American Humour is Terrible

[Active Schizophrenic]

the daily show are the Colbert Report the two funniest shows ever. And I am Canadian.
also south park is american one of the guys who made it attended columbine High school.

 

[sora91111]

First of all if your aiming a post at Americans use humor not British. Second of all not all American humor is simple.Scrubs is hilarious.

 

[Von Strimmer]

While the United States will never have fawlty towers or the original office and of course will never reproduce top gear! I do believe there have been some fantastic shows to come out of the states. Shows such as American Dad or scrubs, community is a good one at the moment. Also Boston Legal. There have been many good shows. sorry OP but your massive generalisation is flawed and unfair.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I believe it's simply down to America being so much bigger.

At its heart, TV is all about getting the most viewers (except the BBC, who are funded by the licence and therefore not so obsessed with ratings, which is why they produce so much more quality than other stations, tho they do keep chasing ratings with a copy of anything that gets popular on other stations, but, that's a topic for another day).

Facts are, if 24% of people rated Community as 9.7/10 'almost perfect' but 67% of people rated 'Everybody Loves Raymond' as 5/10 'watchable' they'll commision another series of 'Raymond.

It all comes down to keeping people content, there's no money in making something excellent, not if you can do 'slightly above average' and moderately entertain more people, cheaper.

One other thing that I think the UK does right, is we tend to commision a series of 6 episodes. It's enough to let viewers get a feel for a show and its characters, whereas US shows seem to go for 13 or 24, and that's a far bigger budget allocation to risk on an unknown property.

 

[monkey jesus]

Can't we all just get along?!

Look at what happens when the US and UK get together to make TV.

HBO Motherfuckers.

 

[J3llo]

I don't think all American shows are stupid i think it is that the general American public is stupid, i mean should you trust the country who have shat out almost every reality show on the face of earth with making intelligent comedy shows.

I think their comedy is like their food, its nothing special but it goes down as fast as cheap hookers.

 

[silasbufu]

Why does humour have to be intelligent?

I'm just curious. Because if I want a good laugh, I can watch an episode of Family Guy for example and laugh my ass off without caring what the show is about. I can also watch shows like Rescue Me which have some really imature jokes, but what's wrong with that?

If I want to laugh, but see something interesting as well, I can watch something like House, Scrubs, Top Gear (just to show you that I can enjoy both american and brittish shows) etc.

So I really don't see your point, rather than some subjective elitism for brittish humour.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Absolute fucking heresy... I'm surprised no-one called you out on this:

Let me just leave this here, it explains my thoughts.

It depends what the limits are! If it's between 0 and 1/3*the cubed root of pi, all's good!
[/mathematical pedantry]

Uh, there's no integral variable i.e. 'dx' is not in the expression so it doesn't make sense. [/mathematical douchebaggery]

That's actually all I wanted to post here, but I've thought of something else.

OT: American humour is just sourced from too many cultures to be able to appeal to everyone. Most British humour is based on satire and dry wit. There is a plethora of American comedy shows out there, it's just finding one that caters to your tastes. I enjoy Scrubs (mostly), Spin City (again, mostly) and a couple other American shows but that's just me.

I find British humour so damned good because my favourite show (relative to medium) is a fucking radio show! It doesn't need the visuals to make me get a stitch.

 

[Kurokami]

National Generalizations Based On a Handful of Things You Don't Like are Fucking Idiotic

You are only meant to use capitals for the first word of each sentence, proper nouns and the word 'I', including of course I'm, since it is just a contracted 'I am'.

But back on topic, yes. Generalizations are bad if you present them as fact.

I was parodying the title of the thread - thus the title case. If any criticism could be leveled, it would be that the capitalization was inconsistent among the short/function words. Though on the other hand, opinions on proper title casing remain largely divided with no universal standard in virtually any major dialect of written English.

Also, you forgot adjectives derived from proper nouns, numerous brands, days, months, languages, taxa, some common species names, nouns used to denote a class of things when they more commonly refer to a single entity (the Church when refering to all churches at once for instance), acronyms, honorifics, legal terms, and likely a number of other words too.

And certainly you must have better things to do than making unthinking comments about the capitalization of forum posts.

TL;DR: Your attempts at grammar trolling are cute.

I have actually posted on this thread.

Commenting on your grammar, I assumed to be for your own benefit, obviously not if you wrote that way on purpose. I do tend to try to correct people if they have issues with spelling or grammar. Why? Because I think it's silly not to try to educate them. If I have made mistakes in my posts, which I have, I would want them corrected. I also don't particularly understand people wanting to remain ignorant or taking some sort of offence when they are corrected rather than saying "thank you" if they actually learned something.

(PS: Capitalization counts as grammar? I'm never sure of these things)

 

[brunothepig]

This thread just seems to have become people pointing out the good American comedies. Well, I still love Family Guy and American Dad, yes still. It may be mindless and stupid, but I find them to be hilarious shows. As for sitcoms, Scrubs is awesome, and so is How I Met Your Mother. I hear Community is hilarious, haven't got around to watching it. Oh, and Archer is American. In fact, that's all that needs to be said.

 

[supermariner]

For every 'Father Ted' and 'Red Dwarf' theres 50 'Two pints of Lager and a packet of crisps's'

I love you this, do I have permission to quote this in future debates about sitcoms forever more?

Aha. feel free my friend thank you

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

National Generalizations Based On a Handful of Things You Don't Like are Fucking Idiotic

You are only meant to use capitals for the first word of each sentence, proper nouns and the word 'I', including of course I'm, since it is just a contracted 'I am'.

But back on topic, yes. Generalizations are bad if you present them as fact.

I was parodying the title of the thread - thus the title case. If any criticism could be leveled, it would be that the capitalization was inconsistent among the short/function words. Though on the other hand, opinions on proper title casing remain largely divided with no universal standard in virtually any major dialect of written English.

Also, you forgot adjectives derived from proper nouns, numerous brands, days, months, languages, taxa, some common species names, nouns used to denote a class of things when they more commonly refer to a single entity (the Church when refering to all churches at once for instance), acronyms, honorifics, legal terms, and likely a number of other words too.

And certainly you must have better things to do than making unthinking comments about the capitalization of forum posts.

TL;DR: Your attempts at grammar trolling are cute.

I have actually posted on this thread.

Commenting on your grammar, I assumed to be for your own benefit, obviously not if you wrote that way on purpose. I do tend to try to correct people if they have issues with spelling or grammar. Why? Because I think it's silly not to try to educate them. If I have made mistakes in my posts, which I have, I would want them corrected. I also don't particularly understand people wanting to remain ignorant or taking some sort of offence when they are corrected rather than saying "thank you" if they actually learned something.

(PS: Capitalization counts as grammar? I'm never sure of these things)

I imagine it might have something to do with the self-righteous tone and implicit assumption that the mistake was from ignorance rather than carelessness.

Moreover, there are a lot of people who would rather "remain ignorant" of the rules of grammar, which makes a lot of sense seeing as how they're mostly already fluent speakers of the language and know all of its actual grammar (in fact, know it more completely and more deeply than any expert is presently capable of understanding). And as you seem to suggest, what you purported to "educate" me on here isn't really grammar so much as it is writing etiquette. And etiquette is very much tied to social groups, so assuming that others should universally hold to the same rules of etiquette is a pretty silly notion. You're not really to blame for that though - people only really get these notions because English grammar instruction is (and popular notions of how language works in general are) so hopelessly outdated.

 

[Purple Shrimp]

some american humour is funny and some is not

please remove the word "american" from the above line to get an equally valid statement

 

[RabbiiFrystofsk]

The only reason i can't stand American comedy much is because they're all sitcoms with the laughing put in the background for the jokes. Friend's was genuinely funny so that can be dismissed out of the equation but i watched about a minute of some old sitcom that Ryan Reynolds was in and turned over in anger because there was about 4 of those recorded laughs in less than a minute.

EDIT: I realised that i said 'they're all sitcoms with laughing put in the background for the jokes'. I retract this and re-clarify that i mean i can't stand these sort of American sitcoms. The one's that are able to stand on their own feet without the need for this are the best comedies, see Malcolm in the Middle and 30 Rock to name a couple.

 

[mountie218]

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.

South Park is not Canadian. It was created by two gentlemen from Colorado.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

Absolute fucking heresy... I'm surprised no-one called you out on this:

Let me just leave this here, it explains my thoughts.

It depends what the limits are! If it's between 0 and 1/3*the cubed root of pi, all's good!
[/mathematical pedantry]

Uh, there's no integral variable i.e. 'dx' is not in the expression so it doesn't make sense. [/mathematical douchebaggery]

That's actually all I wanted to post here, but I've thought of something else.

I... crap, you're right. My bad. Evidently I suck at maths.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I... crap, you're right. My bad. Evidently I suck at maths.

No sweat, and I suck at maths too (I'm a biologist...(!)). That was just one of the things I remember from pure maths lessons about... thirteen years ago... *depressing facepalm* *sob* I'm... old...(!)

 

[squeeble69]

Firstly, South Park isn't Canadian; both of it's creators are American. Secondly, you're arguing that American comedy is generally less intelligent than English comedy, which is bullshit; watch any episode of Not Going Out or Grownups and then tell me they're more intelligent than Arrested Development or Boondocks. I do agree, however, that there is a greater number of 'unintelligent' shows (that also reach a higher level of popularity) in America than Britain, but that can be attributed to the fact that there are simply way more people in America, meaning there is inevitably a) a greater number of stupid people (due to proportions of the population, not bashing America) and b) more shows being produced. So, in short, I thoroughly disagree with you.

 

[Duskwaith]

Fraiser. Quite simply one of the best shows ive ever watched.

And its American so they do have some brilliant shows

 

[xchurchx]

its true, i find american humour not that funny, especialy the stand ups, just no
there are certain things i laugh at like family guy and american comedy films, but i watched this one show where it was like a news programe but instead they took the piss out of stories (and no it wasn't fox news), the entire audience were wetting them selves with laughter, i however was starting to worry about humanity

Do you mean the Daily show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report?

no idea coz i watched it in france as it was the only thing on the telly that was in english