Favourite Joke/Gag

[on:]

Apologies if there is already an existing topic about this (I searched and couldn't find anything), but what is your favourite joke/gag/funny scene in the entire series? Perhaps you have more than one?

Mine has to be Roberto demanding the bank teller to tear the pen so most of the beads are on his end. Probably an odd choice, but there's something about it that really makes me laugh.

[Reply #1 on:]

Apologies if there is already an existing topic about this (I searched and couldn't find anything)

There are lots of similar topics to this, Danny.

This thread isn't specifically about favourites, but is where "greatest joke" and "favourite joke" threads have been redirected in the past.

There's a favourite background joke thread.

There's a favourite quote thread.

This "best science joke" thread has been around for a while.

Subtle jokes.

Computer-related jokes.

Fridge jokes.

Funniest moments.

That's just a selection from the search I ran. Still, perhaps you'll get lucky and no moderators will happen by for a while.

[Reply #2 on:]

Ah, never mind.

Mods, you can shut this thread down.

[Reply #3 on:]

I've continued discussion here.

Also, do the mods even patrol the on-topic area anymore? I don't think I've seen any for a while.

[Reply #4 on:]

I hope they read my sign post.

[Reply #5 on:]

Don't have a favorite, but "Everybody was doing it, I just wanted to be popular" is pretty funny.

[Reply #6 on:]

There are so many great lines in the show. One that I actually got to use in real life (but Futurama related) the other day was something Heather said in Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurdles, "Sir, it's not necessary or wise to be naked"

[Reply #7 on:]

Anything with the Crushinator.  I wish she was in more.

"Of course not!  A lady that fine you gotta romance first!"

[Reply #8 on:]

'Iffy pop' is darn near perfect, I think, though it's more of a general-purpose joke.

George Takei clarifying that the rum was 'both spiced and regular' tickles my funny bone.

The line 'heart full of neutrality' is good, too...

[Reply #9 on:]

I’ve been noodling on this one for a while, and I think in general my favorite jokes—the ones that feel distinctly Futurama-y to me—are the ones that are sort of, for lack of a better term, linguistically interesting. Not wordplay, per se, but oxymoronic or almost like a brainteaser, something that makes you do a small double-take. I’m thinking of lines like “Bender’s name isn’t Bonder, it’s Bender!” and “This opera is as lousy as it is brilliant!” (And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that those lines are both from Ken Keeler episodes.)

Similarly, I’m also very, very fond of lines that are sort of schematic and transparently expositional, where the schematic/expositional aspect is the actual joke. “I’m gonna die—that’s the opposite of what I want!” from “Lethal Inspection” is a good example of this (and, from that same episode, the pedantic exchange about being a stone’s throw from Tijuana).

It’s possible that what I’m saying here is that my favorite jokes are actually ones that seem kind of dumb or half-assed, but I would argue that there’s an art to doing them well. To take another Ken Keeler episode as an example, from “The Prisoner of Benda,” I think the banter between Amy and Farnsworth (“Can I still change my mind?”/“Let’s find out.”) is really bad. I’m also not in love with the “Howitzer” gag from “Lethal Inspection.” Things that err too much on the punny side of things, or that are executed too winkingly or self-consciously or in a self-congratulatory way, are decidedly not my bag.

[Reply #10 on:]

Well, getting the brain out was the easy part. The hard part was getting the brain out.

[Reply #11 on:]

There's a dam!

Damn.

There's a grate!

Great!

[Reply #12 on:]

Oof, that “joke” pains me so. See, that’s an example of an objectively corny joke that seems a bit too proud of itself and therefore loses any minimal charm it might have possessed. The “getting the brain out” joke is borderline to me, too, though in that case it’s harder for me to articulate why. I think it has traces of that winking quality that I so despise—like, it has the cadence of a joke, a malapropism, when what I actually prefer are lines that are a bit more plainspoken and unadorned, where you can almost see the gears of the character’s mind turning (and perhaps malfunctioning) as they say it.

I know I’m not making much sense. The best example of this I can think of is actually from The Simpsons—and, perhaps significantly, from the era in which DXC and Ken Keeler were writers on the show. It’s this exchange between Bart and Lisa from “The Secret War of Lisa Simpson”:

Lisa: Maybe everyone would be better off if I just quit.
Bart: But if you quit, it’d be like an expert knot-tier quitting a knot-tying contest right in the middle of tying a knot!
Lisa: Why’d you say that?
Bart: I don’t know, I was just looking at my shoelaces.

Like, this is perhaps the perfect distillation of my sense of humor, my platonic ideal of a good joke. You have the clunky analogy from Bart, which is amusing enough, but then Lisa picking at the weirdness of it and Bart admitting where it came from—and the answer itself being so banal, the opposite of revelatory—is what puts it over the edge for me.

So maybe what I like best are jokes that on the surface should not read as jokes at all, but some combination of the cadence and the delivery just do it for me? Like, I’m less impressed by the cleverness of the language itself—in fact, the dumber the better—but am drawn to the overall construction of the joke? I’m fumbling here, I know, but this is honestly the best way I can think of to describe it.

Edit: Actually, you know what, here’s another Futurama example to prove my point. “They’re the beaniest!” from “A Leela of Her Own” is honestly one of my favorite lines in the entire series. This is an objectively dumb joke, but the underlying mechanism/assumption of the joke—that we generally form superlatives in English by adding the suffix “-est”—and then the misapplication of that grammatical rule that results in the non-word “beaniest,” is what makes it so funny to me. It’s that truism about writing, that you have to know the rules of the English language before you’re able to break them—it amuses me to no end when those rules are broken and result in the least eloquent diction and/or syntax possible.

I am fully aware of the fact that I sound like the world’s biggest asshole right now, but I am unabashedly pleased to have lit upon an explanation for why I find this stuff so funny. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk or whatever.

[Reply #13 on:]

Oof, that “joke” pains me so. See, that’s an example of an objectively corny joke that seems a bit too proud of itself and therefore loses any minimal charm it might have possessed.

Hah. I don't exactly disagree, I just remember finding it amusing when I first saw that episode since I wasn't expecting wordplay in such a strangely forced context.

I don't know why "forced wordplay" amuses me. It shouldn't. But when something dumb is used with extreme (and I do stress, extreme) moderation, it can sometimes be pretty damn funny. Not that I think this particular example is a perfect representation of the point I'm trying to make, it was just he first thing that came to mind.

[Reply #14 on:]

Esther goes into a bar.

"I need to loosen up.  Give me a screwdriver." 

Gets a literal screwdriver.     Only thing that could have topped that is Ruth saying that she could bake a potato in her cleavage.... and meaning it literally.  You hear a ping, and for a baked potato to pop out her cleavage.  Turns out Ruth regularly warms and cooks her favourite snacks in her breasts, since her grandfather was a toaster and her bubbe was an easy bake oven.