American Humour is Terrible

[Elementlmage]

Other people like American humor. It's called an opinion. You're not right, and neither are they.

My point is that the jokes involved are less intelligent than those in British shows. Go watch Peep Show. That is genius. Compare it to any widely viewed American comedy show. I'm not arguing which is subjectively better, I'm arguing that British comedy is more intelligent. Please read my post and understand it before replying.

Frasier, Cheers, NCIS, Northern Exposure, Malcom in the Middle, Arrested Development, That 70's Show, The Drew Carey Show, Weeds (not really a comedy, but is chock full of great humor), Seinfeld, etc.

Starting to get the idea?

Or, you could just scroll down this list here:

http://www.imdb.com/search/title?num_votes=5000,&sort=user_rating,desc&title_type=tv_series

I'm sure there is some comedy in there you will like.

 

[Bob Hoss]

I like South Park (I know it's Canadian) for it's witty commentary of current affairs. It actually takes issues of the day and makes some good jokes at them. Family Guy is just ok - I wouldn't watch it often, but it can be funny. The kind of American humour I really don't like is shows like the Big Bang Theory. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLQaTcViOA

It just isn't funny. Not because it isn't my sense of humour, but there is no intelligence to the jokes involved. America has scrounged genuinely good British TV series such as Shameless and The Office, and ruined them in an effort to bring them to the American market.

My point is American humour is unintelligent and boring to watch. It is juvenile, and I find it actually almost painful to see shows like Two and a Half Men doing well when they are so full of utter crap.

Sir, clearly no one is around to give you anything good! There are many American-made comedies that can make any Brit enjoy themselves, and if you had made this thread more a query of some recommendations, explaining what you have already seen and disliked, I'm sure you would have been over-run with some great suggestions.

But instead you just came off like a bit of a tool, and it makes me reluctant to share any gems with you.

I will agree that often, American humor doesn't pack as much wit as British humour, but that doesn't seem like such a problem to many of us. It just means you can go to different sources for a different laugh.

Yankees tend to prefer ridiculous situations and what happens from that being funny, whereas Brits tend to set it up so they can knock it down (NOTE: SUPREME generalization,I do realize that there are mountains of sub genres). I feel like your just expecting laughs to come to you in a usual way from an unusual source.

Milking a cow and milking a cat take two very different skill sets, as Grampa used to say...

 

[Araxiel_1911]

I could write a lot about this, but it's 5:25 in the morning here and I'm to tired, so I'll keep it short:
First, I do adore South Park, too. But it's not Canadian. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are both American. Comedy Central is American. It's a very "unamerican", American show.

Now to the meat. I strongly disagree with you. Yes, I love british humour. And I love "intelligent" humour. But I wouldn't call Mr. Bean very intelligent, although I'm a great Rowan Atkinson fan. Same counts for Monty Pyton or Fawlty Towers. So am I a tremendious fan of Simon Pegg.
But so I like How I Met Your Mother. Scrubs is one of my favourite series ever. And the View Asken-iverse might be very, very stupid, but I can quote all of Jay and Silent Bob dialogue, well rather just Jay's.

What I'm trying to say is: I don't give a rat's arse about the location or the writer's nationality. If a show is bad or not has not directly something to do with that. If I think a show is bad and unfuny then that'll not be because of the nation it belongs to.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Thanks for making broad assumptions off a limited number of sources. Very constructive.

 

[ServebotFrank]

I like South Park (I know it's Canadian) for it's witty commentary of current affairs. It actually takes issues of the day and makes some good jokes at them. Family Guy is just ok - I wouldn't watch it often, but it can be funny. The kind of American humour I really don't like is shows like the Big Bang Theory. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLQaTcViOA

It just isn't funny. Not because it isn't my sense of humour, but there is no intelligence to the jokes involved. America has scrounged genuinely good British TV series such as Shameless and The Office, and ruined them in an effort to bring them to the American market.

My point is American humour is unintelligent and boring to watch. It is juvenile, and I find it actually almost painful to see shows like Two and a Half Men doing well when they are so full of utter crap.

Why are you making generalizations based off the worst show on television? The Big Bang Theory is fucking awful and I have no idea why that show has fans I really do. It seems like the writers just decide to write based on what Nerds might do (Which is false) because they're idiots. "I'm playing Mario Brothers 2 on a poorly run emulator on my computer." What was the point of that?

Also what's with these threads saying "America sucks ass because of *blank*?" I fail to see how America television is worse then other countries. Arrested Development, The Simpsons (until the tenth season), Futurama, My Little Pony (Yes I went there), and everything Pixar made. You blaming a country on it's nationality alone is stupid and I can't believe so many people on this site do it so often. That's not a generalization by the way, I never see this on other forums I visit such as Talking Time. "Insert something negative about America" got old when it started and we should kill this trend before it goes on any further. It's annoying.

I went off topic a bit but seriously, I shouldn't have to come out and say it.

 

[Imat]

Other people like American humor. It's called an opinion. You're not right, and neither are they.

My point is that the jokes involved are less intelligent than those in British shows. Go watch Peep Show. That is genius. Compare it to any widely viewed American comedy show. I'm not arguing which is subjectively better, I'm arguing that British comedy is more intelligent. Please read my post and understand it before replying.

British comedy, as a whole, is more intelligent you say. This coming from the country/island chain behind such deep, thought-provoking comedy as the vast majority of Monty Python (Hilarious stuff, by the way), IT Crowd (Also hilarious), and Lab Rats (Amusing, though not so much so as the other two mentioned). The point being that every country/culture has intelligent comedy, just like every country/culture has less intelligent comedy. Heck, even Shakespeare had some not-quite-so-witty jokes, yet nobody complains about that. If intelligent comedy is your only cup of tea, I truly feel sorry for you. There's a vast world of comedy out there, a world I'm lucky enough to enjoy the majority of, and narrowing it down to a small fraction and calling it "The only good comedy," as a fact, is simply incorrect. It may be the only kind you enjoy, but many of us, American or otherwise, enjoy a variety of comedies and are thus more easily entertained.

Also, saying you like South Park but don't like unintelligent comedy is somewhat hypocritical, don't you think?

 

[The Virgo]

As an American, there are some good American comedies, but not recently. Watch some older movies like "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" or "The In-Laws" (The one with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin).

However, I will say that British music IS a lot better than our music. In the 60's, you had the Beatles, The Animals, The Stones and The Strawbs, to name a few. In the 70's you had Genesis, Pink Floyd (to be fair, they started in the 60's, but they really took off in the 70's), YES, ELP, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Queen and King Crimson, to name a few. In the 80's you had Flock of Seagulls, Bonnie Tyler (she's Welsh, but you get what I'm saying), David Bowie, Eurythmics, Tears for Fears and others.

Even today, music standards being as low as they are, you gotta admit that English songs like these are still better than most of these crappy, copy/paste American songs.

 

[DustyDrB]

I'm sorry. The American Office improved greatly on the British one. The first three seasons were fantastic. The rest? It's not classic entertainment (went too far away from uncomfortable comedy and too far into emotional narratives), but it's still good enough to warrant being there and doesn't detract from the early seasons.
And seriously...

Louie
Community
Party Down
Arrested Development
Curb Your Enthusiasm
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Parks and Recreation
30 Rock
Scrubs
Better Off Ted

and NewsRadio was an extremely funny show even though it did use the laugh track. I hate that outdated TV device as much as anyone, but NewsRadio is the exception.

 

[6_Qubed]

I like South Park (I know it's Canadian) for it's witty commentary of current affairs. It actually takes issues of the day and makes some good jokes at them. Family Guy is just ok - I wouldn't watch it often, but it can be funny. The kind of American humour I really don't like is shows like the Big Bang Theory. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLQaTcViOA

It just isn't funny. Not because it isn't my sense of humour, but there is no intelligence to the jokes involved. America has scrounged genuinely good British TV series such as Shameless and The Office, and ruined them in an effort to bring them to the American market.

My point is American humour is unintelligent and boring to watch. It is juvenile, and I find it actually almost painful to see shows like Two and a Half Men doing well when they are so full of utter crap.

Assuming for a second that you aren't a troll, are these the only shows of this genre that you've seen? Have you seen any of the older shows America has to offer, such as Frasier? That show was more intellectual humor than it was "potty jokes" and had enough of a fanbase to keep it on the air for a while when it was still on, and to keep it rerunning today.

Consider also Seinfeld. Go back and watch a few episodes. They did an entire episode about masturbation without even naming the act itself, either in technical terms or layman's terms.

Now true, these are both older shows that are no longer running, but I use them to illustrate a point; To make so bold a claim as "Americans are shit in the humor department", you really need a much larger testing pool, with more variety in shows and in eras of programming. Yes, many modern "funny" shows are not intelligent, but the same could be said of most shows in general.

And if you don't wish to be properly scientific about this, I can still offer a sound suggestion, in paraphrase of an older and sadly now-deceased icon of American humour, George Carlin: "Did you know there are two knobs on the TV? One of them changes the channel, and the other one turns the TV off!"

edit: Also, South Park is an American show. Don't take my word for it, take Wikipedia's! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park

 

[QuantumT]

I like South Park (I know it's Canadian) for it's witty commentary of current affairs. It actually takes issues of the day and makes some good jokes at them. Family Guy is just ok - I wouldn't watch it often, but it can be funny. The kind of American humour I really don't like is shows like the Big Bang Theory. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmLQaTcViOA

Yes, South Park is so Canadian that both of its creators grew up in Denver, Colorado. What's funny is that you couldn't hardly pick a place in the US that's further from another country.

 

[Korolev]

It's easy to point at an example of bad American Humour and then claim that all American comedy is terrible.

It's so easy.... I COULD DO IT TO THE UK!

Exhibit One: The massively popular Little Britain. It's nothing more than a collection of montages of people being horrible to each other and repeating the same tired jokes time after time. Now, I am aware that it has been cancelled, but it was very popular for a while.

Exhibit Two: Mr. Bean. Now, I'm going to cop a lot of flack for this one - Mr. Bean is very popular, and I have to admit that as a child, I loved Mr. Bean. But I recently saw an old episode of Mr. Bean as an adult, and it's.... stupid. I could understand why I liked it as a child, but it's nothing more than an almost-mute man acting like an idiot in public. There's no real humour.

So, by pointing to those two bad comedy shows, am I justified in saying "UK Humour is terrible!"? No! Because the UK has The Mitchell and Webb Look, Black Adder was excellent, and Monty Python was Brilliant.

You can't point to one or two bad American shows and use them as a justification to claim all US Humour is terrible! What about brilliant comedians like George Carlin? The Simpsons in their hey-day (Before Season 8) were also excellent.

It is very easy to point to just about anything and call it terrible if you pick a small enough sample of it.

 

[wilsontheterrible]

Are we talking just television or humor in general?

Are we going for 'Oh, I see what you did there. Yes that was quite clever of you.' because British comedy tends to focus on that while the U.S and China have a hearty appreciation for slapstick comedy. Every culture has a unique aptitude for different types of comedy.

When I was working overseas I found out that Germans think satire is fricken hilarious but it's a little to dry for me. India actually has a really vibrant spirit of comedy that gets overlooked a lot as well.

As for television my favorite is Japanese tv even if I couldn't understand a word of it, I've got my American mainstays, but I can't stand British television. Some of it's great but most of it, like any nations tv, is bland crap.

In general I think American's have a great sense of humor. We laugh at ourselves and at each other in pretty equal measure. I think the problem is that in the U.S humor is very sudden and very apparent, it doesn't normally require too much effort to discern the meaning but I don't think that reduces the comedic merit of it.

 

[Sean951]

American comedy realises on slap stick, and low brow humour too much.

Something I'm not a fan of.

(Also, why is it that the only comedy Americans like in British comedy is Monty Python. There are tons of others that are far more superior, take Red Dwarf for example. Oh... I didn't just go there, oh yes I did.)

Isn't Monty Python largely slap stick?

Also: Could someone PLEASE tell me how Red Dwarf is funny? I saw the first episode, and only finished it because one of my friends was enjoying it. I found the entire premise completely boring. Oh look, some idiot wanted to take a cat to Earth and retire in New Zealand, but then he was frozen for 2 million years and the cat became what is quite possibly the single most annoying character without being Peter Griffin.

 

[Some_weirdGuy]

I remember when the American version Cath and Kim came out. It was awful XD They completely missed the whole humour of the show. funnily enough i think it stopped airing after the second episode.

For example, n the original(Australian) version of the show one of the characters(i can't remember which was which) dresses in short shirts and stuff. The whole funny thing about it being she's middle aged and got this muffin top going on, so she looks awful but she doesn't seem to get that.

In the American version however the actor who played her was this young slim girl who looked quite decent in that sort of clothing and since half the humour of the original was about how bad she looked in them it just missed that entirely.

 

[Caligulove]

Humor is kind of a subjective thing. Right now, American humor is a bit more favorable in my eyes since Russel Brand wasn't our fault.

 

[Greasemoicockneypalm]

British comedians are excellent, but Monty Python is very hit and miss, as is a lot of institutionalised British comedy. I mean, look at the Carry On films, the IT Crowd; it's often pretty puerile.

The truest indicator of a nation's sense of humour is its standup, its live interviews, and life experience within a country. Let me tell you, the 'comedy' we get on Australian TV is so far removed from the reality of Australian life it boggles the mind.

For example, Trailer Park Boys, whilst not the most intelligently written show in the world became so popular because it parodied social realities and dabbled in the farcical, just like the Simpsons, Daria, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld did (to name very few).

 

[The Lesbian Flower]

What if I just want to sit in front of my idiot box for a couple of hours and not have to really think about why something may or may not be funny to me and what makes up the humor of the show I'm watching? A lot of the "humor" on American television is just very simple but there's some stuff that's complex, but what do you care? No one makes you watch it and I don't see why you have to complain when you can just live and let live.

 

[zajohnson]

American humor.... sucks. I can't believe people laugh at garbage that's on TV nowadays.
Probably why I NEVER watch TV. I just go on YouTube, THAT'S where all the laughs are it seems xDD

 

[Vern]

I know it's pointless to post this so far into the thread. But I just have to point out "Upright Citizens Brigade". It's hilarious. And it's American. And it uses intelligent jokes and ridiculous situations. And I for one hate Two and Half Men, and I've never seen Big Bang. Really the only American sitcoms I've ever enjoyed are Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Roseanne. The former because it's intelligent, quirky, and is glazed in a heavy dose of pathos. Roseanne actually showed a dysfunctional American family, had some humor, but it showed life, and for that I give it credit. Well, I'll have to add Arrested Development, because it was hilarious.

 

[TheEldestScroll]

eh some of it is funny. the american office is my favorite show, but thats just below the british show, the IT crowd. whats funny is funny. but yes american humor is meh sometimes.