I am not going to lie to you; I have spent today watching Drake and Josh. What started as an innocent nostalgia (harping back to simpler times, when Rose and I would watch Nikelodeon on a weekend and laugh ourselves senseless) turned into an actual comedy fest. I say comedy fest because, and again there's little point in lying, I found the whole thing hilarious.
This isn't usual you see. I remember in days of old I would watch Sister Sister or Kenan and Kel with my sisters (other good examples of shows built around a double act of contrasting characters) When we decided to youtube said shows in later years to remind ourselves of our childhood, it amazed me how unamused I was. What was often more funny than the shows themselves was the memories of the amusement I felt at the time that I watched them.
Take for instance the renown and oft quoted old favourite 'I...PUT THE SCREW...IN THE TUNA...!' The way Kel dramatically confesses this to the courtroom continously should have me rolling around the room myself (figuratively!) but instead I merely manage a smile as I remember the moment I first saw this scene.
Today, on the other hand, I didn't seem to find the way Josh repeats words for emphasis (emphasis!) old and beyond me. I didn't find Drake's narcissism tiresome. And most importantly of all, I didn't find the comedy too 'simplistic' (I hasten to use this word, but my sense of humour has being described this way before!)
After some consideration of this it hit me. I mean, I realised why I was so amused, in fact, why I was actualy laughing out loud. It is simply because slapstick is funny. That is the end of that. Let me give you an example...The IT Crowd, season 1, 'Calamity Jen' (is it episode 2?) oh anyway, the one where there is a FIRE (EXCLAMATION MARK) Somehow Roy, Moss and Jen all end up collapsiing on the floor at the end of it. Moss' fall perhaps being the most comical as the firemen burst through the door which he is about to leave, causing him to fall backwards in one clean motion. I laughed my head off when I saw that.
Yes, slapstick is still funny. It's not the fact that Drake puts his head into the aquariam to rid his mouth of the hot chilli sauce that Megan put into his dinner (or whatever it was) it was the way he dunked half of his body in, his legs sprawling around. It wasn't that Josh and Drake were in a physical fight, it was more that the flailing around was clumsy and resembled more of a cat fight than anything else. It wasn't that there was a snake climbing up Josh's trouser leg, more the way he jerked around as though electrocuted.
I don't care what makes me laugh anyway, as long as I am laughing, but, just for the record, you can't beat some all-american twenty-somethings cast as teenagers rolling around on the floor shooting out one liners.
