In Cape Feare we have a scene that has been with me to this day. Sideshow Bob follows the simpsons to their new residence and steps on a rake… again, and again, and again, and again, and again… and again, and again. And then he steps on it again.
I laughed, stopped laughing, laughed again, stopped laughing for the second time and then finally started laughing again. The hugely inappropriate timing of that shot made it some of the strangest TV I had ever seen. Later on, the effect was over-used and greatly diluted by Family Guy which unfortunately made it a lot less funny but, the first time I saw that scene, it absolutely floored me.
Was this the first time such a technique had been used on TV? Or ever? Has anybody else tried to use it again? Was anybody else as affected by this scene as I was? The sense of timing on it was just pure genius.
This was from Season 5, IIRC, so the DVD will probably come out for the winter Holiday. It’ll be interesting to see what the commentary track will have to say about this scene.
I assume that you are talking about the bruised shin scene from Wasted Talent. I didn’t see the two scenes as even remotely similar. With the rakes, it was the sheer absurdity of it: Bob steps on a rake, turns, does it again, etc… and as the camera pans out, we see that he’s standing in a veritable forest of rakes, grimly making his way out by stepping on them one at a time. The absurdidty of the entire setup is what makes the scent priceless.
In Family Guy, Peter bangs his shin, and then spends about 30 seconds grabbing it, then hissing through his teeth “ssssssst!-OW!”. The absurdity here is a) That he does it for so long, yea, we’ve all had bruised shins, but that’s an extreme reaction and b) Well, bruising your shin DOES hurt like a motherfuck and sometimes when it happens we’d like to sink to the ground and just whimper for a few minutes. Peter goes ahead and does it, creating an absurdity we can all see ourselves doing.
In short, the comedy in Bob’s scene depends on an absurd location and props ( a field of rakes), while in Peter’s it comes from the actions (and overreactions) of the character himself( although Bob’s repeated “Step, WHACK!, gergergerowl” is priceless too ) .
No. This very comic device has been used quite effectively in the old MGM “Tom & Jerry” cartoons from the 1940s. There, it wasn’t a forest of rakes but two placed facing each other so that Tom, dazed and woozy from being smacked in the face by the first rake, would stumble backwards into the second rake, getting smacked in the back of the head, woozily stumbling forward onto the first rake… and so on and so forth.
I’m sure it’s been used in the intervening time between MGM’s heyday and the Simpsons’ fifth season, but I can’t think of any examples at the moment.
To be fair, Family Guy has done quite a few of the long-take style gags: Quagmire fishing around for his keys (with his hand mercifully below camera line); Quagmire making ready to put the moves on Lois (jiving, mixing a cocktail), etc. I never thought of these jokes as Simpsons rip-offs because the “rake gag” is such a comedy staple that the bit with Sideshow Bob comes off as more of a parody, a slapstick bit consciously taken well beyond the point of absurdity.
BTW, apparently a recent Simpsons episode contained a dis wherein some girl insults Bart by calling him “Family Guy!”. Those Simpsons writers sure don’t like Family Guy, huh?
In one of the episode commentaries included on the third season DVD, the Simpsons writers/actors present discuss their wariness regarding Family Guy. I can’t remember much, but they said that it didn’t work because they only had one writer - they claimed the necessary creativity wasn’t possible this way. I’m not sure if this is true anymore, or if it ever was, but it’s interesting nonetheless.
That’s interesting, because if one were to glance at the back of a Family Guy DVD box, they’d see that well more than “one writer” is credited. Curious, that.
They must’ve assumed that Seth is the only writer (seeing as he’s the creator and principle voice artist), a pretty sloppy assumption for tv-savvy people to make.
There’s an old Steve Martin movie (Pennies From Heaven?) where he pours coffee grinds for a ridiculously long period of time, to make some strong-ass coffee I suppose. I thought that was an example of the funny, not funny, then funny again concept.
I’d say that the bit in Family Guy where Peter is fighting a chicken should also be included. It’s not just that he’s fighting a chicken (a fairly ludicrous idea to begin with) so much that the thing just goes on and on and on for like five minutes of screen time.
Family Guy does that constantly. On the live-action side of things, David Letterman is known for doing that kind of gag over and over.
The timing is everything with that gag. They keep making you think it’s over and then doing it that one more time, so it makes the ‘surprise’ work again and again.
Rake to the face is only moderately funny, and the field of rakes is absurd, but I’m with gotpasswords. I think what makes it great - even if it was only supposed to be a time-killer - is Bob trying to maintain his serious, murderous rage despite the repeated whapping.