If we’re going to get into WW a guy falls in a hole:
The speech from the pilot of “The Newsroom” debunking the idea that America is the greatest country in the world. Giles’ speech to Buffy about reuniting with her boyfriend Angel, who had killed Giles’ girlfriend and tortured Giles himself.
This far in and nobody’s mentioned the War?
Don’t call it that.
I’ve tried to find Tim Conway funny but I just don’t get it.
God yeah. Here’s a terrific Walton Goggins scene, where his character, local crime boss Boyd Crowder, meets a big-city mob enforcer and the two men size each other up. Some very subtle acting here:
FWIW I’ve never seen the Mary Tyler Moore Show, don’t know any of the characters and instantly saw the humor in Chuckles. The incongruity of two topics (serious of death vs frivolity of the name Chuckles) is about as basic as humor gets.
I don’t think it’s that funny or that great a scene, but the source of humor is obvious.
Okay. Glad you saw it. I didn’t. I’m didn’t see an incongruity because if you are reporting on the clown name, it will be strange. I didn’t think the writing made it funny in how they used the name.
Because we aren’t supposed to?
That Newsroom speech is great! As are your other examples. Thanks!
Thanks for the discussion!
Here’s another Carol Burnett/Tim Conway skit to not laugh at.
Tim Conway - Dentist
The best B&B ep. tho was where Beavis drinks too much coffee in a hipster beat poet cafe’, transforms into Cornholio, goes up to the mike and spews his usual gibberish–and the patrons all become convinced that’s he’s some profound poet.
It’s not about how they used the name. It’s how the characters reacted to the death. Especially how Mary was sad and scolding the rest of them for making jokes and then loses it at the funeral. The other context you might be missing is that this wasn’t someone they were reporting about, they knew him and he worked at the station. As can be inferred by the term, the humor in situation comedies derives from the situation.
Post #83.
Sherlock and John bicker like an old married couple.
It’s still funny after ten years (omigosh, was that ten years ago?).
IMO, it’s not Tim Conway that makes it funny. It’s Vicki Lawrence swearing in character, because she’s just as tired of his crap as I was
One of the best twists in recent television was the start of the “Robin Sparkles” arc on How I Met Your Mother. Totally unexpected while still being plausible, and the gift that kept giving, not even counting that it also started the Slap Bet arc.
This may be the absolute best scene ever:
The Robin Sparkles episodes were the funniest ones of that show’s entire run, IMHO. The Canadians on the writing staff must have had a blast creating those. The one with her music video “Sand Castles in the Sand” (featuring a cameo by Alan Thicke) just slayed me.
A whole thread could be made from West Wing scenes. The most devastating one for me was in “Drought Conditions” (season 6, episode 16) the two-hander between Toby and CJ, wherein Ton confesses that his brother, for whom he’d been sitting shiva, had killed himself.
Speaking of Sorkin, the Sports Night episode “And the Crowd Goes Wild” has the scene in which Natalie breaks down over her split with Jeremy in Isaac’s office and it never fails to make me well up.
Seymour’s final years in the Jurassic Bark episode of Futurama.
I know the writer who wrote this.
The next time you talk to him or her, please convey how much I enjoyed it. It’s a beautiful scene, wonderfully written and brilliantly acted. I can’t watch it without getting choked up.