Podcast Reaction: The Pitch-A-Revamp Edition

Frank Drebin is on the case!

This week on the podcast, the Gabbing Geeks celebrated Watson’s 40th birthday by having Jenny use a faulty mic, so it sounded like Watson was senile and talking to voices in his head.  That was amusing as technical errors went.

But then they pitched some revamped old projects, like the Munsters and Flash Gordon, despite some attempts to actually revamp both of them as Mockingbird Lane (look it up) and an awful Scy-Fy channel show, also known as any Scy-Fy channel show that wasn’t Farscape or BSG.

I have an idea of my own for this.

Punching Up Instead Of Down: The Art Of Finding The Proper Victim In Comedy

At some point in this movie, Seth Rogen maybe wishes he didn’t anger the American Sniper crowd.

My wife and I watched The Interview off Netflix recently.  It was funny in some places, not so much in others, but it got me to thinking about why it is considered acceptable to mock some figures in comedy and not others.  The basic idea is, it is OK to “punch up” and not to “punch down”.

To be clear, this has nothing to do with free speech rights or anything along those lines.  It simply has to do with what is and is not funny.  That’s highly subjective at the best of times for any number of people.  So, to make things as clear as possible, these are my thoughts on what is and isn’t funny, and that is not to stop anyone from making jokes at the expense of anyone anywhere.

Also, there’s going to be some MASSIVE SPOILERS below the cut for The Interview, so you’ve been warned.