All conversations are uncomfortable for me. I think this is why I don’t find most comedy sketches funny. The comic part of the sketch is nearly always somebody getting something wrong, and then the awkwardness of maneuvering around that misunderstanding. Like the dog turd in the middle of the living room floor that everyone is too afraid to mention. This sketch structure is basically every single episode of Three’s Company, a show I was forced to watch with the family, all of whom found it uproariously funny. There were other shows back in the day, back when entertainment was three broadcast channels or a trip to the library. Any number of situation comedies that weren’t funny because they made fun of awkwardness directly, and so I didn’t watch them. Between Two Ferns is the latest awkward thing that isn’t funny to me. Not funny because that is every single conversation I’ve ever been a part of, for my entire life.
Not until The Big Bang Theory did I find a show that was both awkward and humorous, mostly because it made fun of normal people (represented in the person of Penny) people who just can’t grasp the truly geeky nature of the wonder of science. Every episode of the show is immensely funny for me. The geekier the better. Awkward is what Leonard Hofstadter is all the time, and it works. It gives me hope as well as makes me laugh.
The one exception to this situation, the one time conversation isn’t awkward for me, is when I’m talking alone with the Wife. I know she will be straight with me, and I with her. I don’t have to wonder about what is the right thing to say? I just say what is on my mind, and she does the same thing. No other conversations are absent the discomfort of awkwardness. How can something that is always present be funny? I wonder how many comics are tormented by this, only worse? Having to do the same schtick over and over and you hate it? I’m just being me, and it isn’t funny being me. It’s just being me.
The Between Two Ferns movie is out now. I will be as far away from that movie as I can get from this point onward. I hope that Zach Galifianakis makes a boatload of money from the movie so that he can finally stop doing the shtick and find something else to do that he really enjoys.
