h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Scene: A US sitcom stage. Curtain goes up, nothing happens for fully three minutes. Audience in hysterics.
A woman dressed in strange retro fashion enters - her hair fills the room.
Woman: (Heavy NY sarcastic accent) "Well, whaddya know?"
Half of audience fall off their chairs.
Enter a man. His teeth appear to be made of fluorescent lights and his skin is more orange than an orange.
Man: "I didn't think you'd be back so soon."
Audience start slapping their thighs, eyes streaming.
There is a three-minute pause. Audience continue to giggle.
Woman: "I have a lot of anger within me".
Audience begins to cry.
Man: "Well - here we are."
Audience dies. Curtain goes down, massive applause.

But we DO import humour!!! Look, look, I'm American, and I spell humour with an extra "u"!!! I'm at the Hitchhiker's site!!! Disney's doing the movie!!! I like...um...Benny Hill!!! And my history teacher's pretty funny, he's Canadian!!!

Hey! How'd you know that!!!!

Me? About my history teacher? He pronounces things weird, like if he wanted to say "I want to speak about the drought in the south" it would be pronounced "I want to speak aboot the droot in the sooth". It's the Canadian curse. And he says stuff like "Some countries have an inferiority complex preventing them from featuring, say, a Queen on their coins. They just can't take it."

My old maths teacher used to tell us;
"Every time I open my mouth some silly fool speaks".

Well we thought in hilarious as 14 year olds.
AG

If you ever meet someone from Eastern Kentucky, perpare for a strange accent. The i's (i.e., "kite") become long i's. We made fun of my geometry teacher for that.

Humor is subjective.

When I want to be funny, there are some people who laugh. Those people I tend to like hanging with more. A good question I ask myself when meeting a potential new friend for the first time is: "is she laughing at my jokes?" That's very important.

Some people just don't get it. I'm trying to be funny and they don't laugh but when I'm not consciously trying to be funny they suddenly go into hysterics and I end up having to call them an ambulance. Then later it's discovered they had taken a bite of my infamous chili recipe and that's what drove them over the edge.

The trick is to be funny on cue. I don't think this is limited to nationality. It takes practice, and people inspired to be funny on cue must seek out cannonfodder like yourselves to use as guinea pigs until they successfully master the art.

All nations both import and export the best comedy of the world to each other. Deep down everyone wants to be funny.

Ok, then....

Uh...wow. That was...er....moving. And you're right, too. Good job, Zach, good job.

The threshold of what people regard as funny probably increases somewhat if money has changed hands at some point.

Yes, thanks for the money. Oops. Sorry....it's only $1,000,000

About £600,000. What was that for? I meant that if you pay to watch something, you expect the standard of humour to be high. Sitcom audiences are usually composed of people who have sent off for free tickets. There's no contract involved where humour has been promised for money but the audience feel obliged to offer the producers something in return for watching orange-skinned imbeciles posing and speaking glibly for an hour or so. Hence, they laugh themselves to the toilet and back.
They Royle Family had the first episode repeated last night. It has no laugh-track on it. Hence, the really funny bits stand out extremely well. I wonder if Monty Python were forced to have the laugh-track added by BBC executives who considered it too arcane for the punchlines to be easily recognised? Maybe DNA could shed some light on this. HHGG had no laugh-track, though the right to forsake such evil probably came at the expense of the BBC minimising the budget.
Experiments need to be done with twins being split up and made to watch two versions of the same unfunny US sitcom. One watches it plain, the other with the laugh-track added. Watch their faces carefully.
The US has been laughing for so long at false humour (where they're told where to laugh) that their opinion of what is funny has been conditioned to suit the witless minds of TV execs. It's not their fault. 'Tis a shame that the second series of South Park was so lacklustre. Maybe Bright, Kaufmann and Crane will bring back Dream On, which was the only properly funny thing they've done. Maybe Jim Abrahams will admit that he's no good on his own and will go back to the Zuckers to get some decent ideas. Maybe Bob Hope will implode. Has anyone out there seen Futurama? Is it as good as we've come to expect from Mr. Groening?

Something tells me you don't like US humor. Hmph.

The genuine humour produced there is fine - it's all the tat calling itself humour that falls well short of the mark that I dislike. There's so much of it, too. All a question of standards, I suppose.

Believe it or not, I'm in a psych class and that sounds like an interesting experiment. It'll be to prove or disprove group conformity when you don't feel you are really with the group...wow. Good idea. Next experiment we have to do I think I'll do that one, although I don't know any twins...I could just do it with random people, of course.

Hmmm, very interesting...

I find it rather disconcerting to find so many people claiming America has no sense of irony and sarcasm. The father of modern sarcasm and satire is none other than Samuel Clemens, as American as they come. As far as modern day, the United States has Saturday Night Live, a terrifically funny show that has produced, and continues to produce, some of the funniest men on the planet. It is true that Britain has a great reputation for humor. Douglas Adams is hilarious, as well as the Monty Python crew. And, who? Hmmmm...can't recall. And don't go saying "Benny Hill," either, because if that's the best you've got, you've got a long way to go.
Incidentally, the biggest reason that Fawlty Towers (a good show starring a Python) and other shows air here so frequently is that we have more channels available than shows to air on them. You can only watch so many reruns of "I Love Lucy."

I think I read somewhere that Saturday Night Live was inspired at least partly by Monty Python. Not in a plaigarising way, but SNL is inherently an American variant on MPFC. (Actually, John Cleese would probably be offended by that comparison)

Many movies and television shows in America are based in one way or another on successful works in other countries. The movie Birdcage which starred Robin Williams and Gene Hackman was a retread of La Cage Aux Folles. Three Men and a Baby which starred Selleck, Gutenberg and Danson and was directed by Leonard Nimoy is actually a remake of the french movie Three Men and a Cradle. I've never seen the french version, but I've been told by many the american version didn't quite match it joke for joke.

However, the french version would probably not be as funny to me as someone who actually spoke french, even with subtitles. Humor is funny that way.

I still say humor is subjective. However, Wingpig does have a point. Americans do tend to import their humor. It makes sense though. The population of America is imported from all over the world.

...but we can't really judge the country's humor by its top-rated shows, now can we? The large part of American TV (I'd assume this is international, too) serves to get rating points by pleasing a lot of people partially, rather than please a small group immensely. Hidden behind all the Seinfelds and Friendses (inventive pluralization) are plenty of good, good people like Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, David Cross, and Bob Odenkirk. Programs like Mr. Show with Bob and David are breaking sketch comedy conventions the same way the Flying Circus did in its day.
And, by the way, Saturday Night Live ceased to be funny years ago, and nearly every American will agree to that.

Saturday Night Live is still funny, but you have to be a loyal fan to know it. The show is cyclical; they find new talent, turn them into stars, send them off to huge hollywood careers, and then have to find new talent all over again. When they're groping for a new cast, the show sucks. But they have a good cast again, and have already sent their first members of the current generation to make a movie "A Night at the Roxbury." I haven't seen it, so I cannot tell whether it's any good or not, but it was based on a funny recurring sketch.
No one can debate the success of the show over the years...it has launched more careers than any other. It is almost impossible to watch a comedy movie in the United States without seeing a former cast member. Many of the classic movies began as SNL sketches, too. The most successful of these is "The Blues Brothers," but recently "Wayne's World" also reached as far as cult fame. The last generation of the show launched Chris Rock, David Spade, Phil Hartman (RIP), Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, and Chris Farley (RIP), all of whom have become household names. The current generation will do the same.