Just finished watching SG-1 fifth season episode “Wormhole Extreme!”. I forgot how much I loved this episode. Chock full of in jokes and down right silliness.
Some of my favorite lines:
“Maybe if we have them shoot them three times the body disappears!”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, because that’s the stupidest thing I ever did hear!”
and this exchange:
“Nice special effects!”
“Meh, I’ve seen better.” (Said from the real SE guys of the SG-! crew)
So, any other (serious) shows that deserve props for trying their hand at comedy?
Mad Men, The Americans, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were all very good at generating sublime comedic moments despite officially not being comedies. I think you’d be hard pressed to think of any truly great drama which doesn’t also contain great comedy within it.
Stargate SG-1 is a funny show even on their normal episodes. Richard Dean Anderson has great comedic timing. Compare it to any time star trek tries and fails to do the same.
O’Neil and bratack look down a vast array of levels, the innards of a gould ship where the main engine is at the bottom.
Bratack: To destroy the engine we must make our way down 5 levels, fight our way through the peltek, crawl through 60 meters of access tunnels and then…
O’Neil pulls out two grenades, pulls the pins and drops the grenades down to the engine.
For one of my favorite comedic T.V. performances ever, credit goes to Enver Gjokaj from an episode of Dollhouse. His character, Victor, is imprinted with the mind of Topher (actor, Fran Kranz). He’s got to spend the entire episode doing a spot-on comedic impersonation of his co-star. I had never seen Gjokaj in any other projects before and he had never really been called upon to exercise any notable comedy skills in previous episodes of this series, so it was a big surprise for him to be so hilarious.
The recently ended Person of Interest began as (sort of) a Procedural; the SF elements (which had always been there) grew. It could be damn grim–but also funny. From the Pilot (thanks, TVtropes):
Jim Cavaziel’s absolutely dead-pan delivery helped with the snark. And this scene came after his first meeting with the insufferable rich white wanna-be gangstas. When he was a bum on the subway they targeted for a beating and he efficiently put all of them out of action.
St. Elsewhere was a medical drama but did in-jokes/meta humor well, such as
Jack Riley reprising his Bob Newhart patient character Elliot Carlin as a patient in St. Eligius’s psych ward where he convinces a middle aged male amnesiac that he (the amnesiac) is Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show
Betty White in a recurring guest role as a military doctor appearing in that episode and being mistaken for Sue Ann Nivens (her MTM show character) by said mental patient
A hospital administrator played by Jack Dodson (actor bka Howard Sprague on The Andy Griffith Show becoming groggy post surgery and mentioning contacting Floyd to get his hair cut
William Daniels’s obnoxious and disliked heart surgeon Mark Craig in an episode filmed on location in Philadelphia mentioning how the city always makes him feel like singing and dancing, and later stating “It’s hot as hell in Philadel-phia”, all references to 1776
The fathers of various characters attend a function and are played by Steve Allen and his former cast members from The Tonight Show- Tom Poston, Louis Nye, and Bill Dana (Don Knotts sat it out unfortunately)
The X-Files has had a few good comedy episodes. Jose Chung’s From Outer Space featuring Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek as men in black is a classic. War of the Coprophages was a little too slapstick but made a valiiant effort.
And while the latest resurrection of the series was mostly forgettable, the episode Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster was one of the funniest shows I’ve seen on TV.
the cops parody they did too was funny one of a few times anyone made fun of a show while using real elements from it I think mulder was looking for a chupacraba in la …