Lazy Comedy
I want to rant about what I think of as lazy comedy. Lazy comedy is comedy that any Tom, Dick, or Harry can perform. I see a lot of this during the late night talk shows, and I find it to be very disappointing.
A typical example might be a bit where they show a clip of the President, and then dub some random person speaking over top of it saying something different from what the President would say. Big whoop. Anyone can do that. I should say that I do think it's possible to make this funny... but the typical late-night bit doesn't do it.
Conan O'Brien does this kind of comedy a lot. I've generally liked his show, but skits where they show a celebrity's face with someone else speaking through his/her lips is far from funny to me.
Another kind of lazy comedy is fake news clips. This might, for example, start off with the comic saying there was a funny thing that occurred in the news today. He'll set it up with something about how a woman reacted stupidly to some event. Then, he shows the clip of some footage from a movie with dubbed over dialogue. Lame. Anyone can make up news stories... "Funny thing in the news today: they finally found proof of aliens [cut to clip from the movie Alien]".
Jimmy Kimmel seems to use this kind of comedy a lot. If you watch one of his opening monologues, much of it is simply fake news clips.
I know I might catch some flack for this statement, but I think the comedy "Family Guy" falls largely into the category of lazy comedy. Granted, I've only seen a couple of episodes, and there were actually a couple of funny moments in them. But most of it was just non-sequitors, and putting a bunch of non-sequitor events together isn't very hard. Worst case, you can get someone on LSD to come up with your story line. But chances are you can get some kid with attention deficit disorder to ramble off an episode or two for you.
A typical example might be a bit where they show a clip of the President, and then dub some random person speaking over top of it saying something different from what the President would say. Big whoop. Anyone can do that. I should say that I do think it's possible to make this funny... but the typical late-night bit doesn't do it.
Conan O'Brien does this kind of comedy a lot. I've generally liked his show, but skits where they show a celebrity's face with someone else speaking through his/her lips is far from funny to me.
Another kind of lazy comedy is fake news clips. This might, for example, start off with the comic saying there was a funny thing that occurred in the news today. He'll set it up with something about how a woman reacted stupidly to some event. Then, he shows the clip of some footage from a movie with dubbed over dialogue. Lame. Anyone can make up news stories... "Funny thing in the news today: they finally found proof of aliens [cut to clip from the movie Alien]".
Jimmy Kimmel seems to use this kind of comedy a lot. If you watch one of his opening monologues, much of it is simply fake news clips.
I know I might catch some flack for this statement, but I think the comedy "Family Guy" falls largely into the category of lazy comedy. Granted, I've only seen a couple of episodes, and there were actually a couple of funny moments in them. But most of it was just non-sequitors, and putting a bunch of non-sequitor events together isn't very hard. Worst case, you can get someone on LSD to come up with your story line. But chances are you can get some kid with attention deficit disorder to ramble off an episode or two for you.
posted by Michael at 8:27 PM
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