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1 week ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
I roamed up and down the aisles at Target, not really looking at anything in particular. I was told the pharmacy would need 20 minutes to fill my prescription. My phone rang. It was from someone I hadn’t heard from in ages, who I’d only hear from every few years: comedian Norm Macdonald.
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1 week ago | 
flipboard.com | Brian VanHooker
9 hours ago#shorts Watch on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2Kncxw6 About Netflix Is A Joke: The official hub of Netflix stand-up, comedy series, films, and all things funny — curated by the world’s most advanced algorithm and a depressed, yet lovable, cartoon horse.
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1 week ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
Over the past decade, Australian-American comedian Jim Jefferies has climbed the heights of stand-up comedy. Yet, despite all his comedic success, one past project still feels unfinished to him: his short-lived FX sitcom Legit. The semi-autobiographical series starred Jefferies as a fictionalized version of himself who lives with his two best friends, Steve Nugent and Steve’s brother Billy, who has a severe case of muscular dystrophy and uses a wheelchair.
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2 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
The Looney Tunes characters may be timeless, but there are some parts of the classic shorts that are very clearly from another era. And yes, there are plenty of ugly, racist jokes from the early cartoons. But there are also the then-topical jokes and turns of phrase we’d never use today, which can be quite charming to hear now. Like, when’s the last time you used the word “varmint”?
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2 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
Ever since Pam Beesly drunkenly accepted her hard-earned Dundie award, saying, “I can feel God in this Chili’s tonight,” many have wished to attain that seemingly incredible high at the American casual dining establishment where two — count ‘em, two — episodes of The Office take place (“The Dundies” and “The Client,” both in Season Two). And yet, there’s never been a Chili’s in Scranton, Pennsylvania — until now.
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2 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
“Never work with children or animals.” As old and clichéd as that Hollywood adage may be, countless sitcoms have learned this lesson the hard way — especially when it comes to animals. Time and again, TV shows will go through a bunch of trouble to introduce an animal as a permanent addition to the cast, only for producers to realize they need to include this unruly critter in every episode or explain where they are every time they’re not around.
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2 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
One of the most obnoxious sitcom tropes is when a show becomes popular enough that celebrities begin appearing on it as themselves. (I’m looking at you, Dr. Phil on Frasier, Nancy Reagan on Diff’rent Strokes and Bradley Cooper on Abbott Elementary.) Now, some shows have made it work. Insane guest stars are The Simpsons thing, for example. And Curb Your Enthusiasm is about a guy in show business, so celebrities playing themselves makes total sense.
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3 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
Being a kid on a sitcom is tough. If you manage to dodge addiction issues and kleptomaniacal parents, one thing will still always be gunning for you: Father Time. When sitcoms center around a family with at least one young child, a decent percentage of its humor usually comes from the young kid saying impossibly pithy lines crafted by adults. But as the kid gets older, they often get less cute and their character is forced to change. So, where do all those snarky remarks and cutesy moments go?
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3 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 crime drama Rashomon took the concept of an unreliable narrator and quadrupled it. In telling the story of how a samurai was murdered, four people give their own contradictory accounts of the death while painting themselves as more virtuous than the others. Despite the heaviness of the source material, Rashomon has gone on to inspire an unlikely medium: sitcoms.
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3 weeks ago | 
cracked.com | Brian VanHooker
When the general public looks back on The X-Files, they picture a dark and serious 1990s show about aliens and government conspiracies. But die-hard fans know that some of the series’ best episodes were a laugh riot. The show began to churn out a few episodes per season with a comic bent, beginning with the circus freaks episode “Humbug” in Season Two.
