Modern Comedy

The mockumentary style is very interesting. I actually have written about it a couple of times now.  They’ve been becoming more and more common with many very popular examples these days.  There’s the Office, but also Modern Family, Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, and 7 Days in Hell. There has even been some pretty interesting kids shows like The Naked Brothers Band or the Total Drama Series. They function in different ways, the Office and Parks and Rec provide a sort of a western “slice of life” show. The shows take the viewer into the everyday, if out of the ordinary, lives of these coworkers. Modern Family is similar in that it follows the life of an unconventional family, but still gives you the perspective of each character thought the reality TV style  “confession cameras.” Meanwhile 7 Days in Hell and Arrested Development simulate actual documentaries. It all provides a different framing for comedy than the standard sitcom.  Rather than a straightforward story telling, the mockumentary allows for that story, but with the ability to insert those interview like portions that give an extra chance for jokes and the chance to give characters real opinions.

The popularity of these shows coincides with the rise of popularity of actual reality shows.  Modern Family came just after Keeping Up with the Kardashians, another show about the daily lives of a family.  The Total Drama series, a made up competition series pitting teens against each other in ridiculously dangerous challenges, came out while Survivor was still culturally relevant.  People seem to enjoy these shows that take everything that is inherently incongruous with these cultural phenomenons and dial it up to make it even more ridiculous.

I'd Like to Cutaway From Whatever Channel Family Guy is On.

The cutaway gag is certainly a staple of the show Family Guy.  They do allow the writers to add in another joke, but is it a good one?  On the whole, they really don’t fit in with the rest of the scenes they are in. They’re barely ever tied into the scene itself, almost always falling back on “This is worse than the time…” It’s barely enough to prevent what they call a “Big Lipped Alligator Moment.”  Where a scene is included but has no real impact on the plot without even being a distraction enough to be a red herring.  Interruptions like those are funny free standing, but in a scene, they interrupt what's really going on.  Constant random cutaways can come across as sloppy and cause the show to become tiresome.
The reason the writers for this show use them so often is because they give them the chance to throw in a quick joke that they couldn’t sustain in a whole episode without having it make any difference in the plot of the episode.  It’s the same way Stewie works a large majority of the time, making comments and acting out in ways that only really Brian ever notices.  As such the writers are able to put in those jokes without having to come up with the reactions or results of the actions.
Perhaps part of the humor is found in these outrageous other lives the characters are apparently living off screen.  American Dad, which in my opinion is the better Seth Macfarlane does the same thing, most of the time through Roger who seems to live multiple lives simultaneously.  With Roger, though, this is worked into the plot, at times being the center of an episode, and even being the source of ridicule for the way the show is constantly using it as an out, as in the scene where they take the horse to a therapist and the following happens (couldn’t find a copy online that didn’t seem like it was filmed on a Samsung Juke):

Stan: Everything depends on this horse.
Roger:Luckily, I know a guy who might be able to help us. Let's just pray that for once, when we get there, he doesn't turn out to be me.
_______
Roger: Aw, crap.
Roger in a wig: Can I help you?
Stan: I had an appointment
with the horse whisperer.
Roger in a wig: Oh, yes, he'll be right with you.
Roger: Thank God I'm just his secretary.
Roger in a wig:I'm an associate.

Self parody is always appreciated.  It’s nice to see the show realize its own shortcomings and bad habits.  It’s similar to when Monty Python ended a sketch with policeman after policeman arresting each other for overusing the same trick of using a policeman to end a sketch.  The fact that the writers are aware of the habit is funny, but so is the fact that within the context of the show, Roger realizes that he’s crazy and is frankly upset that his habit inconveniences himself more than anyone else.  There’s a point at which a bit like the cutaway gags or Roger’s characters become overused and lazy, but they have the potential to once again be funny.  The show just has to double down and mock its own use of the trick.

Please Laugh - JEB

I actually did my essay more or less on this topic. I found it very interesting the way people see the laugh track. (If you’re curious here’s the article I used, but if it doesn’t work it’s “Laughing Together” on Academic Search Premier http://search.ebscohost.com.libproxy.furman.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=66469859&site=ehost-live) It’s basically a focus group that watches sitcoms with and without a laugh track and then talks about what their perception of the laugh track is.  Essentially, they were all fairly aware of the laugh track in watching the show, and all but two really disliked the laugh track believing it was almost condescending, telling them when to laugh. And yet, the average sitcom still feels the need to use it, and those shows are still popular. As much as people don’t like the laugh track in theory, they in practice, it doesn’t seem as though they mind it all that much.  If anything, it seems to really help shows reach the mainstream.  

Why is that though? Everyone seems so opposed to it, but at least on some level, they must like or rely on it. Two of the people in the study openly liked it. One of them said it turned it into a group experience which I found interesting.  Humans are social creatures so it would make sense that the impression of having multiple people there would make a difference.  It’s sort of similar to the screens in Fahrenheit 451 which served the purpose of giving the feeling of being surrounded by other people, providing a sense of society without being social.  On the other hand though, another person in the group argued that it served simply as a cue to the jokes.  It’s like someone walking you through the humor.  Though this is precisely why some don’t like it, maybe they still rely on and appreciate it. Lots of other shows that don't use a laugh track still will have some way of pointing moments of comedy out with moments of silence as characters in the show react or with complete breaks from the scene in shows like Modern Family or the Office with the interviews or the narrator in Arrested Development. It's a function that producers really seem to find necessary.

The Whitest Last Paragraph U'Know (anyone know why it does this, I can't fix it)

A joke is a joke, but you should never underestimate the comedic power of the reaction.  It can be used to enhance the humor already employed. Incongruity is enhanced by other people reacting to it.  One of the classic YouTube accounts of our era (aka like middle school), The Whitest Kids U’Know base a lot of their comedy in creating these bizarre situations and then having someone else present, not a part of the craziness, but just bearing witness.  The best way to explain it is through example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqgiEQXGetI

That scene is a perfect example of the first usage.  Having a person reacting to an incongruity to provide an avatar for the viewers frustrations and give the incongruous situation or oblivious person someone to bounce their incoherent thoughts off of.  In this case we have a man pitching his idea for a soda commercial to a board of executives.  His idea for “the Grapist” character is of course ridiculous, and watching a full grown man in a grape costume chasing kids around isn’t what you’d expect from a commercial marketing a children’s beverage. But then having to watch the man try to justify his choice extends the scene, giving us the chance to revel in the incongruity.  Of course he is completely oblivious to the main problem. The only one of the executives really seems to be seeing what's wrong with that scenario.  He struggles to try and get the others to see what's wrong.  He’s a voice of reason that highlights everything wrong with what’s happening.  Somehow he’s the crazy one and gets called out for seeing such inappropriate things in the harmless commercial. His crisis as he eventually approves the commercial can be just as funny as the commercial itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFUvmZWf4hI

This video takes a different approach to the reactions, here we have a man who also has some serious problems with the story he’s being told, but just out of social pressure, he’s trying his best not to react in the way one should.  It’s an everyday scenario, two old college friends see each other out in public and catch up a little bit. However, here, one of them is holding a gallon of PCP.  That comes as a bit of a shock to the other. He does his best not to show it though, but his panic continues to grow as the story continues. He’s just too polite and never actually addresses that concern. It’s still a lot like the last video, though. He is able to raise questions about all of the absurdities of the story leading people to where the jokes are.  In my case, it didn’t even register at the time that PCP wouldn’t be liquid until he brought it up. We just get to watch him squirm in this situation, trying to get through the interaction without freaking out, while still being sickened but curious.  Just to add insult to this, the other guy has a good job and is more successful.

Whitest Kids U’Know really seem to have a formula of their own.  They create a ridiculous scenario, usually from an everyday interaction, and then insert one sane person to deal with it all.  Their isolation frustrates them which is funny in its own right, but it's also used to highlight the insanity around them.  They’re the benchmark for crazy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwj3efLxbc

This scene gives us the opposite scenario, instead having everyone just sort of accept the incongruity.  Here, we’re the sane one, left out, questioning what’s going on . First we watch the teacher torment that poor kid whose mother died, with the rest of the kids playing along. Then we watch the other kid celebrate when he finds out he doesn’t have any parents. Neither of these seem like the right reaction in the scenario.  No one reacts that way, though.  The kid just gets to go wild. When one man asks him why he’s hitting a building with a hammer and he responds because his parents are dead the man is like, “curses he’s right”. It escalates the scenarios each time with reactions seeming more and more wrong. It’s frustrating, but at the same time it’s funny because it’s so ridiculous. As soon as his parents die no rules apply to this kid, even apparently those of space and time.

I Don't Make the Comedy, I Just Know It

I believe I am in the minority here, but I didn’t enjoy either of these sketches all that much.  That could be largely because they’ve already been done.  Abbott and Costello did them first but I’m seeing them do it second. The baseball scene was copied for the Kids in the Hall sketch, “McCillicutty and Green.” It was, of course, killed by this scene. Having the joke cannibalized for the sake of that scene crushed any amount of humor in that joke.  Being a mathlete back in middle school I was exposed to the same sort of tricks as in the second video a lot. I had a teacher who always did it to stump the students, but I had her for four different classes, so it got old.

Following a formula for comedy doesn’t sound good. This class has shown us it's hard to boil it down into anything so simple.  I think there is a general framework to sketches.  Introduce a scenario, usually a weird one or one that is slightly incongruous. Build upon that idea with examples, usually three, the golden number of comedy.  To end it, wrap up with one final joke  that ties back to a joke or comment previously made in the sketch.  That’s the formula that seems to work. SNL especially can be seen following this pattern in its skits, like “Jeopardy” that typically only goes through like three questions before Alex Trebek loses control, or .  One of my favorites, “Meet Your Second Wife”, also does this. https://youtu.be/MJEAGd1bQuc  It starts with a ridiculous concept for a game show, gives three contestants with increasingly young wives (though the third one trips us up by starting with the older woman), and then wraps it up by giving everyone a new kayak, expanding on what would lead to the second contestant's wife's death.

While some don’t like this rigid, predictable structure, I think it can have benefits.  The three examples are enough to establish a pattern, with the third one either taking the pattern farther, or completely breaking from it to create incongruity.  Then the joke at the end leaves them laughing, and the reference to a previous portion of the sketch just leaves them laughing harder as another layer is added to what was already funny.  As I blogged about earlier with the “Debbie Downer” sketch. Being able to expect a joke, anticipating it and then having that realized is an effective comedic device.  Whether the audience gets exactly what they’re looking for or a slight spin on it, they’re still delighted by a character’s compulsion or a remarkable coincidence.

To summarize repeating a joke is disappointing. Even if the audience does find it funny again, it’s rarely as funny as it was the first time. However, following a similar structure doesn’t repeat the jokes, it just delivers the jokes in a familiar, easily understood way.

Why did the Maya Rudolph cross the road?

This is one of the most infamous clips in the entire movie.  I find it extremely funny.  I think I'm able to do this because the movie never actually confronts us with the poop itself, just a little throw up.  What we are treated to is the characters pain and struggle as they sweat it out in the bathroom. They try to keep it together as best they can but they all fall apart. All the while the real mess is safely concealed under lots of fabric.
One of the best parts of this scene, though, is the contrast between the two settings of this scene. There is the refined dress shop, filled with dangerously white carpet. The bathroom itself is just as refined, but the scene inside of it quickly devolves.  The movie cuts between the two of them making the humor in either even funnier. The bathroom is full of women screaming at each other as they destroy it. It's loud and chaotic. Outside, in the store, Annie is doing her best to maintain composure and Helen, who didn't eat the meat, is completely fine. We laugh as Helen torments the sweaty Annie by talking about her distress and even getting her to eat.  The two of them are basically whispering with refined piano music playing in the background.  It's quiet and sophisticated.  Going from the quiet of the store makes the turmoil of the bathroom more jarring.  Then going from that back to Annie's quiet suffering makes it more fun to watch the pain in her eye.
I don't believe trying to relate Mr. Hankey to the Bridesmaids scene would really work.  Their humor is different, they're mainly just tied together by the presence of poop.  Mr. Hankey is about this crazy character and what he represents.  South Park makes him a Santa like character. On the other hand, Bridesmaids focuses more on the behavior of the characters as they perform this normal act, taken to an extreme by the questionable Brazilian food. Poop humor is a thing, but not all humor involving poop is necessarily poop humor.

Was Feline AIDs Ever Not Funny Though?

The question posed was how long it takes for something tragic to become funny. The answer, 22.3 years.  At least that’s what they say on the show South Park.  The episode “Jared has Aides” focuses on this quandary as the people of South Park are finally able to laugh at AIDs. At least they laughed at the miscommunication in which everyone thought Jared Fogle wanted to give children AIDs, which is made so much worse with the more recent allegations, while only wanting to pay for them to have aides.  The show is focusing on the way that people, including the writers of the show, will eventually encroach on sensitive territory as people as a whole care less or have less emotion tied to these events.  

In honesty, I think it has to do with the distance someone has from an event and their ability to dehumanize the subject.  JFK and Lincoln assassination jokes are able to be funny because we don’t have much of a tie to these people or their families.  They are these figures well into the past we don’t really think of their personal lives or families. In the same vein, it takes some very dark people to make jokes about the murder of someone on the news.  This is a very person and people sympathize with them or their family.  Celebrities are different because they have become these icons.  With the 9/11 jokes, we are separated by minimal time, but for many people it is again this separate thing from their lives.  It is a historical event. There isn’t this clear face that people are sympathizing with. To extend this, I doubt someone who’s father died in 9/11 is going to find such humor very humorous. To them, it is a very real thing wrapped up in some real emotions. On the flip side, when something is small, it's often funnier when it is someone close to you. When you find security footage of a friend walking into and shattering a glass door it is much funnier than seeing that same video of a stranger. Its related to the Benign Violation Theory. When the situation is mroe removed from you, to you it seems more Benign. However, when it isn't to extreme of a violation its more rewarding to be able to put a person with the dumb mistake or small misfortune.

https://www.booster.com/giffordcatshelterfiv

Breaking character can make or break a skit.  In the case of Debbie downer, it definitely enhanced the sketch. There are other sketches with Debbie Downer where they do a slightly better job keeping it together. These are still funny and weird.  This sketch was written to exploit Debbie's compulsion to spout off such negative facts and topics. Her theme song sets the sketch up as making fun of her as an archetype. The way she sticks out at any social gathering they place her in, whether a family trip, thanksgiving, or a proposal, and always has a “fun fact” to share killing the mood and throwing off everyone else present is what defines her character. The use of the cliched sad trombone helps signal the audience that her sadness is itself the joke. It’s even better knowing that everything she says is completely true. Watching the whole cast struggle so much is funny in a separate way. Rachel Dratch especially looks like she is in actual pain trying to hold things in. We laugh at their failure knowing full well that we would be know better.

One of my favorite parts of Debbie Downer skits is the mention of feline AIDs.  We don’t get Debbie actually talking about it, only someone else complaining about her having mentioned it. Without fail she always responds “It’s the number one killer of domestic cats.”  It has become as much a part of her neurosis as every other morbid thing she says.  One expects to hear it, but they can never be quite sure when it’s coming, but when it comes out, you laugh at the familiarity. There’s almost a relief of tension. Recurring jokes across different episodes allow you to laugh at its specific usage, but also its general usage. In this case you laugh at Debbie exposing some poor girl at Disneyland to the world of feline AIDs, but just as much you laugh at Debbie’s preoccupation with feline AIDs.

The part that gets me every time, though, is the comment at the end.  After the skit has wrapped up and you’ve heard the last joke, as you’re still holding your sides recovering, she gets you one last time. In this case it’s “they never did catch that anthrax guy.” It’s that final kick while you're down. It's such an unsettling thought, but with the context, having already spent six minutes laughing at her extreme pessimism, it becomes a hilarious cherry on top.

This Quickly Turned into a Jimmy Fallon Hate Rant, but We Got it Back on Track... Mostly

Its interesting what does and doesn’t have the capacity to become a meme. It's not an exact science, and without really looking it seems entirely random, as the humor involved itself is often very random. Something has to reach and appeal to a pretty big group for it to become the cultural phenomenon. The example of Drake’s dance is perfect.  It already had a massive audience when he put it in his music video. Someone, or a number of people, saw the dance, thought it was funny, and isolated that section, exposing it to even more people. To really become a meme though, something has to be malleable and be able to be applied in other ways creating more jokes, such as in him throwing pokeballs, or at the end of its life cycle in a T-mobile commercial. The “world village” is what makes memes possible as things are able to spread quickly around the world, elsewise by the time it reached somewhere else, the humor would have passed.

It’s difficult to force virality. The reason anyone can be successful with it is the mere volume with which such things are pumped out. When I saw Jimmy Fallon as I read through this blog post, I couldn’t help but groan. I have never cared for him.  He remains to this day, my least favorite SNL cast member. All of his supposed best moments are of him breaking character and laughing.  His lack of professionalism was a novelty at first, but it got old as he even became a distraction in other people’s skits.  One might ask why this isn’t funny but Stefon, a skit intended to make Bill Hader break character is. That could stem from the fact that it's rare for Bill Hader to ever break, making it better when he does, whereas Fallon breaks so frequently. It’s so over the top and out there that it's almost like a fun test, to see him set up for failure. Fallon breaks at almost nothing, as seen is this video where he doesn’t make it 5 seconds into an unfunny song. (http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/holiday-treat-for-all/n11532). The problem with then giving him his own show, is that’s all he does still. He can’t stop laughing at himself in his monologues, interviews, sketches, or games. He acts childish, he appeals by trying to be the cute one, all in awe of his guests, giggling, jumping, and clapping with them. It appeals to some, allowing him to be successful.  His segments are short and simple, allowing them to succeed on the internet as standalone clips. When you go to Fallon’s youtube page, the interviews aren’t even kept together. They are divided into short clips by their topic, though this is also to boost his views.  It’s safe. Jimmy Fallon is the mild salsa of television. No one is upset by him, but it can just leave you wanting more, or significantly less.

Watching Jimmy Fallon like...

How I watch Jimmy Fallon

Don't Kick Her Sharkeisha

I would summarize my middle school experience with World Star Hip-Hop. These videos hit very close to home. I was constantly being shown videos from the sight and the “live action” versions were fairly frequent. Shamefully enough, I even had a friend on it once.  Every time there was a fight, kids would rush to the scene leaving class to see the spectacle. By the school rules, you could receive a referral for watching a fight, but it was never enforced because they’d have to give them out by the dozen. A lot of it, though, I think has to just do with the spectacle of it all. It’s two people going wild, giving into emotion and attacking each other. In a sense, you can feel superior, having kept a cool head. Still, that can’t be applied to every situation. Many of the fights that were planned ahead of time. These spars were still heavily attended, in spite of being scheduled well in advance. You see someone getting the mess kicked out of them and think “glad that's not me.” The relief felt is released in laughter.  

However, I think this mainly applies to these school fights. We all knew there wasn’t really going to be too much of a risk.  With some very notable exceptions, things never really got too out of hand or even had the chance.  The resource officer would be on the scene soon to break it off before anyone could get the other pinned, á la Sharkeisha. At the very least it was two consenting parties. It was a short diversion from the dullness of class.  Maybe Sharkeisha gives me nostalgia. In other situations, one might feel compelled to act to prevent things from going too far.  One may be able to laugh because there isn’t anything they can do. That’s a big part of the vine culture. You’re removal from the instance allows you to laugh.  There’s nothing you can do about it now. It’s like when people say to vegetarians, the cow’s already dead (though there’s usually a little more to it for vegetarians).  

Sharkeisha is a different story. It wasn’t a fight, it was an assault. The other girl was looking away holding her backpack and phone/iPod when Sharkeisha sucker punched her. The danger really lies in the celebrity that Sharkeisha became. People began glorifying the actions of beating a girl like that. The victim now has to live with getting beaten and then being treated as a punchline (pun very much intended) rather than a victim.

I Never Watched the Movie So I Can't Really Think of a Creative Title

In scenes like the one from the Hangover, the line between something being funny and cruel is a little fuzzy, and it varies from person to person. A person's tolerance for this kind of thing has a lot to do with their place in life or how they were brought up. But what I think is a pretty universal dividing line is the point at which someone being stupid and inflicting pain on themselves becomes something more permanent. Watching someone hurt themselves is funny, but watching someone cripple themselves is cringe inducing. In this scene, the audience knows the characters are all safe. There’s still too much time left in the movie to lose any more characters. Tasers can certainly cause some long term damage but these people likely aren’t at any real risk.

This line between stupidity leading to momentary pain and enduring pain is why I genuinely cannot watch the show tosh.0. There was a video of a guy who fell and his bones were sticking out of his shins. Some people(or sadists if you will) might like seeing things taken that far. Others might just laugh because they don’t know what else to do, in shock. The average person though, isn’t going to enjoy someone getting maimed. That’s why the show has its niche carved out on Comedy Central.  Compare this to a show like America’s Funniest Home Videos, where people hurting themselves is limited to people falling, getting dropped, or hit in much less harmful ways. They’re going to have a bruise, but no long term trauma. It could even be a relatability thing to some people. You think, “I’ve done that. Thank goodness there wasn’t a camera then.” You laugh, and you see them laughing at themselves from the audience. It's more good natured. Its more universal allowing to have stayed on the air since 1990, though it has suffered a recent drop in it’s syndication with the rise of the Internet and insufferability of Tom Bergeron. On a related note, it is still on and for some reason Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is the host, which might itself be a lesson on the incongruity theory.

I think what works in that scene is less the violence itself, and more the entire scenario. There was so much wrong with that scene if you compare it to how things work in the real world. 1) They brought a bunch of strange men into a school with children, specifically three men who had just been caught for a crime. 2) They Tasered them in front of a bunch of children which could very easily have led to some scarring and distrust towards the police. 3) They then allowed the kids to use the Taser. Luckily they didn’t pick a kid who would try and Taser a classmate. The incongruity between this scenario and the real world is funny in its own way. Whether or not something is funny to someone can vary, but also so can why it is funny to them.

This Response Post is Going to be Legen- wait for it...

     The rule of three is very common across the different areas of study.  It is especially common in english, where groups of three are seen consistently. There are the three bears, little pigs, and billy goats gruff. Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by three spirits. Its seen as the minimum needed to establish a pattern and is short enough to be memorable.  In math you're taught to graph using three points to establish a trend. It even appears in law and the arts in a similar manner.
     What makes it different in comedy is that the first two typically establish some kind of pattern for the third one to break in some unexpected way as to produce laughter. Its like an extension of the incongruity theory.  Where the first and second examples are setting an expectation for the last one to let down. The rule of three might not seem entirely necessary in many examples as the third is incongruous on its own. Barney simply saying "a hug is like a public dry hump" is certainly not something the average person would say making it incongruous in that sense. However, Robin's two examples before that set up a benign aside about how to end an encounter with an ex, making Barney's statement stick out even more.
     Barney himself is a very strong example of another trend in comedies, main characters that are pretty bad people. His character is defined by having sex with women under false pretenses, behaving like a spoiled child, and putting any chance with women over his own friends. Thats what makes him funny to the audience. The rest of the people on that show have unsettling flaws of their own.  Maybe its an incongruity thing with them acting contrary to what it socially acceptable. On the other hand it also links to the superiority theory.  We think we know better than these people so we laugh at how shallow or broken they are. The relief theory could have a hand in it just as well.  We laugh because we see people acting in ways that we ourselves might if it weren't so discouraged by society. Its a cathartic thing.  Either way, you see it in almost every show from How I Met Your Mother to Friends to Always Sunny in Philadelphia, going back to Seinfeld and even further back to shows like the Honeymooners. It seems as old as the comedy itself.
 Speaking of catharsis...

-Dary

Please let this be a normal blogpost. With the Frizz? No Way

https://youtu.be/HYNoFwLFqXM

Comedy is a difficult thing to distill into a single unified theory. Laughter is a human experience, but its cause can’t be explained as easily as why one sneezes. The reasons a person could be laughing vary widely and what makes one person laugh doesn’t work for everyone. The superiority theory has its merits. It's common to laugh at other people’s expense, at what makes them inferior, but it isn’t a very consistent one.  Other people’s inferiority might just make one feel proud or smug, or on the other hand pity. Incongruity, to me, is the most consistent.  The above clip functions because of the incongruity of what it was and what it is. The Magic School Bus is a show many of us grew up watching. Whether or not we’ve seen that specific episode, we have our expectations of how the show functions.  When Keisha chimes in, it catches you off guard.  You perceive that line of dialogue as completely wrong and out of place, but it still works in the scene.  The decision to leave the rest of the dialogue unchanged sharpens the contrast as the other characters are completely unfazed to what was a pretty blunt thing to say.  We see this incongruity but the characters don’t. Still the incongruity theory isn’t foolproof. Many instances of incongruity aren’t funny or are even just annoying. Take a look at about any recent children's cartoon to see this. The new Teen Titans series attempts to create this effect by making a comedy about a well established team of superheroes. However, the odd pair makes for a confusing show with jokes that are overreaching or are just not really jokes at all. Instead the pairing must be unexpected, but still be somehow related and creative.

The Bluth Disconnect

Arrested Developement is the story of a wealthy family filled with some terrible people.  The story follows the middle son as he tries to hold the family together after the father is arrested for various illegal activities.  All of the characters are so incredibly self involved that they know almost nothing about each other's lives or the real world.  The following scene shows the mother Lucille talking on the phone driving when someone pulls out in front of her and the choice words they have for each other.
https://youtu.be/SkpeB7etL9A
 What really makes this scene special is the fact that later on it is revealed that the other driver is her husband who is on the run from the authorities.  Its very ironic, considering the fact that she was talking about how much she missed him on the phone. The superiority theory functions in that our laughter is to deride others.  We feel superior due to some shortcoming of a character.  The "failing or defect" we see in this scene is how disconnected the Bluth parents are.(Monro)  Lucille speaks highly of her husband now that he's missing, though she does next to nothing to find him.  Her husband George isn't much better, escaping prison and doing nothing to contact his family in his own self interest. One can also feel superior because of their uncivil exchange. They are both quick to respond in pretty targeted ways to each other. The incongruity theory is what I believe holds the real key to this scene.  It suggests that humor comes from the "abrupt intrusion into the attitude of something."(Monro) In other words, it takes something we have expectations about and will take a sharp turn from that in an unexpected but enjoyable way.  Lucille's entire character consists of this.  One would expect her to play the part of the loving mother and wife, which she seems to think she does.  However, though unknowingly, she and her husband have such an interaction. Through this moment we have now received new insights into Lucille's character.