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September 5th, 2008Featured, Friends of the Blog, On WritingFriend of the Blog David sends in a great example of what we were discussing last time — the Bad Joke Joke.
This is from an episode (“Beers and Weirs”) of Freaks and Geeks. In the scene, Neal distracts Lindsay while Sam and Bill swap out her alcoholic beer for non-alcoholic:
NEAL
So, what kind of music are you gonna play tonight? You should play some Chicago. They have a really hot horn section.LINDSAY
I don’t know. I think I’m gonna play some Zeppelin, Foghat, maybe some Sabbath.NEAL
Friday night — always a good night for some Sabbath.
(off her puzzled look)
‘Cause Friday night . . . is the Sabbath . . . for the Jews.Heh. Now that’s a good bad joke. It totally comes out of character and out of the relationship between the two characters. And it has that magical quality of being funny at the same time as we understand why it’s not a big laugh-getter. A great example against which to measure other examples of this difficult genre.
Lunch: noodles, sushi, canned tonic water