Handsome Paddy VS. The Angry Boyfriend: A True Cautionary Tale

Those who know me could probably guess I was bound to write a blog with this title eventually. I'm no saint. I've been known to cross other couples' relationship boundaries on more than one occasion. Maybe I have low self-esteem, maybe I don't respect other men as much as I should, or maybe I think if your girlfriend is interested in me, then that's a sign that your relationship is already over and I'm just the herald of its demise. But that's all irrelevant because that's not what happened this time.

It was late last Friday and I was casually flirting via text message with an aquaintance I hadn't seen in months and who I no longer lived within three states of. I had been a gentleman (this time) and explicitly asked if she was involved with anyone before the whole thing started. She insisted she was single and was actually a little offended I felt the need to ask. And when I say flirting, I mean this is a conversation I would have while gauging if someone was interested in me. We're talking PG-13 content at the very most. After awhile she stopped replying and I got bored. That's when, at 11:13pm, I received a text from a number I didn't recognize, but not just any text. It was the text that every bored smartass lives for:

"So who is this"

What followed was one of the most surreal conversations I have yet to have with a stranger, and I once talked about orchestras with a homeless man as he bathed himself in a drinking fountain at 2am. Sadly, I did not have the forethought to transcribe that conversation, but I did save this one. Below is, verbatim, the actual conversation I had over text message with an irate man I have never met, complete with color commentary by me and a few lessons to take from my experience. For the purposes of clarity, I will call the person in question Mystery Angry Boyfriend or MAB for short. Enjoy.

Mystery Angry Boyfriend: "So who is this"

Handsome Paddy: "This is Paddy, who's this?"

I'm not ashamed of who I am.

MAB: "U a guy or a girl there patty"

HP: "A guy. And it's Paddy."

Seriously, you literally just read how my name is spelled, how do you fuck that up?

MAB: "Hhmmmm txtin my girl all kids of sexual shit huh ima fuk u up"

This is pretty much exactly where I expected this conversation to be heading based on the previous two texts, so his threat lacked the gravitas he had perhaps hoped for.

HP: "I don't know who you are, but your manners need work. Also your spelling is atrocious."

Hey, he's already going to "fuk" me up, I might as well give him some harsh criticism while we're at it.

MAB: "Ya u dont kno me but soon u will il find ya ya my girl is asleep idgaf what u say but ive seen the txts"

HP: "Well tell her I said goodnight. And goodnight to you as well, stranger."

This guy's a prick who can't spell, if I wanted to deal with that I'd play Xbox Live, but there's no reason not to end things on a polite note. Or so I thought.

MAB: "Were kool if u dont try to hook up with my girl"

HP: "Well I can't really promise anything since I don't know who you are."

Remember, at this point MAB had neither told me who he was or who the girl he kept referring to was, and while I could have guessed, I'm not going to do his detective work for him. I don't work for free.

MAB: "It dosent matter r u n kingman"

HP: "You sure you wouldn't rather talk out some of these anger issues? Have some share time? Maybe a hug?"

MAB: "Na i wana kno what is goin on r u n kingman"

HP: "Why? Do you want to beat me up? Will that make you feel better?"

MAB: "I just wana kno what my girl is up to talkin about sex with another dude man thats all just b strait up with me"

HP: "I'm trying, but your texts are like, indecipherable."

MAB: "Then tell me dude r u n kingman and what is going on"

HP: "Oh, man! You were so close to a properly formatted sentence. A for effort though."

MAB: "Hmmmm im just forget her #"

For a split second I thought I had actually mocked this man into a massive psychological breakthrough and he'd decided to move on and figure his life out. But it turned out he's just really bad at typing.

MAB: "U just forget her #"

HP: "I'm not going to do that, but I'll tell you I will if it will make you feel better, if you promise to stop going through your ladyfriend's texts and allow her privacy. healthy relationships are built on trust dude."

This was the beginning of me trying to diffuse the situation by digging into my years of professional experience giving relationship advice and offering this man legitimately beneficial tips on his love life.

MAB: "True true u got a point just do me a favor and don't talk about sex to her she goes thru mine i dont go thru hers she had me put it on the charger and i seen a text from u its kool il talk to her n the mornin when she wakes up n my arms"

HP: "That sounds like a solid plan, sir."

See, it's totally cool that he's threatening someone he's never met after reading texts from her phone because she asked him to put it on the charger and she goes through his texts all the time! Clearly I have dared to jeopardize an otherwise healthy and happy relationship.

MAB: "She is the only woman ive ever loved and dont wana loose her thats y im tryin to stay calm bro"

MAB: "U sound polite tho sorry if i got the wrong impression just worried about sum shit"

HP: "I'm a worrier too. You want to talk about it?"

MAB: "Just tell me how u guys started talkin man idw to talk about her and i i just wana kno whats up man thats all i do tust her i just dont trust guys if ya kno what i mean guys r scandelous so just b honest with me im not tryin to threatin u i just wana kno thats all"

He almost spelled "scandalous" right! I had to fight the urge to tell him I was proud of him.

At this point it was now midnight. This conversation was now entering its second goddamn day and MAB had yet to use a single character of punctuation.

HP: "You make some good points, unfortunately I still don't know who you are, so I can't really give you much information."

MAB: "It dosent matter who i am bro im not sextin ur girl i just wana kno y u r with mine lets not play games lets just hear the truth thats all i ask"

HP: "I apologize. Perhaps I've been unclear. I don't know who you are, therefore I don't know who your 'girl' is, so I can't tell you anything about me and her. Also did you just say 'sexting' who are you Nancy Grace?"

I seriously hate the term "sexting." It's so trite. I prefer to call it "explicit free verse in 160 characters or less."

MAB: "Ya u do because u txted her back after i sent u a message bro"

This confirmed my suspicions that this guy was angry about the girl I had been flirting with just prior. After his first couple messages I had texted her and told her what was going on.

MAB: "U know what u aint worth my time il get to the bottom of it"

This is the first of many texts where MAB insists this conversation is beneath him, then immediately fires off another text when I don't respond.

MAB: "U obviously aint a man just a boy i guess"

This guy wants to have a stupid fight. I'm not going to have his fight. I'm going to have my fight, because my fight is awesome. So, instead of getting into his petty insults, I come clean and admit that I was apparently flirting with his girlfriend.

HP: "Well why didn't you just say so in the first place? Yeah, that's none of your business. I wish you the best, but this is really something you need to sort out with her. Maybe step back and look at why you want to be with her if it means having to have conversations like these with strangers."

Again, if you're playing along at home, this is actually me trying to give this poor, inarticulate man(?) some useful relationship advice. I've attempted to play fetch with cats and had more successful results.

MAB: "U coulda just been a man about it but u wana play games so im done here"

Alright, he got in one last zinger about me being a "man" but he's finally finished with his tantrum and is moving o--

MAB: "I thought ud b kool but hey i was wrong"

Fuck, he's still going. I'm not exactly sure what made him think I'd be "kool" since before this conversation all he knew about me was that I was flirting with his girlfriend. Maybe he just thinks really highly of her taste in men.

HP: "Which part would have made me a man, violating my friend's trust or pretending to know what you were talking about while you texted me gibberish mixed with idle threats?"

At this point I'm getting frustrated with this guy's pathetic attempts to be a dick to me, so I've gone back to chastising him for butchering the English language with every one of his keystrokes. Bizarrely, this actually had the opposite effect I'd expected.

MAB: "Hey if shes a friend then its all good and il b a man and say sorry but if u have a woman u love and u seen sumthin like that how would u react if i was wrong im sorry shes the love of my life man and about the threats my bad i was pissed at first im calmed down now but like i said if im wrong im sorry"

Mind you, I have yet to deny anything he's accused me of and have actually openly mocked him more than once. And he's already seen the texts of me flirting with his girlfriend, but by calling her a friend he is now totally cool with everything that has happened so far and actually apologizes not once, but four times (if you count the phrase "my bad" as a form of apology). I'm now beginning to suspect that I'm talking to a very strange breed of bipolar sufferer who rather than having manic and depressed moods, instead alternates wildly between rage and deep remorse.

HP: "I accept your apology. if situations were reversed, I would question whether my heart was leading me down the wrong path and I would ask myself whether it's good for me, as a person, to be with someone who I don't trust."

Again, this is real advice I would give to a friend in this situation.

MAB: "O i trust her i havent had a reason not to n over 2 months that we have been together just thought id ask u but u just wana play games il forget this ever happened"

To recap:

• She is the first woman he has ever loved.
• She is the love of his life.
• They have been together for two fucking months.

It's at this point that I begin to worry that I am in fact talking to a mad man who might do something to harm himself or others based on my words. So I stop goading him and just try to get him to step away from the ledge a bit.

HP: "While I don't think that's the healthiest approach, I hope it works out for you."

MAB: "I didnt go thru her phone it poped up when i plugged it n"

HP: "You mentioned that, and it could be true. It's kind of a non-issue at this point."

MAB: "Im still gona question her but il forget i ever talked to u is what i meant u wont get any threats or nuthin anymore"

HP: "Well that is healthy, except for the "questioning" your girlfriend part. That makes it sound like you plan to interrogate her. Just talk with her. Open and honest communication is usually the best route."

MAB: "Well thanks for that ya as i said if im wrong if im right this wont last but il ask her about it when the time is right"

I doubt he meant it that way, but he kind of wrote a pretty good rap lyric there.

HP: "Best of luck to you. Have a goodnight."

MAB: "Hey thank u and same to u"

That's right, the conversation that began "ima fuk u up" has ended an hour and a half later with a polite thank you and a goodnight, without me ever apologizing or admitting any wrongdoing on my part. Either MAB just needed to get his frustrations out or I actually calmed down a possessive boyfriend to the point that he behaved with civility to someone he knows was flirting with his girlfriend mere hours ago. I'm like a douche-whisperer.

Unfunny Side Note:

Despite my jocularity while writing this, as I typed this post I was truly concerned for my friend's well-being. Maybe her boyfriend is harmless. Maybe he's a raging psycho. Maybe he's actually her little brother fucking with me. But before this post goes live I will do my best to make sure that she is, in fact, safe. Because as I will address more below, people do die over this shit and there's nothing funny about that.

Edit: Just heard from my friend. She's fine.

That said, there are several important lessons to be learned from this strange encounter.

First, if you spell like an idiot people will treat you as one.

Second, kill them with kindness can be a useful motto. Sure I gave MAB a hard time about his spelling and sent a few texts that were soaked in sarcasm and intended only to enrage him further, but ultimately I turned the situation around by not sinking down to his level by having an SMS-based screaming match over a girl I barely knew. I stayed calm and mostly polite and honest and actually tried to give him solid advice to think about and in the end he thanked me for it.

Third, this was essentially a flame war via text message and while it's debatable which one of us was trolling the other, things ended amicably because we were able to see where the other person was coming from and maintain some sembalance of civility. So the next time you're in some heated discussion about abortion, gay rights, light beer or what have you, remember that your opponent has thoughts and feelings behind their remarks. They may not be right and they may not be as gracious towards you but that's not the point.

I once found myself embroiled in a flame war where someone I personally knew and who had at one time been a comrade in activist circles outright called me a rapist on a Facebook comment feed based solely on my opinions on a news article. The content of the article is irrelevent because no matter how hard you try, you can never rape someone with an opinion. But he chose to invoke the feminist version of Godwin's Law after I had specifically stated that I had no problem disagreeing with him and was willing to remain civil about the whole thing. And you know what? After he called me a rapist, I stuck by that. I didn't back down, but I didn't let myself get caught up in the torrent of bile spewing either. If more people would agree to be respectful and agree to dissagree during debates that have no actual impact on the topics in question, we'd all be a lot happier and the world wouldn't suck quite so much.

Fourth, behind those texts was a real person with real emotions, and the things I said to him could have had real, and potentially very serious, consequences. I pushed his buttons but I recognized when to try to deescalate the situation for the sake of everyone involved. It was a stupid argument, but people rarely get killed over intelligent arguments. Every day people die over ridiculous shit because no one was willing to back down and say "Hey, this is silly. I'm not fighting anymore." Remember that the next time you're telling someone you hope they die in a car fire becuase they believe something different than you.

Fifth and finally, don't fuck with me or I will make fun of you on the internet, and that shit is forever.

Things That Are Killing The American Sitcom Pt. 4

Censorship

Censorship kills a lot of things: creativity, avant-garde cultural change, a young boy’s ability to masturbate to basic cable programming (well, in theory). But censorship is also sticking a knife between the ribs of the American sitcom.

Censorship in action.

This may at first seem an odd argument. Isn’t the sitcom a paragon of storytelling so traditional, inoffensive, and simplistic that it makes "Ziggy" seem edgy? Well, yes, but the best sitcoms, those considered not only historically and culturally significant but extremely popular as entertainment, are also those that were widely considered offensive for their time. Shows like All in the Family, MASH, and The Simpsons have had to struggle with censorship, and in doing so became popular for taking a stand.

Taking a stand against censorship.

The problem is all of these shows came to be before there were any real alternatives besides fighting censorship if you wanted anyone to see your show. While cable television has existed since the 1940s, it didn’t really take off until the late 1980s, just around the time we stopped seeing shows that challenged the status quo on broadcast TV. Sure legitimately good shows have come out on broadcast networks since the advent of cable, but even the most innovative of them don’t really push the envelope, so much as make the most of where it is. With the advent of the internet and premium cable channels becoming more popular, even basic cable programming has seen a brain drain.

As previously discussed.

The problem with this is that the American sitcom, like all creative endeavors, are defined by their medium. When you take the sitcom off broadcast television, and eventually off of television entirely, it fundamentally changes its very nature. If you think it’s an exaggeration to suggest censorship could eventually send all situation comedy innovators to the lawless wastes of the internet then you’re clearly unaware of the lengths writers and other artists will go to avoid being censored.

“I don’t get it.”-NBC Programming Executive

When I wrote a sex column for my college newspaper I once had an entire column rejected by my editors for being about blowjobs. Specifically, the column was about the etymology of the term “blowjob” and didn’t actually discuss the act itself at all. It was rejected because several years before my column another writer wrote an entirely different column with a step-by-step guide to giving a blowjob. That column passed through the editorial process and was published during the university’s annual Parents’ Week. Needless to say, angry letters and mass firings ensued. Because of all this the current editorial staff was wary of blowjobs….so to speak, and nixed my column immediately. The fact that my blowjob column couldn’t have had less in common with the earlier offender was considered irrelevant.

“Huh huh ‘Blowjob Column.’”

My point is that I wasn’t really all that inconvenienced by the incident. Writing the column only took about an hour, writing a new column took about the same amount of time. I didn’t get in any trouble, I just got a talking to about “boundaries” and “acceptable content.” And I got paid the same pittance either way. Even so, I was upset. I had been told that something I had created and worked hard on and truly cared about wasn’t acceptable. It was dirty and wrong and was held as an example of what I should never do again. Because of this I was tempted to outright quit writing the column. While I didn’t quit over it, I’m still so mad at that editor that below is his name and picture.

This is Chris Etling. He’s still Editor-in-Chief of the Northern Arizona University Lumberjack. He’s been pursuing a Bachelor’s degree for the past seven years. He is a cockbite.

Ahem. Where was I? Oh, right. Censorship. See, this is exactly why censorship is killing the sitcom. Simply put, censorship kills comedy, situation or otherwise. It creates the kind of anger that not only makes artists (loosely defined to include sitcom writers and college sex columnists) want to quit, but also leads to uninteresting blog rants years after the fact.

Do you see what you’ve done, Chris Etling of Flagstaff, Arizona, phone number 267-436-5063, birth date March 11, 1985, SSN 532-64-1416, with a fatal allergy to peanuts? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?

Come back next time when I’ll be putting all this behind me and starting a new topic: Observations on the Film Doomsday, because I just watched it and I’m profoundly lazy.

Things That Are Killing The American Sitcom Pt. 3

Tyler Perry

I really hate Tyler Perry. Not as a person mind you, as I don’t actually know him and it’s hard to develop strong feelings in any way for someone who smiles blandly as much as he does. No, my issues with Tyler Perry are based entirely on his work, particularly his dominance of original TBS programming. You see, TBS, despite supposedly “knowing funny” whatever that means, has not one, but two original shows painstaking shat out by Mr. Perry on his way to cashing a series of massive checks. This has not only made portions of TBS’ regular programming unwatchable, but it has also made the network itself a minefield of ads for sitcoms that are not only unoriginal, but also deeply offensive to my non-existent African heritage.

My African heritage.

Nothing better encapsulates my feelings towards Tyler Perry’s oeuvre quite like the South Park episode “The Biggest Douche in the Universe.” Except while in South Park Stan accused John Edward of slowing down the progress of humanity, I merely accuse Tyler Perry of slowing down the progress of comedy, and, occasionally, of having an unusual amount of space between his nose and upper lip.

“Hi, I’m Tyler Perry and you could practically ski down my nasal labial trough.”

Because of his lack of humor, cultural sensitivity, or really any sense of quality control whatsoever, Tyler Perry may well have already done more to kill the American sitcom than any other single person. Now, this is actually pretty impressive considering it wasn’t so long ago that Perry was just a weird theater kid in Georgia, except instead of writing wish-fulfillment coming of age rock operas, Perry wrote musicals about child abuse that made his audience really uncomfortable.

Pictured: Tyler Perry’s early work.

Over time Perry adjusted his plays bit by bit until they started getting good reviews. Presumably by the time he realized that what had once been a deeply personal expression of his adolescence had now become him doing a two hour drag performance of what it would be like if you put How Stella Got Her Groove Back in a blender with the comic strip Crankshaft, it was already far too late. And once the dump trucks full of money, cocaine and hookers showed up Perry decided he no longer needed to express himself in any medium but awful, awful comedy.

The world's worst game of Shoot, Screw, or Marry.

The problem with Tyler Perry’s comedy isn’t just that he does it rather than following his bliss and making terrible plays no one wants to see. It’s that in abandoning his dreams for commercial success, he also abandoned all semblance of creativity. Sure by all accounts his pre-success writings were awful, but at least they were somewhat original. Now Perry just uses the same stock characters and situations that have been around for 50 years, occasionally exaggerating already exaggerated aspects and re-contriving the most contrived of plot devices. Fat, goofy neighbors, annoying in-laws, and aggressive disdain for one’s own off-spring based simply on the fact that their sensibilities differ from that of their elders in some way, all built around a nougat core of Tyler Perry not giving a shit anymore. There’s nothing that is ostensibly “funny” about Perry’s shows that wasn’t already played out by shows like Good Times, All in the Family, and Family Matters.

If you put Jaleel White in that outfit you would swear this was the episode where Urkel travels to the future.

A further problem is that those who criticize Perry’s creations are commonly presumed to simply “not get it.” I realize that as an Irishman raised in the southwest by East Coast elitists I’m not exactly Tyler Perry’s target demographic. And I can understand defending Perry’s style of humor by claiming that it’s a “black thing” or a “southern thing” or, even more accurately, a “specific to distinct regions of the dirty south, as seen by African-Americans of specific economic, social, political, religious, and educational backgrounds living therein thing.”

Or a “cross-dressing and fat suits worked for Eddie Murphy thing."

I can actually sympathize with this, because, as you may or may not know, there is such a thing as Irish Catholic humor. It’s a particular brand of humor usually passed down through Irish families that emigrated during the potato famine and clustered in specific neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Boston. It’s a humor that is extremely juvenile, can be easily understood by a small child, and makes use of well-worn comedy conventions.

As opposed to Tyler Perry, who weaves a spider’s web of intricate satire regarding inter-generational conflict.

The hallmark of the Irish Catholic style of humor is the Pat and Mike joke which features an understood premise: There’s these two guys named Pat and Mike, and they do silly things, usually somehow involving alcohol. The punchlines usually involve piss, the clergy, general idiocy, or all three.

I thought I was going to have a hard time finding a picture that succinctly represented piss, the clergy, and idiocy all at once, but what can I say? God bless you, modern art.

So I get how Tyler Perry could be playing to a very specific demographic with his humor, but here’s the thing: I would never try and market Pat and Mike as a national television show. It would essentially be like building a TV franchise around a “you had to be there” joke. While to me and people from the same very specific shared background Pat and Mike jokes are observational satire, to everyone else they're lowest common denominator slapstick played out with offensive caricatures. And if there’s any better way to describe Tyler Perry’s comedy, I can’t think of it.

Unless I'm allowed to use made up words like “shitastical” or “offensipalooza.”

Simply put, Tyler Perry manages to create sitcoms that are paradoxically so familiar they’re tiresome AND so specific that they’re unrelatable. Still, I would happily forgive him for all of this if he would just do something about that upper lip thing.

Just a thought.

Check back next time when I'll be wrapping up this series by talking about: Censorship. Look forward to more swears!

Things That Are Killing The American Sitcom Pt. 2

The British

As an alarmingly Irish-American, I’m no fan of the British. Their food is legendarily bad, and considering their neighbors are Ireland, known for taking a vegetable that smells like feet and boiling it into a national staple, and Scotland, who took a sheep stomach and filled it with everything else no one wants to eat, that’s saying something.

Haggis: Looking and tasting like Satan’s balls since 1430.

Based on what I know of English history (namely, the first season of The Tudors), Britain has a multi-century rivalry with the French, which as far as rivalries go, is about as sad and pointless as Sisqo starting a beef with the rappin’ granny from The Wedding Singer.

Given the inevitable lead paint poisoning, I’m giving odds to the granny.

But by far the most egregious crime in Briton history is its long, humorless history with the Irish. This is particularly troubling because of all nations and peoples, the British usually do the most with their humor, and do their part to kill the American sitcom in the process.

Normally one-upmanship of American entertainment is solely the realm of bizarre Indian adaptations of copyrighted properties, depressing French existential cinema, and everything Japan does.

According to Google Image Search, this is a TV show in Japan. I can think of no reason to doubt this.

It’s hard to say what it is that makes the British so much better when it comes to situation comedies. British humor is widely acclaimed for its rapier wit and dry wordplay, but American sitcoms have done just fine without those for years!

HAHA, he’s vehemently intolerant of homosexuality! Hilarious!

In spite of their complete lack of appreciation for the humorous consequences of severe lifestyle intolerance and avoiding sex with your wife, British sitcoms routinely trump their American counterparts. In fact when American television producers want to create a hip new show, a good bet is always just to buy the rights to a show the BBC cancelled two years ago.

Coming soon to NBC!

In fact, with The Office an American adaptation of Ricky Gervais’ British show of the same name, and both Community and Parks and Recreation being American adaptations of the American adaptation of The Office, NBC’s only original content on Thursday nights is a show about what happens behind the scenes on Saturday Night Live and a show where Jerry Seinfeld belittles your marriage.

"Hi, I’m Jerry Seinfeld and I used to be culturally relevant.”

Unfortunately for anyone opposed to sitcom outsourcing, it’s likely the best American ideas will continue to be "pre-owned" British ideas for some time. As the best American comedy writers get lured away from TV by poor pay, reality programming, and Jay Leno wanting their time slot, it’s more than likely that we’ll continue to get our patriotic chuckles from the best and brightest the Queen can spare.

God Bless America.

Be sure to come back next week for, I don't know, more pictures and words and stuff, probably.

Things That Are Killing The American Sitcom Pt. 1

The American sitcom is a time honored tradition. And it is dying. I’ve found multiple reasons for this, and the next several posts will detail these reasons with thoughtful commentary and humorously captioned photos. Enjoy.

Everybody Loves Raymond

I used to watch Everybody Loves Raymond every week with my dad and younger brother. We’d get a Grande Combo from Taco Bell and watch the entire CBS primetime lineup from start to finish every Monday night, all centered around Raymond. And every Monday night, I would get terrible diarrhea. You might say this is because of the vast quantities of poor quality “Mexican” food, but I think Everybody Loves Raymond deserves at least part of the blame. There’s only so much bad comedy one can ingest before it has to find its way out, often in the form of rectal bleeding and anal fissures.

The leading cause of American dysentery since 1996.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that Raymond is a bad show, in some kind of Supreme Scale of Comedy™ sort of way. It’s just that it’s exactly what a sitcom was 10, 20, hell, as far back as 60 years ago. Not only does Everybody Loves Raymond exemplify the schlubby husband+hot wife+annoying in-laws formula that’s been around since The Honeymooners, but most of the jokes would work just as well on the radio, for God’s sake. And before you get confused, that’s not versatile writing, that’s writing that’s so lazy it’s the equivalent of a comedy time capsule.

“Dammit, you forgot our anniversary again, Ralph! I mean--err--Ray.”

These are all relatively minor crimes against the American sitcom, but what really hurts this show is its legacy. Unlike the many, many lazy iterations of the Honeymooners formula, Everybody Loves Raymond ran for 9 and a half years, is syndicated on TBS 3 times per day, was just acquired by TV Land, and is regularly run on local stations (here the show is almost certainly on somewhere, no matter what time it is, often on more than one channel). To make matters worse, Everybody Loves Raymond lead directly to The King of Queens, a show which also ran for 9 years and took all of the slob husband/sexy wife/mildly unpleasant in-laws jokes Raymond had driven into the ground and proceeded to dig them up and rape them in front of their own mothers.

Joke rapist.

The weird part about all of this is that Raymond could have been a really good show. By the end of the series it was pretty irrelevant what Ray’s job was, he was mostly there to justify the title and blink occasionally, but he was actually a sports writer. There’s a lot of un-mined comedy gold to be had from a profession like sports writing, but the show only ever used it as a set-up to the same traditional family squabbles seen on every other show ever. Equally unused was the basic set-up that Debra was from a polite, upper-class, gentrified family, and Ray’s family was crass, low-brow, and so ethnic the cast of Goodfellas would ask them to tone it down. But despite all the possibilities this presented, nothing was ever done with it. The two families never really had any more conflict with each other than they did amongst themselves, and Ray and Debra’s differences in upbringing were always turned into jokes about Ray being lazy or Debra being a bitch. Even Ray’s father, who was supposed to be the epitome of unpleasant paternity, never went any farther than the kind of PG-offensive that would make Norman Lear spin in his grave.

Norman Lear is dead, right?

Ultimately this, more than anything, is what Everybody Loves Raymond has done to kill the American sitcom. It has taught an entire industry that original characters, creative dynamics, and thoughtful interplay are all worthless, because you can have broad caricatures tell the same stale jokes for a decade and still be commercially successful. Which is actually kind of an American lesson, now that I think about it.

America. Sigh.

While researching this topic I came across a lot of Patricia Heaton pornography. A LOT. It’s gonna take me awhile to recover. But when I do I’ll be back to talk about the next thing killing the American sitcom: the goddamn British.