: "Hey, you wanna' see a movie after work tonight?"
[scene change]
Jeff D: "Hello, I'm a ho. I'm a total ho . . .[cont.]"


You wouldn't expect an episode of Family Guy to be funny if only Meg had a speaking role, would you? The foil is only as funny as the characters which s/he contrasts.

Terastas, what looks like happening here is that you're expecting one style of humour and getting a completely different style.

Comedy is in the eye of the beholder. You might not think The Office is funny. I don't like it much myself. But it's a very popular show, so I'm happy to just assume that I don't enjoy the style of humour and leave it at that. I'm not going to go around saying "I don't like it so it's bad" or "I don't like it so it's not funny".

As for your last paragraph; it's certainly possible for a team to be funny where a single character supplies most of the humorous dialogue: just look at the Marx brothers, and how seldom anyone gets to interrupt Groucho when he gets up a good head of steam.

Well, then, I'm probably one of the few people who doesn't love The Office, but still likes it and will watch it :/

I mean, the whole idea behind the humor in the office is just sheer awkwardness...two of the major contributors being:
-Michael, who is pretty much socially retarded.
-Dwight, who is just plain weird.

I mean, yes it frequently gets uncomfortable with those two characters acting the way they do...but hey, we all know people like that on some level, or have similarly made fools out of ourselves before, so we can laugh a bit at that...and the sheer ridiculousness of much of it is supposed to add to this humor, no matter how uncomfortable it might seem to some.

The fact that everybody else is serious while Michael does something stupid or inappropriate doesn't have to be looked on as a bad thing... If it was a real situation you were witnessing, that is how people would likely react... you might find it very uncomfortable and *not* funny as you're witnessing it first hand... but later on you'd probably be able to go "hahaha....wow." at it. I mean, it's not real, and you can't do anything about it...so you're even *more* withdrawn from it than you would be if you were recounting actual events, or hearing them from somebody else. If you look at it from that perspective it's easier to laugh at.

Hey, I'm not knocking social awkwardness. That is a great form of comedy. . .

When it's subtle.

That kind of humor doesn't work when you milk it to death and make it systematically more and more obvious like they do on The Office. If you're going to dumb it down and hammer a punch line over and over again, screw subtle humor and social awkwardness and go for slapstick and fart jokes.