As someone who had “I Had a Pony” on cassette and listened to it constantly on my Walkman while delivering newspapers every morning, I can confirm it was on that album.
Also, from Emo Philips around the same time: “Women: You can’t live with them, and you can’t get them to dress up in a skimpy little Nazi costume and beat you with a warm squash or something.”
Norm Peterson in Cheers.
“Women, can’t live with them…pass the beer nuts.”
wow, some things do change (sorta), and some things dont (sorta) eh?
and they’re still trying to balance between society and sponsors …
Yes. That, and my memory (I saw him perform when I was 18, in 1988 at the Beacon Theater in NYC, and this is one of the jokes I remember him telling).
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned, but The Man Show starring Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla. Kimmel appeared in blackface as Karl Malone in multiple episodes and then we had the Juggy Dance Squad. While men were often the butt of jokes, I don’t think this series will have aged very well.
Sometimes it’s amazing just how quickly comedy ages. The Venture Bros. started airing on cartoon network in 2003 and one of the running gags revolved around Dr. Girlfriend’s deep voice which caused some characters to question her femininity. A lot of people don’t really think that kind of humor is funny any more.
The thing that strikes me watching a few 80s and 90s comedies recently featuring a leading man who is a quirky non-conformist getting by on his wits, and sticking it to the man and finding love with his hi-jinks and lovable antics, is how many of those “lovable antics” are actual sexual harassment. And then the remaining hi-jinks that don’t involve sexual harrasment would be considered pretty unacceptable bullying of his straight-laced side kick.
Odesio’s post reminds me that Most Extreme Elimination Challenge is pretty cringey now, too, with random misogyny and homophobia being a regular feature in each episode.
The Dan Fielding character on Night Court is a pretty egregious example of that. His whole character was based around trying to get into women’s pants.
I never felt the same way about Barney on How I Met Your Mother, though…I know people who dislike the show for that reason, but I always felt that a) telling elaborate lies and cons in pursuing women (at least in a fictional, highly-stylized sitcom reality) is a far cry from aggressive, creepy lechery and b) Neil Patrick Harris being one of the most out gay actors in the business effectively turned Barney into a meta construct and a joke on hetero rakes.
He didn’t formally come out until during the second season. I don’t remember how open-secretly out he was before but that first season might have solidified some minds.
I still find the humorous part of that rings true. A lot of people then and now still think that a person can’t be genetically female and have a deep voice. The joke was that all of these idiots came up with ridiculous reasons that she had such a voice. She was generally the most competent character on the show. I honestly can’t think of anyone who was better at moving ahead in that ridiculous world.
And the show did have Col. Gathers, who if nothing is a testament to human sexuality and gender being a very complex subject.
Dan Fielding is the prime example of a character whose antics we laugh at and enjoy but we’d never want to work with someone like him. I call it the Fielding Effect and it’s quite common in American sitcoms. Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory is another fine example. We laughed at him but he’s manipulative and emotionally abusive and you probably wouldn’t want him in your life.
Come to think of it, so many characters fit that Fielding Effect. Especially sitcoms where quirkiness seen from afar is fun. Up close, and day in and day out, it’d be insufferable.
I’d including the entire cast of Seinfeld, Friends, Community, Arrested Development, and of course It’s Always Sunny.
This goes way back. Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners was an abusive ass that we were supposed to like because he thawed at the end of each episode.
But what bugged me re-watching a lot of eighties and nineties comedies, is it wasn’t the bad guy that was being so abusive, it was hero. Its one thing (though still pretty dodgy) to write a scumbag character and make his amoral attempts to seduce women (a.k.a. sexual harassment and assault) the subject of the comedy. Its another to have the plucky protagonist who we are rooting for do all that (Bill Murray, as Peter Venkman, in Ghostbusters was one example of this I watched recently , but there are a lot)
I haven’t watched Night Court in years, but wasn’t Dan supposed to be an asshole? You weren’t supposed to want to be around him, and most of his co-workers didn’t really like him that much. ISTM that sort of character could still work largely unchanged in a modern show - there are still sexist assholes out there, and watching someone clever put them in their place would still be entertaining.
Fielding was definitely an asshole but I don’t think he was ever irredeemable. There were several episodes where he showed his non-asshole side like when he saved Roz from falling off a building or when he was stranded in Alaska.
Oh, Dan was supposed to be an asshole. But in a lot of ways I think Larroquette was so charismatic that a lot of us ended up liking Fielding even though he was a sexist asshole. But you’re right that Fielding would almost always receive some sort of comeuppance by the end of the episode for his behavior and scheming. I think you could still have a sexist character like Fielding in a show but I think it’d be handled a bit differently today. He probably wouldn’t be as likable for starters.
He only did that because she would have landed on his car!
Or the time he worked off-hours as a male escort and came to really care for the older woman who hired him.