I actually have an appropriate tag for this already.
In The New York Times, an article about how sitcoms are dwindling because writers are finding it harder and harder to find shocking material in an age of reality shows and fewer taboos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/arts/television/21stan.html?ref=television
I'm not quite in the right frame of mind to write much about this, so perhaps I'll have to come back to it, but a couple of things. 1) This article focuses heavily on the embarrassment that can stem from the body, but that's by no means the only source of embarrassment.
2) I don't really find embarrassment funny anyway (I'm far more likely to cringe or feel sympathy), so I'm not really sure why sitcoms should be trying to compete on reality TV's turf.
3) Ludicrous =/= embarrassing. Since I'm using my Much Ado icon, one of the funniest scenes in Branagh's film, to me, is the scene in which Benedick is attempting to overhear the conversation between Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato without being discovered, while they, of course, know he's back there. (It's also one of the few moments during which I like Claudio, due to the completely over-the-top way Robert Sean Leonard plays his lines and then looks at the others as if to say, "what do you think?") It's absolutely ludicrous, based on one of those wonderful misunderstandings you can get so much mileage out of in comedy, and not particularly embarrassing at all.
4) Um, hi, verbal humor? This doesn't have to be puns or other sorts of wordplay (though there should be more wordplay, as I think it is both funny and sexy, in the right hands); Barney's catchphrases in How I Met Your Mother make me giggle too (okay, so some of them involve puns).
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/arts/television/21stan.html?ref=television
I'm not quite in the right frame of mind to write much about this, so perhaps I'll have to come back to it, but a couple of things. 1) This article focuses heavily on the embarrassment that can stem from the body, but that's by no means the only source of embarrassment.
2) I don't really find embarrassment funny anyway (I'm far more likely to cringe or feel sympathy), so I'm not really sure why sitcoms should be trying to compete on reality TV's turf.
3) Ludicrous =/= embarrassing. Since I'm using my Much Ado icon, one of the funniest scenes in Branagh's film, to me, is the scene in which Benedick is attempting to overhear the conversation between Don Pedro, Claudio, and Leonato without being discovered, while they, of course, know he's back there. (It's also one of the few moments during which I like Claudio, due to the completely over-the-top way Robert Sean Leonard plays his lines and then looks at the others as if to say, "what do you think?") It's absolutely ludicrous, based on one of those wonderful misunderstandings you can get so much mileage out of in comedy, and not particularly embarrassing at all.
4) Um, hi, verbal humor? This doesn't have to be puns or other sorts of wordplay (though there should be more wordplay, as I think it is both funny and sexy, in the right hands); Barney's catchphrases in How I Met Your Mother make me giggle too (okay, so some of them involve puns).