Ironic that in a thread about stupid characters, Abe Weissman is misnamed as Abe Maisel.
Then why use the word “stupid”, even in quotes? It makes it sound like the reason you don’t like the character is because you don’t know the difference. I’m the one who said Abe Weissman is “comedy gold”. I didn’t say that because I think stupid characters are necessarily funny. Abe is not stupid. He is clueless and self centered and melange of various other characteristics that make me laugh. And it’s even funnier when I see how the main character has inherited many of Abe’s traits. Or perhaps I’m just stupid for not having the same sense of humor as you do.
Abe is smart but had spend too many years in an environment where other people accomodated his eccentricities- so when circumstances change, he’s at a loss. He’s cerainly smarter than Joel’s dad - but Joel’s dad is much more “in the world” and thus better able to deal with day-to-day issues.
Really depends on how it’s played.
Gilligan’s stupidity was an essential plot element that was done in a very poor, lazy way.
OTOH, Michael Scott’s stupidity was also an essential plot element that was done extremely well. There was nuance to the character, even if his actions were overall no more or less stupid than anything Gilligan ever did.
We disagree about the use of the word.
I don’t care how “school smart” someone is, to be as clueless as Abe was in the synagogue is behavior I will characterize as stupid. Same for typing in a bathtub next to the room where someone is sleeping. Or not realizing that quitting your cushy job means giving up your apartment. He might be real smart in certain respects, but he’s a bonehead at being a human being.
And I wasn’t writing a thread about one character I did not like in a series I lost appreciation for (which resulted in my attributing an incorrect surname. Stupid me. 
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I guess I was trying a novel approach when posting on-line, of using a single imperfect word with the idea of generating a broad discussion. I thought it was a dead giveaway to state in my OP that the word “stupidity” didn’t really describe my feelings…
Yeah, but he’s mostly a sweet, well-meaning idiot. A likeable dork.
A self-obsessed, naively dumb character I found enjoyable (didn’t like her), as written was Sansa Stark in a Song of Fire and Ice. Note that this is explicitly novel-only Sansa, not the TV-version GoT Sansa. And this basically came down to Martin doing a very good job writing a naive, entitled-tween/teen-selfish character. I though she was a well-realized kinda dim person, which is not the sort you usually get POV stories from.
Just as a side note, although I completely understand the TV need to age all the characters, most of the younger set’s motivations and foolishness in that series make more sense when you realize they were all mostly written as several years younger in the books. Rob Stark and Jon Snow were both fourteen when the series started. Of course they do idiotic, impulsive things.
And the title of the show. 
. Yes, we do disagree on what “stupid” means. The lovable dope trope examples you give are miles away from the absent minded professor trope that Abe is much closer to.
King of Queens, in a nutshell.
I won’t hear a word against Jed Clampett. He was my favorite character. A hayseed, perplexed by his strange new surroundings, but I think Jed had innate wisdom. Not stupid at all. Put a modern day character back in the day in Jed’s Ozarks, and see how bright that guy would look, a fish out of water.
So where do you all stand (uh, figuratively, of course) on Edith Bunker? Was she stupid? I think she was stupid for putting up with her husband’s abuse, although I vaguely recall an episode (of All in the Family, if you’re too young to know what I’m talking about) in which she stood up for herself to great effect (did she shout, “Stifle!” or something like that?). Her character has points in common with Marge Simpson, and I wouldn’t call either stupid, just because it would seem too mean-spirited.
The Joey character on Friends was often portrayed as stupid, and Tim Conway made a living with those kinds of roles.
Depending on the portrayal, I might draw the line at individual stupidity vs. choral stupidity. Every Simpsons character, sooner or later, is shown to be stupid or have a stupid moment, and that kind of thing is usually fine with me.
It depends on the actor and the quality of writing. If either of them is sub-par, the stupid character is simply annoying.
But take a brilliant comic actor like Christopher Lloyd on a show that’s brilliantly written, like Taxi and you get stupid Jim Ignatowski, one of the funniest sitcom characters ever. Even though he was a savant in some ways (piano virtuoso), and his back story is that he was smart until getting spaced out on drugs at Harvard, the humor derived from his stupidity.
On the other hand, Latka (Andy Kaufman) was too wacky for my liking.
In other words, Oliver Wendell Douglas. In fact, I always saw Green Acres and Beverly Hillbillies as deliberate reversals of each other. Rural people out of their element in civilization, and civilized people out of their element in the country.
I think that Edith Bunker was WRITTEN as a stupid character, often trying to understand things that were completely above her. But then…the writers ONCE let her have a deep insight into the human condition. This particular moment in television history has stuck with me through the years:
I hate “stupid comedy” of which the gold standard is “Dumb and Dumberer” . I believe the reason for that genre is so the 100 IQ sub-literates can fell superior. But having managed a crew of such, there is nothing funny.
Barney is okay in moderation,but I think he may be more clueless than stupid.
Jethro was the only really stupid one. EllyMay was into “critters”, and Granny wasn’t literate but not dumb.
I couldn’t take all the stupid in Green Acres.
Yes, Abe is a parody of Ivory Tower intellectuals. He lived in a world where because of his brilliance people tolerated his egocentrism and cluelessness and now has to deal with a world in which they don’t.
And yes, you can easily see where Midge gets her own issues with cluelessness and egocentrism from her father.
I couldn’t stand the “Woody” character in Cheers; his behaviour struck me as almost verbal slapstick.
Though not exactly stupid, but extremely annoying, is Detective Watts in Murdoch Mysteries.
I like them, they make me laugh. Kelly Bundy, Woody, Penny’s dumb boyfriend Zack, they all made me laugh. There is a dumb character type that absolutely annoys me. The best example I can think of is Dr. Smith from Lost in Space. He kept stupiding the crew into life threatening situations and NOBODY ejected him into space like if they were Ripley and he was an alien.
Yes, ‘Doug Heffernan’ annoys me with his crassness and his inveterate selfish and slothful stupidity, though once in a blue moon he can be a stand-up guy. Even his own on-screen father thinks he’s stupid. ( refer’s to Doug’s being diagnosed of having a short attention span as “that’s just a fancy way of sayin’ he’s stupid” )
That scene bothered me but not because of Abe’s behavior but because a rabbi hijacking a young man’s Bar Mitzvah Dvar Torah to pick on a congregant would simply never happen and would be wildly inappropriate. OTOH Abe writing the truth as he saw it? That was his job and exhibiting bias because of shared ethnicity with the show’s writer, or having known him as young child, would have been unethical.
No question Abe is of narrow intelligence with some rigidity and not great at the ways of the real world … not as extreme as Sheldon in Big Bang Theory but in the same direction. Sheldon is much more helpless to the ways of the world than Zack is.
The well intentioned dim bulbs are often great characters. Inspector Clouseau to Maxwell Smart to Dudley Do-Right …
The group that bother me are the self centered cringe comedy characters, the Larry David sort.
Yeah, I finally caught up with that episode - and Abe didn’t act stupid at all. He didn’t make a scene at the play, even though he hated it. Instead he was polite and affable, and helped make the night a good one for Buzz - then he wrote (somewhat reluctantly), a truthful review. He wasn’t expecting Buzz to be happy about the review, but apparently expected a bar mitzvah not to be turned into an attack on him - a totally reasonable expectation. He defended himself with dignity and calm in spite of the irrational attacks egged on by the rabbi, and has nothing to be ashamed about.
I could never stomach Friends (like Seinfeld, an existence so far removed from my life I couldn’t relate) but I will say Matt LeBlanc plays himself in Episodes and he is sometimes monumentally stupid but I love his character - he’s hilarious and basically plays off so well with the other two leads it works. Generally, I don’t really love stupid characters but in that case, I liked it so much I was tempted to see if he was as funny in Friends.
Also, Abe in Mrs. Maisel - I think he’s funny though that I do have less tolerance for him after he blew off his Columbia gig AND burned his bridges there. Though his wife also gave away her TRUST FUND which she had to do nothing to earn. She was definitely right to be annoyed and stand up for herself but to throw the money away with no thought of the consequences and also essentially “punishing” the other trust members by leaving her money in the trust was worse than what Abe did (though he was also misguided and short-sighted).