Every now and again, we are lucky enough to find something that we watch or read or play and it fits. It fits like that shirt. You know the shirt I’m talking about. That one. This show or book or game is like something that you would have made if you were inclined to make things like this. It tells stories that make you nod, it asks questions that you’ve asked, and, it tells jokes that you get and seem to fly past other folks (or, maybe, they’re too polite or refined to laugh and… well, let’s face it, you aren’t). It’s like the creators of this show were somehow connected to your sub-conscious and you to theirs and a positive feedback loop was created.
These things don’t happen *THAT* often, sadly, and when they do they’re generally cancelled after a season (if they even make it that long). Still, one season is better than none, right?
One show that fits this description (for me, granted) is Andy Richter Controls The Universe.
It’d be easy for me to tell you this joke, or that one, or another one but… if I had to find one series of jokes packed into the smallest possible space that will let you know in just 37 seconds whether this is something you need to buy or something that you can afford to have missed, it is this one:
I must have watched that episode a dozen times. I still crack up each and every.
So that’s my recommendation for you this week.
I’m afraid that I don’t lead a very comedic life. Every now and again, there are shows or (more frequently) movies that seem to reach under my skin and flick my nerves. Some I watch over and over again, some I can barely stand to watch a second time. They don’t tend to be comedies. And they tend to be the sort of plots that I don’t readily tell people about, because it would mean “Yeah, I relate in a very specific way to a transsexual musician, a robot girl trying to become human, and an aging blues fan who doesn’t like people that share my interests.”
Even when it is a comedy, it’s often something a very serious scene that flicks the nerve. When Niles and Daphne pretend that they met in a bar or when Drew Carey has a bachelor’s party for a wedding with a girl who ended the relationship in a fit of self-loathing the night before.
I’m a walking buzz-kill, at times :).
As with a lot of people in my demographic, I do relate strongly to The Big Bang Theory, but mostly in the sense that it’s people I know (isn’t that always the case? Nobody thinks they’re Sheldon.). While I have nothing in common with the protagonist, Better Off Ted had exactly the same sense of humor that I do.
I’d never even heard of this show until this post. It looks good, and in fact it look as if another short lived but more recent series, Better of Ted, was written by fans of Andy Richter Controls the Universe.
(As an aside, the best reason to watch Better Off Ted were the pho-commercials, played during the commercial breaks, for Veridian Dynamics, the fictional corporation the show was centered around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TcRjxPyhv0 )
“Diversity. Just the thought of it makes these white people smile.” Veridian Dynamic: Diversity. Good for us.
The sensitivity training episode of Andy Richter Controls the Universe is worth seeking out. (And after you see it, you too will start complaining about the Irish.)
“And after you see it, you too will start complaining about the Irish.”
Everyone in my family is Irish. I’m already complaining about them.
You type very well.