there was a lot of great alt comedy in the 90s with stuff like The State and Mr. Show. I'd argue that shows like that really paved the way for Tim & Eric (in fact, T&E got their big break thanks to Bob Odenkirk who produced Tom Goes to the Mayor)
Tim & Eric definitely brought that type of comedy more into the mainstream until it was no longer "alt" anymore. because yeah, at the time Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia were the biggest names in comedy
The State, besides being great, gave birth to so much great absurdist and alt-comedy projects. David Wain's whole career is basically non-stop hits of incredibly funny shit.
Plus, if you want to go further back in Odenkirk's DNA, he credits Janeane Garafalo with getting alt-comedy really going. She's fantastic in Wain's Wet Hot American Summer (the film and the first season of the TV series for sure are worth a watch).
The Larry Sanders Show, which Garafalo was in as well, is worth a mention as a 90s pre-cursor to this type of humor as well. It's definitely still stuck in some traditional sitcom trappings, but it was way ahead of its time.
There's a few things in the 00s that predate Tim and Eric in that same vein too. Whitest Kids U Know and Wonder Showzen immediately come to mind.
Basically, Tim and Eric are super fucking funny, but alt comedy is a much wider world than them.
Wet Hot American Summer is probably my favorite comedy movie. no plot, just bits and they all land. you can tell everyone in the cast really gelled and had a blast making that movie, which is essential to good comedy
I was a kid during Mr. Show so I never got to see it but Bob Odenkirk is fantastic in literally anything he does.
oh you should definitely check it out, it's one of the best sketch comedy shows off all time
Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia were the biggest names in comedy
It was a very dark time
Mr. Show is the GOAT.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Kids in the Hall yo. They were doing jokes we do here now on Canadian public broadcasting and hbo for America. They even had a sketch called Fuck You, Taxpayers. Where they point out that part of their funding comes from the Canadian government and then intentionally waste money, Scott Thompson got to say 'Hi, I would like to use our publicly funded airtime to say that I should be allowed to masturbate in public." "WOW! What an opinion! One you probably disagree strongly with and didn't want to hear. But you still paid for it because...."
Studio audience: FUCK YOU TAXPAYERS
"And because the audience all had scripted lines in the sketch, we had to pay them all as speaking extras. They took home $500 (1992 money) just to watch a comedy show on your dime cause...for another speaking fee..."
Studio audience: FUCK YOU TAXPAYERS
Personal favorite monolgue is this:
https://youtu.be/mvBAtyFoFL8?si=Ce1Kqw-SGoAY215d
Favorite sketch with characters and stuff is this one
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Here's another, ROBOT
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Ka2nkIi2I&pp=ygUMaGFtIG9mIHRydXRo
This also has a pre-Ezri Daz Nicole DeBoeur as Laura
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
What about Mitchell and Webb?
I'm a burger american so I don't know british humor, but it's the team behind the "are we the baddies?" skit.
And Peep Show
Which to this day, I probably quote as much as The Simpsons
And I love The Simpsons
Mitchell & Webb pulled british comedy out some very deep, dark, post-Little Britain doldrums
Also missing out on the absurdist sketch humour of The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)
I've watched only a few of them but the mock Football TV spot absolutely slaps
Dr Katz, Professional Therapist featured a lot of then-popular comedians and it's one of the funniest shows that's ever aired
I'll have to check it out.
It's hilarious
if the metric is what's commercially popular, comedy has always sucked and will continue to suck until the end of time. there are a ton of people who are nationally/regionally touring who are so fucking good and you'd never know about it because the ceiling for that is basically writing for a late night show while doing sets or something
:stavros-laugh:
i remember not "getting" Tom Goes to the Mayor when it first came out. my politics at the time was some vaguely left-libertarian/liberal BS
now knowing that Tim is a leftist if I had time I'd love to rewatch some episodes (like many things though i just don't have the time these days)
The episodes are 11 minutes, so they take less time than most stuff.
mr show erasure
Rats off to Ya! 
Oh Ratty Ratty
The comedy most important for my young sense of humor was MST3K, which is still chock full of gold material.
You've never heard of The State, have you?
Or the followup, ~~And Revolution~~ ~~Reno 911~~ Viva Variety
The first Borat showed me a realm of funny I had not yet established trade routes with, it was awesome
horrible racist stereotypes of Central Asians
it gave us Nick Mullen
Okay yeah I should establish that it is a problematic fav
I was much more interested in how it captured a deranged side of post 9/11 America that I was steeped in but saw no representation of.
Like people literally fled from him for approaching them while looking indistinctly foreign
Same! Borat had a lot of problems with stereotypes, but it was also kind of ahead of its time at making fun of the racism of Americans towards literally everyone.
honestly the funniest thing is sacha baron cohen turning out to not be a lefty or a righty but a stone 
I'm pretty sure the joke is "Americans are so racist that this is how they view foreigners and will accept it without question" like it's essentially the same joke we make about dprk supersoldiers casually pushing trains but with a way higher budget
I mean more the fact that Sacha is a huge Zionist himself and his portrayal of Central Asians as antisemitic savages in the Kazakhstan scenes is incredibly weird considering how much of a problem antisemitism is in the West, it's this framing of Muslims as uniquely antisemitic that kinda feeds into the support of the genocide rn which is why I really hate to see it.
Well yeah that's what I mean, I always thought the movie was pointing a mirror at the American audience and saying "this is what you think foreign countries are like right?" Which tied in to him taking that character from that fictional country that is how Americans imagine other parts of the world to be and traveling as him to America where the average person fully accepted it
That said, in the context that he is a Zionist himself it does seem entirely possible that it wasn't as intentional as that
I read it that way when I saw it myself (admittedly I saw it pretty recently), but in context I think the most charitable interpretation is that Sacha is comparing American racists to what he imagined Muslims to be.
Ok, I don't get it... I watched episode 2, season 1 of it, and I did not like it... I guess that's why wiki said it was polarizing...
unrelated but this post led me back to this and I just gotta say the Skeletor bits are just 
I only watched Tim and Eric as a kid because there was some bikini model and I thought I stumbled onto something forbidden
Back in October 2021 I saw somebody mention Freaked during a Twitch stream, and having nothing better to do, I watched it a few nights later.
[What I wrote to a friend after I saw the film.]
I just got done watching Freaked. Man, what a boring fucking film. Basically, remember one of those Disney Channel original movies from the late ’90s or early ’00s, make it edgier, make it faster‐paced, and you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. A lot of the jokes might have been ingenious if I saw it in elementary school, but watching now they’re just generic, predictable, and easy.
Examples include a mad scientist imprisoning somebody in a gigantic outhouse, then telling himself that he ought to build a toilet in there; a memory echoing in somebody’s mind when it was really just somebody nearby repeating himself; a humanoid worm hissing at somebody; a werewolf chasing a squirrel; artificial Siamese twins acting like the Three Stooges; an adoring fan pestering somebody even after being sucked out of an aeroplane; and more.
I mean, I could understand why somebody would enjoy some of these jokes, but hoooooly shit, did they bore me. The only time that I either laughed or chuckled was when I riffed on the film, and I rarely did that. Credit where it’s due, though, some of the ideas are original (I’ve certainly never seen anthropomorphized eyeballs who work as Rastafarian police officers before), and it’s clear that the artists spent a lot of time on their crafts, so I can give them an A for effort. Nevertheless, none of that is enough for me to recommend the film.
Now, here’s a fun little challenge for you: this was a comedy from 1993. Can you guess what some of the jokes are about‽
My friend guessed heterosexism, to which I replied:
That’s right! In one of the scenes, a character tells his audience that what they are about to show is not for those with intense sensibilities. The camera then cuts to two men in stereotypical ‘yuppie’ outfits getting up and walking out.
Now, your answer is correct, but it wasn’t the only thing that I had in mind. (Hint: it’s in the same neighborhood as your answer.)
When my friend guessed cissexism, I replied this way:
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding! Good answer! One of the characters is a trans woman, a non‐passing one at that, and that’s basically the entirety of the joke!
Oh yeah, I forgot the mention that the male protagonist and a female character kiss at the end of Freaked. Because, you know, it wouldn’t be a happy ending if we didn’t see any heterosexual activity between two individuals who barely fucking knew or liked each other.
My favorite joke in the film was when the camera cut to a haystack next to nothing, and as we hear somebody falling out of an aeroplane, we wait in anticipation as he lands… next to the haystack. That is a perfect example of lazy comedy: when a joke is so predictable that you can literally flip a coin to vote on the only two possible outcomes. Awful. Don’t watch Freaked.
Freaked
Ouch you just dredged up some repressed memories I had of seeing that movie as a kid.
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
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