I don’t mean that the joke just isn’t funny, I want to know a joke that almost makes you want to fast-forward through the scene.
I think Married With Children has managed to come through unscathed because of Ed O’Neil and who he is as a person. He’s so much the opposite of Al Bundy and has always been very open about that. The show as a result falls into that same category as South Park or All in the Family; We understand that the jokes are meant to be satire via absurdity; It’s so over the top and the actor is so different in real life that we just get it.
Compare that to something like Home Improvement, where we know that the humour isn’t meant to be absurdist, and we know that Tim Allen really is a douche.
This is why I avoid watching all commercials in America which inevitably take this trope to the extreme every chance they get. Usually referring to the man who is a doddering incompetent who must be ordered out of his “man cave” to perform some sort of yard or mechanical chore to prove his worth.
I feel like the cursed inverse of this is The Orville, where they’re divorced and then drama and jokes about being divorced is half the show. It was in what I saw of season 1 anyway, it was so relentless I couldn’t stand another minute of it.
If you can stand a bit more, the show does become a lot more than what those first few episodes imply.
