Does Anybody Remember Laughter?

May 7, 2004

I’ve been drowning in DVD TV sets again. I’ve had the Ben Stiller DVD set sitting on my shelf for months now, so I started cranking through it last week.

I remember this show to be edgy and funny, miles above what was being put on Saturday Night Live at the time. I’m sifting through the stuff now and I found myself mostly stonefaced for the first half of the season. I’m still laughing occassionally, but it’s not the internal injury type laughter of yesteryears. At first I thought I’m just not into sketch comedy anymore, but then I realized my favorite comedy on TV by far is Chappelle Show, which is textbook sketch.

It clicked a few episodes in that I just wasn’t laughing because the first few episodes of Stiller are just drenched in pop culture. Removed from the context of ten years ago, it just doesn’t jump off the screen like it used to. Stiller’s show gets progressively better though, as it starts to develop some characters and starts to parody some icons that are still around today (Legends of Springsteen comes to mind). I’ll be getting to the second half of the season, so it’ll be interesting to see if attains some sort of timelessness or if it goes back to dating itself with its efforts in staying topical.

I also went through Mr. Show Season 1, and since it’s more recent vintage and more character based, it seemed just about as funny as when I first saw it. In ten years, will Chappelle Show make me laugh? I dunno. I expect America’s race politics to be close enough but will anyone even remember Lil John? Doubt it.

Posted in Idiot Box