I realize this TV show doesn't really follow my internet humor trend, but I was watching clips on YouTube so I thought I'd make the stretch. Robot Chicken is a late-night comedy skit show on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. I'm fairly certain it was designed for high school and college students who like to stay up late watching TV. While, most of the time, I don't understand the humor of the jokes and therefore dislike the show over-all, I really like some of the satire skits. My favorite example of this is the Star Wars episodes. Having not watched the actual show, I'm not certain how many actual episodes it was (I believe at least 2 half-hour shows), I've found quite a few of the individual Star Wars skits. The best thing about these episodes is that, while they do reference the original movies, you don't really need to be a fanatic to get the jokes and find them funny.
For those that don't know the movies, this skit references a scene where Han Solo flies his ship through a giant asteroid. But like I said, aside from the actual scene setting, the skit doesn't directly reference Star Wars at all.
Boba Fet is the bounty hunter hired to capture Han Solo, the cryogenically frozen statue he's talking to (but you probably could have figured most of that out yourselves). While I didn't find this clip nearly as humorous, I still found it funny, and I didn't need any Star Wars backstory.
Most of these skits need not be explained, with the exception of the man and woman in bed. The man is Luke Skywalker and the woman is Princes Leia. The reference here is that the two discover at the end of Episode VI that they are brother and sister.
I think part of the reason that Robot Chicken is so good at making their satire skits so easy to understand is that most of their other skits are very random. They keep the skits short because they are the equivalent of stand-up's one liners. They don't require setup or backstory, and this holds true even in their satires. The simplicity of these skits is what makes them easy to laugh at, and thus makes them so funny.
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3 comments:
For me, Robot Chicken is always hit or miss. Sometimes the skits take two obscure references and combine them. Even if I know where they're coming from, they just aren't funny. I guess they believe in bombarding you with tons of skits and hoping something will make you laugh. So it boils down to 15 minutes for ADD viewers.
I'm not saying it's all bad. At times I just want something easy and simple to watch. I really enjoyed the Ponda Baba skit in the Star Wars special. He was just a graphic designer on his break. I felt bad for him in the movie when he lost his arm, but in the episode I felt even worse. Yeah I laughed too but still.
Hey thanks for ur comment, I left a little rebuttle under ur comment. I've only seen a few skits from robot chicken and definately remember "little hitler" and "my little death ponies"(something like that). I'll b sure to check it out next time its on.
Robot Chicken is in a category with many other comedy shows these days. The best way to describe these shows is random-comedy. Some popular shows that come to mind are The Andy Milonakis Show, Wonder Showzen, Robot Chicken, and The Sarah Silverman Show.
There are usually three elements to these shows; being random, being obscene, and being offensive. None of these shows have a plot, they simply center around random actions or sayings that are usually offensive or obscene. Upon watching one of these shows for the first time, it can be very entertaining, but after watching it multiple times, these shows tend to bore, simply due to the fact that there is no substance to them.
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