This show has been on for -twenty- years now - they just did the 20th anniversary show this past Sunday night (it comes on right before Extreme Makeover: Home Edition yeah okay I do like that show LOL). Now I don’t normally watch it but was waiting for EM:HE to come on and figured there wasn’t anything better to watch…
Except there has to be something better. And I cannot believe it’s been on the air for 20 years! The majority of the video clips that they show are mean, imho. One segment was totally kids hitting and slapping and kicking and biting each other :eek: Then they show the audience who is falling off their chairs -laughing their asses off-!! Every once in a while, there is a clip of a honest-to-og funny video. But take my word for it, the majority of them are mean or mean-spirited. What is funny about seeing someone get hit in a “sensitive area” by a bat or a ball?! Maybe it is funny if it was a child who did it, accidentally. That’s a pretty big maybe, though, imho.
Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks this … but good Og, this show has been going strong for -20- years. :dubious:
I dunno, a lot of it still makes me laugh, but you are right about the groin-hits. Those aren’t funny. Nor are the old “fake lottery ticket” gags funny. I always imagine the recipient thinking, “All right! Now I can get mom that surgery she needs, and support her in her old age decently!” and then finding out they’ve been suckered. Not good.
Nor are kids barfing, snotting, spitting, pissing or pooping amusing, either.
That kind of stuff was funny 20 years ago when this concept was new. But you’re right, seeing some guy get hit in the crouch, or a dog biting someone in the ass, or a kid falling out of a tree gets old really quick. I too remember being surprised a few years back when I was looking through the TV listings and happened to see that it was still on. I had long figured it for dead.
And this series along with Full House has the notoriety of ruining Bob Saget’s career. He had actually a pretty edgy comedian before getting involved with those shows. But then they made him say all those corny jokes in the stupid voices.
I agree that the show is mean. Every so often when channel-surfing at my folks’ we’ll come across AFV and we’ll watch about 2 minutes before we see something that’s just not funny. Old person falling over. Baby running head-first into wall. Dog skidding across floor.
I thought the first couple seasons were pretty funny. I still like the ones with the cats and dogs but I can get those on YouTube, without the lame jokes and commercials.
They must be getting hard up for clips, because half of them look staged now. How often do you video someone on a ladder or cutting limbs off trees, or getting in and out of a boat?
Does the OP hate the Three Stooges too? Schadenfreude is hardwired, even an 18-month old thinks someone getting hit in the crotch and falling down is funny. It’s mean, and you may be able to develop your sense of moral outrage to the point that no slapstick or pranking is funny, no matter how clever or sophisticated.
Chances are it will still manage to reach you at some point. Even if you can’t take pleasure in the misfortune of other humans, you can’t help but laugh at cats getting caught in embarrassing situations. They had it coming after all.
Enough adults’ sense of schadenfreude is still as easily entertained as when they were toddlers for crotch shots and lost pants to have sustained the show for 20 years.
The best bits are the unexpected moments that come out of real life, that are unique and unusual, that no one could have imagined and written. If there was a best-of compilation that pulled the top 5% over a 20 year span, I would go out of my way to watch it.
I like juvenile humor as much as anyone and a crotch hit can be funny in the right context, but seeing some random guy get hit in the balls with a football doesn’t do much for me. And once you get past the age of 12, those gags lose their funny pretty quick, especially when you can see them coming from 20 miles away.
As for the “winners” of the show, I always figured that those were the people who were just available to come out during the day they were taping the episode. They’re rarely the funniest videos of the show.
i thought it was hilarious when i was 6. i even believed sagat’s voiceovers were part of the film itself and marveled at their razor sharp wit and uncanny ability to predict the future. then i turned 7, got cable, and stopped watching entirely.
the moral of the story? when it was created, there weren’t a lot of cable options. heck, even the cable options were mediocre at best. now, with so many channels pumping out so many shows, AFV would not be as popular now as in its inception. secondary moral? there’s always a market for shows like this. stupid, neanderthal-level humor. it’s cheap, it has an endless supply, and for the most part, enough americas (especially 6 year olds and the parents thereof) are content to laugh at it.
What is the host’s name nowadays? He always seems to be poking fun at the viewing audience for wasting their time watching this show. He frequently points out that all the videos always fall into the same categories and once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. When I do pause on this show while surfing around, I invariably see videos that I’ve seen several dozen times before.
Strangely enough, I do enjoy Three Stooges! I will admit to wincing from time to time, particularly when Moe does the hard slaps, but I’ve always found the Stooges (the original ones, mind you–Shemp and Curly both, no Curly Joe!) to be funny. I remember enjoying “Candid Camera” when I was a kid – the candid-camera type shows they’ve done recently have been mean jokes as well; I don’t recall Durwood Kirby and company being mean in that way.
Tom Bergeron. He’s hosted AFV since 2001. He also hosted the Hollywood Squares the last time it was on TV, back when Whoopi was part of the show, and he now currently hosts Dancing With the Stars.
And they usually feature a little smartass doing something that shouldn’t be encouraged.
I remember one, with a toddler – he might have been three. He fell down (on carpet, he wasn’t hurt) and he started to cry. The “funny” part was that he stopped crying when he couldn’t see mommy, but as soon as he saw mommy he cried some more. Followed her all over the house, crying whenever he saw her. I didn’t know whether to feel bad for the kid or not, attention-hungry little bugger.
If I had a video camera handy, I might tape a really fat lady getting on a horse, just in case.
There was an amusing little bit on Cracked lately about how people enjoyed AFV, but couldn’t stand annoying hosts and just wanted to get to the ball-hits and cute kittens, so we invented YouTube.
