Post Comedic Stress Disorder
What is it with Canadian shows like The Rick Mercer Report and Popcultured?
They’re not the only culprits but they shall stand as exemplars. And to be clear, I am definitely not including Corner Gas in this group. Good old Corner Gas.
Simply put, if you have three minutes to fill and you need say twenty jokes, you don’t just write the twenty jokes.
It’s standard theory that you write fifty or sixty jokes and then pick the best twenty. Look it up, it’s been that way since the 15th Century, although there are enigmatic references in Saint Augustine, not the one in Florida. Hold da Vinci up to a mirror, you’ll see.
I’d been waiting for The Rick Mercer Report to premiere and when it did, about five minutes into it I just flipped the channel.
Now, Popcultured apparently wants to be the Canadian Daily Show, but it suffers the same problem. Sometimes it comes across as the result of a bunch of high school buddies sitting around stoned on cheap weed laughing like hell at the first twenty jokes that come out of their mouths. “Oh, man! I hope I remember this tomorrow!”
Shemp is hemp backwards, indeed.
Popcultured’s only true emulation of American television is the perpetuation of the tradition of Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen De Generes as lesbian comperes.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I suppose I should point out, in all fairness, that you can also steal other people’s jokes that you know work, if you can’t come up with fifty or sixty of your own.