spatch

David Cross tells stories. They aren't always funny, but I think that's kind of reminiscent of Bill Cosby, too - people don't tend to remember the vast ocean of duds that Bill's gems are swimming in. He's had a long career on stage and the best years of it have been distilled into probably a couple records' worth of classics. His propensity for meandering improv resulted in a lot of klunkers, though. I'm sure a lot of them aren't preserved in any fashion, but even if you go to Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow, Right, which was a greatest hits itself, there's the bit Hoof & Mouth. It's terrible! He's audibly spinning it out and it has no punchline and if he didn't know by the end of it that it was a non-starter, then he paid too much attention to the generous audience.

I think that also mirrors what's always been wrong with sitcoms - everything that's still wrong with them now. We just excise the chaff from our memories and take home DVD sets of the ones that we thought were pretty darn clever. And okay as far as I know no-one has made a pretty darn clever one since Sports Night and that was a checkered affair at best anyway, but I don't think that what sucks about the sitcoms on now hasn't always been what sucked about sitcoms.

I think it's strange to call humour that's more incidental and less intrinsic to the action "deeper". It's just more restrained. Staying quiet to appear deep is the oldest trick in the book, but it's not like when CJ cracks up and says "I just remembered something funny about the deficit!" in The West Wing it's a joke that really makes you think or expresses something profound... it's just a genuinely hilarious moment that isn't wedged in between a zillion crappy jokes about how fat people sure do love to eat and men are very stupid.