Patsy to Edina on Absolutely Fabulous about an acquaintance of theirs who was very very fond of plastic surgery:
“If she has another face lift, she’s going to have a beard.”
My favorite Blackadder insult is this one:
Percy: <breezing in> Sorry I’m late!
Edmund: <bored in a deadpan> Don’t be. I’m sorry you’re alive.
I have to bite my tongue not to say that sometimes.
Two of the cop characters from The Wire after one has weakly asked a fellow, female cop out on a date and been turned down:
Carver: (mocking Herc) I’m Thomas. You want a coffee?
Herc: Hey, listen. I was gonna ask her for her panties to make some soup with, but uhm, I was afraid she’d take it the wrong way.
Flo, from Alice: “Kiss my grits”
I]Fawlty Towers[/I. ]John Cleese, through an insincere grin, as his wife leaves the hotel: “Don’t get hit by a bus.”
For full effect, read the following in an Australian accent.
“Anna, if you tell me to bend like a willow I’m gonna throw up.”
And there’s a brilliant one from The Games where John Clarke (John Clarke) is telling the agent for the U.S. Men’s basketball team exactly what his clients can do if they want to be in the Olympics. I’ll check my recording, unless a fellow doper beats me to it.
They missed the best one from Absolutely Fabulous:
Edina, contemplating dieting: Inside every fat person there’s a thin person waiting to get out.
Edina’s Mum, sweetly: Just the one, dear?
When Sammy Davis Jr. kissed Archie Bunker. That worked on so many levels, without his saying a word.
What is most disappointing about the original list is that it quotes Alf Garnett’s “You scouse git,” from Till Death Us Do Part when its writer Johnny Speight used the show for one of the best, but most oblique, put-downs in history.
When Speight learned that Mary Whitehouse (a noted moralist nutbag such as America tolerates) hated the show, due to the Alf Garnett character - Speight created an episode where Alf Garnett was seen to be a big fan of hers. He was seen proudly reading her current book. “What are you reading?” his son-in-law asks. When he relates that it’s Mary Whitehouse - his son-in-law sniggers. Alf’s rejoinder is “She’s concerned for the bleedin’ moral fibre of the nation!”
I’m stunned that nothing from Chef! made it. Gareth Blackstock / Lenny Henry was truly a master of the eloquent putdown.
“Let me explain the order of things to you. There’s the aristocracy, the upper class, the middle class, working class, dumb animals, waiters, creeping things, head lice, people who eat packet soup, then you.”
"You are a pea-brained, prat-faced, pompous, pillock-headed cretin. If you took an intensive course of intelligence injections and studied till you drop, then one day you might make it to moron third class failed. "
“So please go away… and please re-arrange the contents of this plate so that someone in the latest stages of malnutrition will at least take a passing interest in it.”
“Everton, let me explain things to you. In the world of cooking, I am Einstein. Lucinda is Isaac Newton. And you are a mud-dwelling unicellular bit of jelly with a predilection for consuming its own excrement.”
"Somebody bring me a knife, very long and razor sharp. I need to castrate the person who made this sauce and I don’t want to cause any unecessary suffering. I’m not a vindictive man, I’m not out to cause pain, but with this man’s DNA in the gene pool, humanity is doomed. "
(quotes lifted from IMDB).
I came here to post that! Although she started it, his retort eclipsed her usual spot-on analysis of the good doctor’s character flaws:
**Frasier (interrupting Lilith): **Dr. Sternin, if you’ll excuse me; I have to cash a check and fill up my gas tank before the show.
**Lilith: **Yes, I know… Have the attendant make sure your tires aren’t as inflated as your ego.
Frasier: You know, you perplex me.
**Lilith: **Oh?
**Frasier: **Yes, normally people of your limited physical appeal make up for it with an actual personality.
Watch the episode here . Incidentally, *Cheers *is one of my all-time favorite TV shows and is at the top of my list of favorite characters. The Frasier-Lilith banter is some of the meanest, funniest writing of that era. Carla was not so bad herself; I liked her so much because she hated Diane as much as I did.
*Coupling * (British version)
Sally: Mary Kelly thinks you’re a complete idiot.
Patrick: Then why is she always looking at my arse when we talk?
Sally: She’s lipreading.
Maude, as we all know, was Edith Bunker’s cousin, and she did not get along with Archie. In one of their interactions, she said, “Archie, you know what I like about you?”
“What?” responded Archie.
“Nothing.”
Good ole Al Bundy:
“Fat woman came into the shoe store today. Said she wanted something she could feel comfortable in. So I suggested she try Wyoming.”
“Fat woman came into the shoe store today. Said she wanted something cool to wear to a Crosby, Stills & Nash concert. So I suggested a nice recycleable paper bag to wear over her head. You know, so she can save the planet in 2 ways.”
Or, talking directly to the fat woman who came into the shoe store with broken heels:
“Oh here’s the problem, you see these shoes are like elevators, there’s a 2 ton weight limit to them. What do you say I nail the soles directly to your feet? It will give you more traction when you are pulling the ice wagon.”
More Blackadder:
“Baldrick, your brain is like the four headed, man-eating haddock fish beast of Aberdeen.”
“In what way?”
"It doesn’t exist. "
"Yes you are to be congratulated, my friend. We live in an age where illness and deformity are common place and yet Ploppy, you are without a doubt the most repulsive individual that I have ever met. I would shake your hand but I fear it would come off. "
Percy: “I’d like to see the Spaniard who could make his way past ME!”
Edmund: “Well, go to Spain. There are millions of 'em.”
I know Golden Girls has been mentioned more than once, but I’m freakin’ mentioning it again. Funny as hell, every episode. Best put downs in show biz…Dorothy, Ma, even Rose used to get some good ones in… with her innocent, earnest delivery…hahahaaa! Funny stuff…funny stuff.
There are lots of good putdowns here, but this is the only one that made me laugh out loud.
I think my favorite recent TV insult came from Arrested Development. Michael and his mother Lucille are having an edgy talk.
Michael: It is going to up in Tahoe a couple more days. Maybe you could take a date
Lucille: How am I supposed to find someone willing to go into that musty old claptrap?
[And here follows the real insult: Michael’s very long pause]
Michael: The cabin… yes! That would be difficult, too.
from Scrubs:
Bob Kelso to Elliott, (in a kind, reassuring, fatherly tone): "All I know is that you spent four years in college, and four years in medical school… so I think I can safely presume that you are at least 8.
I suppose the BBC could be forgiven for missing or steering away from some of the American TV put-downs, but there is no excuse for missing one of the single-greatest sustained put-down scenes in the history of the TV medium: