Column: Why are TV’s two big fantasy shows so epically humorless?
The CW’s Jane the Virgin and The Vampire Diaries have had a rough go of it in recent seasons. While both shows are a gooey mess, and with their respective casts, they’re the two highest-rated shows on the CW behind only Arrow and Supergirl. And yet The CW doesn’t really seem to appreciate the humor of either show (or the shows they bring to life). But we haven’t seen very many other shows with this strange problem: Being so incredibly “funny” that it’s difficult to even recognize the show as “the funny show.”
Well, we’ve got you covered. Check out the list below (no, they’re not all based on TV shows, that’s just where our brains are stuck):
#1. Family Guy (1999-present): Family Guy is the closest thing we have here, and yet Family Guy’s humor has been a bit lacking. You may think that it’s just the show itself, but it’s not just Family Guy’s humor, and it’s not just Family Guy’s brand of comedy. That show just didn’t have that much to say and it didn’t really have that much to do all too often. So for Family Guy, I’d have to argue that it’s not so much the lack of jokes as the lack of jokes that makes the show a bit flat.
Family Guy is one of the funniest shows on television. For the first few seasons, it relied on jokes — a lot — and it’s easy to miss the good ones because they’re so spread out. They weren’t necessarily funny because they were great, they were funny because they were scattered across the air. That style of humor isn’t at all suited for television, and it’s much more suited for movies. And because the show is based on a cartoon, it’s also a bit hard to enjoy. It’s hard to laugh at Family Guy because it’s not a show you want to
