I love FotC. I think most of their songs are great, and that the boys really have a lot of musical talent. They don’t have the best voices in the world, but not sure where the “out of tune” comment comes from. I also enjoyed the show a lot (though there were definitely times that it was hit and miss).
Having said all that, their humor is definitely not universal. I know lots of Conchord fans, and lots of people who roll their eyes at them. That’s fine. To each his own.
I liked G&O but each episode only really had one laugh out loud moment for me. FotC was good for at least a few laughs each time. The only Portlandia episode I found especially funny was the Aimee Mann one. But I also stopped watching fairly early in since it wasn’t doing anything for me.
In the What We Do In The Shadows thread, people were talking about laughing all the way through. I had a few good laughs watching it but it was more of a solid “I’m enjoying this” without cracking up. that’s sort of my FotC feeling as well – I definitely enjoy the episodes but they’re not a laugh riot for me.
I didn’t like it either. I didn’t find them funny. I didn’t care for their music. It’s the kind of thing I usually enjoy so I’m surprised to see so many did actually like it. I thought it was one of those things where it’s so bad it’s good, at least to mock. I only saw the first three episodes though, so maybe it got better.
Not particularly catchy, definitely not funny.
On that particular song, the forced rhymes seem to me essential to a parody of “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.”
If you didn’t like the first three episodes, I doubt you would like the rest.
I feel largely about that song as I do about the rest of the songs I’ve heard. It’s not terrible, but it’s not particularly good or funny either. “88 Lines About 44 Women” is largely the same idea, funnier and catchier, done 30 years ago.
The guitar neck attached to a video editing machine is almost funny.
You do understand that the mediocre music, singing, production values etc are part of their thing right?
They used to introduce themselves at live shows as the third most popular folk parody duo in New Zealand (recently overtaken by Folk of the Conchords, a tribute band.)
The humour is dry and understated and plays a lot on the insecurities of New Zealanders in the big wide world. You either like it or not I guess, but if the music and production values were top notch, half the humour would be gone. My point being that you shouldn’t criticise them for something that is a deliberate choice, it’s not like they were trying to make the best songs ever and failed, the songs sound how they were meant to. I think this is a lot clearer watching them live.
I’ve seen them live and thought they were hilarious, particularly the chat/banter between songs. BTW Arj Barker was surprisingly funny as well. I’d never been a fan but live he was great (he opened for FotC.)
Right. Bret won an Oscar for composing a song for one of the Muppet movies, so his musical skill isn’t in question.
That’s right, didn’t he write that “Am I a Man or a Muppet” song? Dunno if that’s the actual title but I assume that’s the song in question.
This was pretty much my take.
Season 2 had some good moments, but about the only truly strong episode, in my opinion, was the one where Jemaine goes home with the Australian woman. Maybe it’s because i’m an Aussie, but i found that one very funny.
Season 1 was fantastic. Their music video parodies are great, and in quite a few of them they really capture the mood and the style of their subjects perfectly. The Pet Shop Boys rip-off, Inner City Pressure, was priceless. I’m also a huge fan of Business Time, Boom Boom, If That’s What You’re Into, and a whole bunch of others.
Some of the dialog is also great. Not all of it worked, but enough did that i definitely thought it was worth watching. Kristen Schaal as Mel the Fan was fantastic, and Arj Barker was great as Dave. Rhys Darby’s Murray was perfect. I also liked David Costabile as Mel’s put-upon husband Doug - such a contrast to his serious work in shows like Breaking Bad, Damages, The Wire and, now, Billions.
Band meeting
This is why season one was so much better. There was a substantial amount of material from their live act, so some pieces were already perfected and they had a good base to build around. The second season was a different story. They probably had to put in a lot more work and still didn’t get results as good as the first season.
I totally understand that, and that’s a huge part of the hipster vibe that sets my teeth on edge. Mediocrity is not a substitute for cleverness, but far too much hipster humor seems to rely on the joke being, “This isn’t very good, isn’t that funny?” Which isn’t offensive or anything, it’s just annoying and dumb.
Hipster?
I don’t find anything hipsterish about the Conchords or their humor. Hipsterism is about being totally committed to some obscure aesthetic; it’s not about mediocrity at all, just the opposite (mediocrity might be a result, through failure, but that’s true of anyone who chooses a goal). Portlandia is full of examples of hipsterism. I don’t see that in this show.
The fictional versions of Bret and Jemaine on the show could only dream of being hip enough to pass as hipsters. They clearly were not meant to be sophisticated or even very intelligent, and they were depicted as sincerely caring about their music and wanting to be successful.
I can imagine a show about two hipster musicians who were too ironically detached to, ya know, actually try very hard, but that’s not what Flight of the Conchords was. Even Murray was trying to be a good manager for them, he was just totally unqualified for the job.
As I said before, it’s not that they were hipsters, but they were characters written by ironic hipsters. It’s a humor I encounter repeatedly from hipsters: sincere passionate characters that we’re supposed to laugh at because they’re so pathetic it’s funny. It’s technically irony–we know something about the characters that they don’t know–but it’s the laziest possible irony. I find it slightly less funny than most cell phone commercials.
But I don’t think they are written by ironic hipsters. They’re written by satirical musician-comedians. And the quality of the satire—particularly in the first season—is exactly the level needed to satirize their targets. And I think the satire reflects a love for their targets, not irony or contempt.
I can’t convince you they were funny, but they weren’t not funny because of anything to do with hipsterism.
I don’t think you can convince me it has nothing to do with hipsterism either, unfortunately :). But if it does, it’s a matter of labels: it’s this sense of humor, not the label I’m attaching to it, that leaves me cold. If you want to call it by another label that distinguishes it sufficiently from Garfunkel & Oates or other similar acts, I’ll be happy to say it’s that thing that I dislike.
I’m not sure I’m familiar with the style of humor you’re referring to.* It sounds like you think the central joke of the series is that Bret and Jemaine are horrible musicians who are too dumb to realize how much they suck, but I think that’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the show is about. They are supposed to be (and IMHO in fact are) good enough that they might reasonably hope for at least modest success, and the audience is supposed to be rooting for them to make it while still laughing at their mishaps.
*ETA: All I know about Garfunkel and Oates is that there is something called Garfunkle and Oates. I have no idea what their style of humor is, or even really what they are.
I find it interesting that I really like FotC, but really hate everything I have seen from Garfunkel and Oates, while you are the opposite. I wonder if that is unusual, or these two bands are superficially similar, but rely on such different styles of humor that they don’t intersect as much as you would think.