Unfunny comedy tropes

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JeffBergGold

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Awkward comedy & Look at us we're so weird and nerdy comedy.

Adult Swim commercials, Steve Carrel, The Office, It's always Sunny. All of that stuff is horrible.


30 rock & Workaholics are funny shows though.
 

Easton Dark

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Hey audience, men and women think differently about stuff, don't they?

That sums up every single female comedian's act that I've ever seen except Lisa Lamponelli's and Sarah Silverman's.
 

Cowabungaa

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The sort of comedy that fucks things up for well-willing people who finally seem to catch their break in life. But you can see it slowly falling apart without them knowing and you can see them realize that goddamit shit is getting fucked up again. I guess you can call it awkward comedy, it it's like emotional slapstick.

And then we're supposed to laugh at this...emotional torture. Why do I not find it funny? It's way too recognizable.
 

sunsetspawn

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Mr.Mattress said:
The Awkward Teen is getting stale, comedy people. Please come up with something new. Maybe a witty, really popular kid who's not a giant D-bag? That could be something to explore...
Check out Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I agree about the awkward teen, but I haven't liked that shit from day one. Come to think of it, I really don't like most comedy. I'm mostly into standup, and even that is full of hacks that couldn't make me laugh with a bottle of mescaline and a barrel of retards.

I like
Patrice Oneal (RIP)
George Carlin (RIP)
Richard Pryor (RIP)
Joe Rogan
Bob Kelly
Louis CK
Louis Black
Jim Jefferies

Uh oh, I'm running out of living comics that I like.
 

Chemical Alia

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"Meta" or overly self-aware humor often seems really forced and instantly gets to me. Like whatever that new Star Wars thing is or Scott Pilgrim-type crap, makes my skin crawl. Also, any attempt at humor in any anime ever.

Overall there's a lot of stuff that I find really annoying, but it's hard to think of examples because I tend to avoid it when I see it.
 

IamQ

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Having an entire series revolve around someones attempts at doing something that will always ultimately fail.

Examples: Ed, Edd and Eddy, anything involving either Donald Duck or Daffy duck, Road Runner etc.

It's never funny. I'm always mad, because most of these characters you really enjoy, but for some reason, the show doesn't, so they never give them a happy ending.
 

peruvianskys

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chiggerwood said:
Meta humor. Almost nobody knows how to use meta humor. The worst ones are when the joke almost works, and then they bring too much attention to how meta they're being and completely ruin the joke. See phelous for a good example of truly awful meta humor with no justification for its existence. Caution upon viewing his videos you may have an extreme urge to to stab yourself in the brain with a fork to remove all the bad memories. You have been warned.
Meta humor, if done right, is hilarious. But if you overemphasize it with a big ol' wink, then it immediately becomes incredibly annoying.

I've never found excessively dry British comedy that entertaining. It always seemed to be more predicated on "look how sophisticated this is, congratulate yourself for being so witty!" than actually making me laugh.
 

natster43

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Vault101 said:
over doing it

take Nostalga critic.....I think he's good and all, but latley his videos have been kind of dull....

its hard to explain but its like he makes a joke but drags it on too long or brings too much attention to it which kills it
This. It is pretty much the main reason I stopped watching his stuff, he would overdo every joke.
Other than that, re-using a joke over and over until it isn't funny and has out stayed it's welcome.
 

geK0

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The Oafish husband who can't survive without his wife seems a little overdone, the only show I ever really liked it in was the Simpsons.

The gluttonous character who eats stacks of ramen/rice bowls is WAY too common in anime and has never been funny.

The annoying best friend (Barney Gumble for example) has always been....annoying

The geeky kid/ school bully bit has never been funny
 

Jolly Co-operator

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Winthrop said:
Pain comedy. Like in the campaign the guy being shot with the crossbow. I just don't find somebody in pain to be funny. It makes me more uncomfortable than anything else. It bugs me in a way to know that so many people find it funny as well. I've just never found enjoyed it.
You brought up pain comedy from The Campaign, but didn't refer to the baby punching scene? ;)

OT: I hate the "lol, this guy sleeps with a lot of women, somehow that's funny, lol" type of character that shows always try to pass off as funny. The only character in that vein that I've actually liked is Barney Stinson, and that was mainly because they developed him more as a character as the series went on.
 

BytByte

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Whenever a guy/gal suddenly can't form coherent sentences because there is an attractive person within a mile of them has always seemed like a cop out to me. Just nah.
 

Royal King

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Personally, I find Dead Baby jokes unfunny. Or extremely in bad taste. Pretty much any violence-towards-infants is bad. This also includes baby-shaking jokes.

Such as: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/9859-Metal-Gear-Solid
 

Fenra

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Straight guy (that is to say ordinary guy not straight as in sexuality) in a "wacky" situation. Mostly because people dont seem to be able to decide what they want to do with it. So either it just becomes awkward and unfunny, pointing at the guy standing there and saying "look he's uncomfortable in this situation, thats funny right?" or they over do the "wacky"ness to the point where its absurd and loses all impact and believability

Also I can just point at Ross from Friends as an example for everything I hate about whiney characters in sitcoms.
 

Signa

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ForgottenPr0digy said:
anything Adam Sandler does these days in movies
From the guys that brought you the 70-minute Star Wars reviews, here's a breakdown on why they think Sandler movies suck so bad.

They were reviewing Jack and Jill, and they went off on a tangent trying to figure out how a movie so awful could have been made.

http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag/jack-and-jill/
 

Relish in Chaos

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Oh, I forgot to mention these ones. I generally like Family Guy, despite how much it abuses cutaway gags and the fact that some of its gags just take too goddamn long (like that scene where Herbert?s fighting that Nazi) and weren?t even that funny in the first place?but one thing I?ve never gotten is how Meg being the butt-monkey of the show is meant to be funny.

I just don?t like it when a main character?s entire purpose is for everyone to seemingly hate them and constantly take the piss out of them. This happened to a lesser extent with Kenny in South Park?s earlier seasons, what with everything he said being muffled and getting killed off every other episode.

IamQ said:
Having an entire series revolve around someones attempts at doing something that will always ultimately fail.

Examples: Ed, Edd and Eddy, anything involving either Donald Duck or Daffy duck, Road Runner etc.

It's never funny. I'm always mad, because most of these characters you really enjoy, but for some reason, the show doesn't, so they never give them a happy ending.
Isn't that intentional? I think the series' creator intended for Wile E. Coyote to be sympathetic, especially with the Road Runner and others like him (e.g. Tweety Bird) being such trolls.

And I believe that, at least, the Eds got a happy ending in the series' end special.

Allthingsspectacular said:
A man losing an erection and/or failing to get one.

I don't get it. How is that funny?
I've rarely seen that in any of the sitcoms that I've watched. The only example that comes to mind was in Two and a Half Men, when Charlie pretended that he was gay to get pally with a woman, and then failed to prove his heterosexuality when he couldn't get an erection over her. But that's a shit show anyway.
 

DioWallachia

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Some music:

chiggerwood said:
Meta humor. Almost nobody knows how to use meta humor. The worst ones are when the joke almost works, and then they bring too much attention to how meta they're being and completely ruin the joke. See phelous for a good example of truly awful meta humor with no justification for its existence. Caution upon viewing his videos you may have an extreme urge to to stab yourself in the brain with a fork to remove all the bad memories. You have been warned.
Vault101 said:
over doing it

take Nostalga critic.....I think he's good and all, but latley his videos have been kind of dull....

its hard to explain but its like he makes a joke but drags it on too long or brings too much attention to it which kills it

also....nothing...NOTHING about nerds/geeks....their interests, their short comings, the way the talk, the fact they like starwars/star trek...the fact that they use words that are actually NOT that fucking complicated except mabye to the dumbasses watching daid show

NONE OF THAT IS FUNNY
To chiggerwood: Can you present a good example of meta humor to compare with Phelous?

To chiggerwood and Vault101: Oh? you dont like meta jokes that are lame (like using the words character or plot over and over?) or over used star wars and start trek references? Well....search no further than the atrocious new anniversary video "To Bodly Flee".

You ALL have been warned.......

PS: I hate it when this kind of people that SHOULD know any better end up screwing up and make everything more hard for everyone who REALLY knows how it should be done, but have a hard time publishing this kind of meta ideas to the world because people now DESPICE those ideas because they are being overused by hacks.

Imagine trying to write or make a movie about a killer black mist of Lovecraftian origins (like Nyarlathotep) but cant do it because some hack made the same thing before in Rise of The Silver Surfer, and it sucked so hard that people HATE anything related to it, specially Galactus who was made into being a black cloud/myst.

Hell, even if you did a good movie/game before anyone fucks those concepts up, you can STILL be labeled as a hack just because some moron does so horribly or because the concept has been used as a dead horse. Case in point of this "Poison The Well" fallacy, Metroid Prime ends up being labeled as a bankrupt game just because the CoD FPS fest (wont you agree, Movie Bob?)

My point is, if you dont know how to pull it off properly then WHY are you even DOING this?

Zyst said:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BreakingTheFourthWall

Breaking the Fourth Wall, when done properly I can maybe get a smirk out of it (depending on the show) but I recently watched an anime (something synphogear) where one of the female characters, literally, every fucking time she showed up, every single fucking time said "This is not an anime! You can't do that" that kind of crap, I mean I know it's not EXACTLY breaking the fourth wall but I don't know exactly which trope it is.

It got to a point where I literally got pissed off every time I saw that character, even in the last episode with epic scale battles going on and crap she squeezed in the line at least 3 times, it just made me rage so hard and the anime wasn't that good anyway.

But yeah... I feel like I just vented instead of giving my opinion but oh well haha.
How about breaking it for terror without actually spelling out that the monster is out to get you? imagine a being so powerful that the glass of your monitor starts to break gradually during the plot (it may even last an entire episode with the cracks still there).

Not only that, the music starts to distort more often and even if OUR reality tries to fight back this thing by healing the fourth wall, it is broken even WORSE the more that monster displays his powers....

Can you present a similar example?
 

DioWallachia

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Signa said:
ForgottenPr0digy said:
anything Adam Sandler does these days in movies
From the guys that brought you the 70-minute Star Wars reviews, here's a breakdown on why they think Sandler movies suck so bad.

They were reviewing Jack and Jill, and they went off on a tangent trying to figure out how a movie so awful could have been made.

http://redlettermedia.com/half-in-the-bag/jack-and-jill/
I heard that they ALSO watched "That is My Boy" because they want to get KILLED by a bad movie.

True Story :D
 

DioWallachia

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Lumber Barber said:
Shows that constantly throw a wink to other shows/books/movies/video games. I love it when it's subtle and you might not notice it at all unless you know the source, but some shows decide to put their little wink on a pedestal and shine lights on it so we all know that THIS IS THE TIME TO LAUGH!
How about "spiritual references" to a work? like how someone in MY story talks about a concept that is similar to another one that inspired this one but is actually relevant to the plot and not just to reference it like saying "i am taking my time to talk about this like in a fucking commercial, because you, little insignificant mortal that still lives with his mom, SHOULD read this other story. Because it good for your pathetic life to have something to brag about and here is one of them"
 

The Funslinger

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Vault101 said:
another one...when its kind of mean spirited....somtimes thats ok but not when its over done

like LOOK AR HOW MUCH SHIT THIS GUY IS GETTING...ITS FUNNY.

after a while its really not...

prime example being two and a half men
Oh God. Sometimes when I'm bored, I watch 2 and a half men on CC whenever.

Focusing on Alan for extended periods of time pretty much induces depression in me. It's mildly sadistic is what it is.

People in the show call him a freeloader, and a leech, and cheap, and stuff, but from what I've seen, if he didn't do that, he'd be financially worse off than people on the dole, despite having a perfectly decent career.

I remember when I bothered to watch an episode of the new season, and he thinks he's Charlie, and starts acting like him, and being good at it, and stuff. I think in the unlikely event that happened in reality, I'd just let him stay like that.

OT: Seth McFarlane's phoned in musical numbers.

We get it, you want to make it as a singer. Now fuck off.