you already know the punch-line.


That said, I've been re-watching Arrested Development on Netflix and laughing my ass off.

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"Andy Griffith" is still funny.
Early "M*A*S*H" is still funny.
"Welcome Back Kotter" is not funny.

My kids have been watching "The Dick Van Dyke Show" with me on Netflix - they love it (ages 12 and 10), even though the show is 50 years old.

Is it the quality of the writing? The timelessness of the humor (in the still-funny shows)?

Charlie Chaplin is still funny
Laurel and Hardy are still funny
I Love Lucy is still funny

"TunnelVision" is still funny.

Ricardo is my role model


Hubby calls me "Lucy", even though it's not my real name.

I love this episode.

Also, the one where Lucy is put on a budget and gives herself a home perm and makes her own dress. Funny every time I've seen it.

I especially like when he puffs out his cheeks and she comes out all teeth. They must have worked a LONG time to get the timing right for that skit.

Master (Mistress?) of comedy.

I liked that episode too...also from the series where they went to Hollywood, the one where she got into trouble trying to spy on William Holden and then Ricky brought Mr Holden to the hotel and Lucy disguised herself with a clay nose, which she ended up setting on fire from trying to light a cigarette.

The grape-stomping scene in Italy...

hahahahaah!!!I never get tired of watching I Love Lucy.

I can still laugh watching The Philadelphia Story, Life of Brian, Blazing Saddles, or the Marx Bros. etc.

But some other period pieces just don't make it. Maybe that's because they just weren't that great to begin with.

to me no matter how old it is.

My mind plays movie reruns of the humor with minor changes in scenery, etc., so sometimes the funny thing ends up getting even funnier as time goes on.

And sometimes because of the movies, something is so funny that I'm cracking up nearly choking on my own spit while people are sitting around saying, "Huh?"

My mind amuses me.

I still laugh just as hard at the same jokes. The best Warner Brothers cartoons (from the 1940s and 1950s), Marx Brothers films (1930s), Three Stooges shorts (1930s-1950s) and Laurel & Hardy films (1920s-1940s) are just as funny now as they were the day they were filmed. To say nothing of Monty Python.

Topical humor ages, other types of humor not so much.

It isn't always enough to have universal topics for humor, you've also got to have empathy for the performers and a shared cultural base. As someone noted, the Honeymooners was a huge hit, but the catch phrase, "To the moon!" tied to the patently harmless "threat" to his wife Alice just confuses people today. It isn't because people thought wife beating was funny back then. Rather, the "joke" was that Alice was firmly in control and Jackie Gleason's character would never dare (or want to) hit her. It was pure, overstated bluster. Things have certainly changed since then in gender relations, but I think mostly in the trappings. In today's sitcoms, you're just as likely to find the female lead outsmarting the bumbling (but loveable) male lead to great comic effect--you'll just see the punchlines with less implied punch.

Some of Lucy's jokes are timeless (mostly her one-person bits, i.e., the booze/vitamin skit), but many others fall flat toaday (most of the Lucy/Ricky interactions). It isn't that husband/wife relationships aren't funny anymore, just that the framework and social cues we look for are "off" in those clips.

Ralph was a buffoon, full of empty and impotent threats to his obsolete authority, and it was no secret- it was the joke! A perfect example of why humor is eternal when context is considered.

watching the Honeymooners because domestic violence was a staple in my home back then.

Hits, slaps, flying dishes, flying food, threats, yelling...it was all there.

Even today, 50+ years later, and even though I know he never did it, I still cringe a bit inside when I hear Ralph say, "To the moon, Alice!!!"

For me, it was all too real.

he doesn't have the voice for singing, and his muscle motor functions seem to be cross-wired.

But I sure do love me some Joe Cocker. For everything he seems to lack, he makes up for it with his passion and intensity. I'm surprised he has a voice left.

I didn't go to Woodstock but I did wear out the album. This was one of my favorite songs from the album.

Exception: The Three Stooges

Red Skelton, Rowan and Martin, Smother Brothers, Johnnie Carson, I Love Lucy, Happy Days, Seinfeld, SNL(pick a year), etc

Perhaps some peoples' sense of humor doesn't age well. Or some people do not like some types of humor.

But from the first time a cave man farted, another caveman laughed!

And I still can't hear Abbott & Costello's "Who's On First?" routine without losing it. Monty Python is still funny. So are Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. If you can get past the language some of Shakespeare's stuff is also very funny. The Canterbury Tales are funny, too, but that's because farting was involved.

And while we're bobbing along, is it possible to find Bob Newhart's "phone" bits even remotely amusing anymore?

and scratching my head that people were laughing. Some geezer awkwardly reads a lame joke off a cue card while holding a golf club and that's supposed to be hilarious? I never could stand to watch him.

Granted, he was a comedian of a different time, but I can't stand him except in very small doses.

Try reading Gulliver's Travels again. It never gets old!

Too much of the humor of the last 20 years or so has tryed so hard to be trendy that the topical references render it uninteresting now. This was not always the case. Just look farther back.

Too many writers try too hard to get laughs on too many shitty sit-coms, but the humor is so lame it's an insult to a cretin.

is just not funny any time.

Like, as you mentioned, some of the shit-coms on TV.

For one thing, there always seems to be some undercurrent or suggestion of sex involved.

So many of our past comedians managed to do years of shows without even a hint of sexual innuendo and not only were they funny then, but they're still funny now. Like I Love Lucy. Often it was just the look on her face that was hilarious.

I always thought "Married With Children" was exceedingly crude and unfunny. Same old back joke all the time...horny wife, un-horny husband, blah blah blah.

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying: "Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed."

"OH NO!" the President exclaims. "That's terrible!"

His staff sits stunned at this display of emotion, nervously watching as the President sits, head in hands.

Finally, the President looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"

A generation--that seems to be the expiration date for most humor. A lot of humor involves edginess, pushing limits--and that is something that can't hold up over time.

"politics as usual with the late great Phil Hartman doing one of his stellar impersonations of Ronald Reagan on snl."

I still miss that guy. What a talent lost.

and I find him just as funny today.

Depends on the humor and who is doing it.

Some sitcoms from the 70s are just stupid now.

"Play it Again, Bob"