some jokes i like
| my name is alec robbins. this is where i will talk about some jokes i like. when i think of more to talk about i'll add them here. maybe you will enjoy reading about them |
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(GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE) Darkplace is so funny it's hard to pick a single joke, but this one (which sets up a runner for the rest of the series) is so funny and so indicative of the whole style of the show that i think i made the right call. in it, Garth Marenghi (a send-up of pompous horror novelists) presents a scene from his previously-unaired TV show, Darkplace. but first, he wants to make sure you understand something about the acting skills of his publisher Dean Learner (played by Richard Aoyade): this continues through the rest of the series and it's funny to me the whole time. |
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(THE WRONG GUY) this is from a very funny Dave Foley movie (you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube!). this movie is full of very, very good jokes but i particularly love this one where Foley's character gets spotted and captured by the film's villain, a professional assassin. this joke is very fast and downplayed (it's at the end of the clip) so i left in a bit of the lead-up to help it play better: lol it gets me every time how Foley just casually walks away from danger the second he's free. and with such a level of disinterest that it's like he really believes he'll be fine! it's hard to overstate just how quickly the movie moves past this, and that's part of what really sells it for me. |
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(ONE PIECE) One Piece is a shonen manga about pirates that's famous for being over 1,000 chapters long. before i read it, i didn't really know that it was funny. it is, after all, an action-adventure story! i knew there'd be comic relief, but i wasn't expecting to be so stunned by some of the jokes. many of them come as a punchline to literal years of careful plotting (seriously!) and so they're a little too complex or spoiler-y to share here. but this joke, from a story arc that lands the pirate crew on a horror-themed island called Thriller Bark, stands completely on its own. here's foolhardy protagonist Monkey D. Luffy encountering a zombie for the first time:  what a perfect zombie joke. i couldn't believe nobody's ever done it before. a brave idiot, when faced with a zombie, would just... push it back down into the ground. the obvious solution we've all been missing for years. for fun, here's the button on the joke that clarifies how unfamiliar Luffy is with the concept of zombies:  and of course, since this has been adapted into an anime, you can take a look at the same joke translated into animation:  |
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(BRASS EYE) this is as clean a joke as anyone has ever written. funny premise, funny execution, in and out. it really does just speak for itself: if i wanted to analyze it further i'd point out how much the execution matters here: the on-screen text, the ominous music, the matter-of-fact underplayed delivery by the narrator... but i think you get it |
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(STELLA) okay it might look like i gave away the funny line here and i suppose i did but this one's REALLY all about the delivery. Stella, the comedy trio of David Wain, Michael Showalter, and Michael Ian Black, had a short-lived Comedy Central show back in 2005 and from the day I saw the first episode 17 years ago I have never been able to get Showalter's delivery of this line out of my head. this moment comes after the trio does a big dance number to convince a co-op board to let them rent an apartment: again lol the punchline here isn't particularly noteworthy but my big point here is that saying something in the exact right silly way is funny. for fun, here's another instance of the same bit later in the show: (lol the part that gets me in this one is the long pause before a mumbled "mr. mcdougal") |
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(ACHEWOOD) Achewood was a very formative webcomic for me - it's full of such surprising, character-based turns of phrase and its pinpoint use of language can always make me laugh. there's too many to pick from, but when i have to choose a favorite i usually cite this strip:  first it's the basketball metaphor, then it's how quickly that gets abandoned, then it's the dark poetry in the lack of a true punchline. it's actually even a little scary, too! for fun, here's my favorite standalone panel:  |
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(STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP) ok so way back in 2006, less than a month before NBC starting airing Tina Fey's "backstage-at-SNL" sitcom 30 Rock, Aaron Sorkin premiered his much-anticipated successor to The West Wing: Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip. it had essentially the same premise as 30 Rock: a peek behind the scenes at a live sketch comedy show. unlike 30 Rock, however, Studio 60 was intended as a serious drama. it's important to tell you that so you understand that what i'm about to show you is not meant to be comedic. in this scene, one of the in-show Studio 60 cast members, Tom Jeter, is giving a tour of the legendary studio to his disappointed parents: maybe you saw a portion of this clip shared on Twitter by Brooks Otterlake, where people unfamiliar with the show couldn't quite grasp what they were watching. it's important to note that the text here is on Tom's side! his parents are supposed to be ignorant caricatures who can't appreciate the lofty artistic endeavor of comedy! Sorkin seems incapable of writing a scene that doesn't feel like it carries life or death stakes - that might have worked for a political drama like The West Wing, but when applied to mainstream sketch comedy like SNL it feels insane. it doesn't help when you get little peeks at the predictably bad in-universe Studio 60 sketches, so not even the show itself can convince you its subject matter is worth taking this seriously. it's important to note that the show ends on a 4-part finale involving Tom's brother being held as a P.O.W. in Afghanistan, right before getting cancelled forever. i love this show. here's my favorite insane little example of what Aaron Sorkin thinks comedians do backstage: comedians practicing spit-takes, everyone! i have watched this show front to back so many times and it's just a beautiful, misguided study of comedy as a whole. it tackles everything from the lack of diversity in writer's rooms (of course, they compromise by hiring a black writer who isn't "too black" because he went to an Ivy League school), the "dark side" of comedy (Matthew Perry's character is a drug addict who believes he can't write comedy sober), and being censored for trying to air "offensive" comedy (the sketch in question is called "Crazy Christians" lmao). but it's all distilled into perfect clarity with this scene of everyone backstage spitting water in each other's faces. it's like a child's idea of what comedians must do. while we're talking about spit-takes, though, please enjoy my favorite example of one from this Letterman clip where Regis Philbin visits the set dressed as Shrek: look at that! what a pro! he's taking a genuine sip of water, senses that Letterman is winding up for a punchline, and lets loose a perfectly-timed spit-take without even a care as to whether the joke will be funny or not. that's a generous, experienced showman! rest in peace. |
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(CLIFFORD) this movie is crazy. i know it's having a bit of a resurgence and i'm glad because it has two of the funniest lead performances in a comedy i've ever seen. Martin Short, then 40 years old, is playing a troublemaking 10-year-old boy opposite of the late Charles Grodin, who plays the straight-man with such perfect, angry intensity that even just thinking about him in this movie makes me laugh. i truly can't think of a better straight-man in comedy history: the real magic of this movie is watching Grodin pull off realistic reactions to the most over-the-top cartoon-performance by Short imaginable. it's just FUN to watch him act his ass off while Short throws insane curveball after curveball at him. this is the best scene in the movie, where the conflict boils to a head and Grodin faces off with Clifford at the dinner table: |
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(MR. SHOW) everybody has their favorite Mr. Show sketch and although i love all the classics like The Audition and The Story of Everest, this is the one that i think hit with me the most: it's a complicated premise wherein part of the joke comes from repeatedly having to explain said premise. the other part of the joke is a palpable sense of rising frustration that builds and builds until it hits that beautiful crescendo of a punchline where we finally get to see all the previous call-in shows. allowing this to hit diegetically, filmed on cascading TV screens, just makes this feel so clean and stylish. what a confident explosion of a punchline! you even get to track this character's frustration levels backwards in time, settling on a tragically optimistic first show for a little bit of comedy pathos. |
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(PARTY DOWN) i love Party Down, a short-lived Starz comedy about struggling actors and writers at an LA catering company. it has one of the best casts ever assembled for a sitcom, but the best among them IMO is Ken Marino as team leader Ron Donald. my favorite bit of the show is one of Ron's lowest moments. apologies, because this requires some set-up: in this episode, Ron is catering his own high school reunion in an attempt to impress his old peers and show how far he's come since his days as an embarrassing party animal. he actually spends most of the night successfully wooing his old crush Melinda only to have her ditch him for her own high school crush, who in turn makes it clear to Ron that everyone still thinks he's pathetic. in a desperate and misguided attempt to regain some dignity, he regresses and attempts something he failed to do back in high school: drink an entire bottle of whiskey on-stage in front of all his ex-peers. then this happens: it's such a darkly funny character moment that leaves two people at their lowest at the end of a long, humiliating night. no solace for either of them, each wallowing in their shame right when they could have - had things gone differently - actually connected with one another. Ron sputtering "call an ambulance" over and over in a pile of his own vomit... it's beautiful, to me. and then the jaunty credits music hits and that's that! episode over! |
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(MOB PSYCHO 100) Mob Psycho 100 is a manga about a timid psychic boy named Mob and his con-artist mentor, Reigen. Reigen works as an excorcist but, importantly, has no actual psychic abilities whatsoever. a lot of comedy is mined out of the methods he uses to trick clients out of their money. this particular client wants an evil ghost excorcised from a photograph. here's Reigen's solution:   a simple, cute joke well-executed with funny, overly-dramatic drawings. i love it!!! the wobbly cursor in particular really gets me. since it's been animated, here it is in video form to compare: as a bonus, here's another very funny two pages from Mob Psycho 100 that i enjoy:   funny drawings are so powerful....... |
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