Fair enough.
OK, I’ll bite. What was Doggy Wogs?
Kinda like National Lampoon’s famous 1977 record album “That’s not Funny! That’s Sick!” http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000C0FA4/103-9875011-2133406?v=glance
Another vote for not offended or grossed out. I’ve seen far worse on network TV that didn’t offend/gross me out. When I was watching it didn’t even occur to me that someone might be offended. But maybe it’s just me.
Um, is Chris Miller dead, too?
If someone were offended by amputees in sitcoms, then MitM was not a good idea since season 1, episode 4. Remember Commandant Edwin Spangler from the first 3 seasons?
I wasn’t bothered by it. It was in line with one of MITMs themes “When the family tries to do bad things, bad things happen. When they try to do something nice or generous, horrible things happen.”
When Francis tried to cheer up one of his friends, the friend ended up having his wallet taken and then being arrested for being at a cockfight.
When Francis tried to give the dead janitor a viking funeral, there was a large explosion and fire.
Dewey manages to draw a Bea Arthur out of her shell and make her happy, she has a massive heat attack and has to be rushed to the hospital.
And the many times they’ve destroyed Craig Feldspar’s life while trying to help him.
Dewey is trying to do the right thing and somehow thank his grandmother for the sacrifice she made to save his life.
Hal is trying to do the right thing by helping his son get over his guilt and sadness.
Given their track record, of course this leads to disaster.
Not offended here either. Far more skeeved out about the Simpsons spider thing. Not offended, mind you, just skeeved.
I’m not a Malcolm viewer in any regular sense. Last night I had the show on “in the background” while I was working on my computer, waiting for The Simpsons to come on. I was only vaguely aware of the whole turn of events with the dog and the leg. I didn’t really find it uproarious, but also didn’t find the gag all that offensive, either.
But, when you add LonesomePolecat having a Margaret Dumont, clutch-the-pearls, “Well, I never” moment over the sequence, then it becomes fucking hilarious!
I think “offensive” is the wrong word. It was pretty gross and I squirmed while viewing it, but what part of you was offended? Maybe if you or a close loved one suffered a recent amputation, but that’s stretching it.
Not talking about you, LonsomePolecat, but I think some people are looking for reasons to be offended.
What is it with Fox Sunday night shows and amputation? First Arrested Development and now this.
I liked the episode. MitM had started to get weak the last two years but I’ve really enjoyed this season. I like that the show is getting away from Malcolm and focusing on Dewey; he’s a genius too, but a lot less pretentious and whiny than his brother. The surrealism of the show is one of the reasons I think it’s funny; the leg funeral is consistent with the behavior of the kids since the first season. The humor hasn’t become more offensive; this show’s always been on the “gross” side. The character motivation/result that DocCathode talked about has always been a part of the show.
I didn’t see it, but from the description, it doesn’t sound at all offensive. I think LonesomePolecat is over-estimating his under-offensiveness.
Why is it when you don’t agree with another poster’s sense of humor (in particular, South Park, which IMHO relies almost purely on shock value for any semblence of humor) you are branded a “humor snob” or much, much worse?
Humor is an individual thing, and I don’t get riled up just because nobody I knew found Adaptation to be uproarious or Brazil to be the epitome of dark satire. If it doesn’t make you laugh, it isn’t funny…to you. How this makes someone a snob (particularly in regard to a subject that is likely to turn the stomachs of some) is beyond me.
Grow up, will ya?
Stranger
Let’s not forget Homer losing a thumb, which he had to fight the dog to get back.
On Futurama-
Bender once chopped his arm in slices to demonstrate some ginus knives.
Fry had his head removed and grafted onto Amy’s neck for an episode.
Dr Zoidberg cut off one of Fry’s arms with his claw during a duel. He reattached it, to the wrong side of Fry’s body. So, he amputated the arm again and tried to sew it back in the right place.
Fry had both hands bitten off while feeding a tyrannosaurus rex.
And of course, Fry and Robot Devil swap hands.
Family Guy
I can’t think of any amputations. But most episodes had a few ‘paraplegic in a wheelchair’ jokes.
There was that old fisherman who had four peg limbs. “Oh, you are just adorable!”
Stranger On A Train. “Growing up” is part of the reason SOME people are humor snobs.
I agree humor can be highly individual. But it can also be grouped, broadly, as either “highbrow” and “lowbrow.” And while I can appreciate a well-timed bon mot, or even a pun (a very, very good pun) some forms of humor – slapstick (the heart of farce), gallows humor (the kinds of sick stories homicide detectives find funny), scatological humor (“Doo-doo-- gonna put it onnnn youuuu!”), blue humor (sex is funny!) and gross-out humor – (of the visual variety) hits the gut better. These are the kinds of jokes shows like SOUTH PARK wallow in, and humor snobs avoid them like the plague.
Askia, some gross-out humour hits my gut in a sense - it makes it twist and turn. Five seconds of Eddie Izzard is likely to give me more belly laughs than the entirety of Tomcats. I adore good slapstick and some sex humor, but I loathe most scatological humour. Humor is entirely subjective.
So, uhh… What the hell are you talking about?
He wasn’t an amputee; his father was a tree.
Gadfly. I’ve taken to calling some people humor snobs on several recent threads. Stranger On A Train seems to have taken offense, and I’m explaining why I think it’s true why people whose sense of humor is more “highbrow” are usually humor snobs.
Humor isn’t THAT subjective. You can usually make some canny predictions on what people will and won’t find funny based on, among other things, gender, socioeconomic status, age, ethnicity and cultural upbringing.
What I object to is the use of the deprecatory term “snob” applied to anyone who doesn’t find humorous what you think is funny. I’m not a “snob” because I don’t think South Park, or amputation, or whatever, any more than I’m a snob because I don’t think Charles Shultz was funny.
So, if your humor doesn’t fit into the classification defined by the above categories, you’re a snob? :rolleyes:
Humor is subjective. One person’s belly laugh is another’s groaner. That doesn’t make one better than the other, or either a snob, unless they perneciously and obnoxiously insist that the other is somehow diseased or feebleminded for enjoying their own sense of humor. In order for something to be amusing to me, it needs to be novel (at least on first viewing), unexpected, clever, and preferably a little though provoking. That doesn’t mean that foul language or shocking behavior make it unfunny–they’re often appropriate, such as in Trainspotting–but alone they don’t make something amusing.
Personally, I find humor based on shock value to be cheap, predictable, and pandering. That doesn’t mean that someone who enjoys it is a bad or stupid person; and my MIT-graduate ex-girlfriend was a big fan of South Park. But I do get irritated when I’m decried a “snob” 'cause I’m not laughing at the guy who glues his <insert appendage here> to his <insert intimate body part here> while attempting to <insert embarassing bodily function here>. It’s just that I’ve seen it before, I know what’s going to happen, and it wasn’t (to me) even all that funny the first time.
Stranger