Season one of New Girl consistently got laughs from me but the more it went on, the more formulaic and problematic it felt. For one, there are a lot of Asian jokes that come off as super racist. Worst one is probably Lizzy Caplan (who I love) yelling "Confucius say" at a Chinese person over the phone. And Schmitt's continual comments about Indian women comes across as fetishizing at best and just straight up racism at worst. And boy does this show rely way too much on sex jokes to get laughs. They're generally the least funny bits. The boring part is the Jess/Nick relationship feels like it hits every lame note of the "will they/won't they" relationship checklist. They're both also legitimately people I wouldn't want to hang around which made me realize I'm basically laughing at these characters and their plight. The joke is always at their expense.
I'm so picky about my comedies and this one did not pass the test. I like me some Zoey, the moment she leans into her quirky oddness tend to be my favorite moments, it's just everything around it ranges from lazy to icky and I have better things to do in life than watch mediocre comedies.
Update: My sisters told me to watch season 2 and it certainly gets better but I'm still on the fence. Fleshing out the characters a bit more means some of the jokes are more specific and less broad but the show is also just leaning into quirky = funny which doesn't always land. Some of the racial jokes have subsided but I still feel like the show is trying to get away with Schmidt being charmingly naive in his racism instead of owning up to the fact it's problematic. It does do this the one time he tries to go buy crack for Winston mostly because it makes sense that Winston would screw with Schmidt while it doesn't make sense for other characters to put up with Schmidt's casual racism.
It does make me think about how often comedies in general rely on sensitive topics and what should and shouldn't be given a pass. I'd have to go back and watch a lot of my old favorites but I feel like my two favorites MASH and Community hold up. MASH does have some character names that are definetly on the offensive side but I think that's also pretty accurate to how people get names in the military and the show always shows those characters as genuine human beings and not charactures or stereotypes like some shows.
Dan Harmon gets flack from some circles of the internet for some of his race material but I feel like he's the most spot on in finding that sweet combination of how characters would actually behave as well as occasionally using race as a social critique. Pierce is human, but not particularly likable in large part because of his regressive race jokes that are often put out there as unfunny as a kind of counter-play to smarter race jokes like Chang's status as a Chinese man teaching Spanish that gets a lot of jokes out of it.
I dunno, just a random tangent I went on there. I like to think I'm more open-minded when it comes to comedy but a lot of times the controversial jokes feel like they are going for cheap shock laughs than actually being a well-written joke. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I mean, I watched some South Park which a lot of people consider one of the most offensive shows ever aired and I generally find their stuff hilarious.
Trying to find something my parents might enjoy to watch as my mom hates
New Girl. Watched the first episode of
Hart of Dixie and it was pretty good.