I feel like an old man, ranting to the disinterested youth of today about the comedy back in my day. I feel so separated from them - if we can’t agree on what’s funny… what kind of dialogue can we possibly have? All of our points of reference are different. How can we ever move forward if we can’t agree on where to start?

This is, admittedly, a rather hysterical viewpoint… but it’s 3:30 in the morning, and my body-chemistry is about 83% wine… so everything I’m thinking feels tremendously important at the moment.

I guess it just makes me question our sameness - our cohesion. It makes me wonder if anything like that is even possible. We’re divided (if my flimsy hypothesis is even correct) even down to humor. I think that’s a bit sad.

Really, I attribute Family Guy’s success to the internet and the On Demand culture we live in today. That and the fact that it’s pretty much mastered the fart joke… which really is the universal constant in terms of our species’ relationship to comedy.

I think you could explain away your students’ disinterest in The Simpsons by looking at the fact that they simply didn’t live through the show’s golden age — what they see on TV now isn’t what the series used to be, not by a long shot.

Comparing the two shows is an oranges-and-apples situation, though, I think. The Simpsons never indulged in absurdist cut-away gags; they were too busy keeping an eye on politics and pop culture (in order to satarize it) to bother.