Lame Sex Joke Makes 100,000th Sitcom Appearance
Hollywood, CA-
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The same lame old sex joke was told for the 100,000th time last Thursday on the hit NBC sitcom, Will and Grace. The joke, wherein an actor speaks with a representitive of a bank, store, or other institution, but in a manner similar to the way one would speak to a lover about the state of a sexual relationship, was met with polite, prompted laughter from the studio audience, mixed with canned hysterics later added in a recording studio. "Gold!" shouted an NBC |
After the taping of the Will and Grace episode, a banquet was held at an upscale hotel North Hollywood, in honor of the bland, played-out joke.
"The joke, whom we in the Friar's Club like to call, 'The Relationship Switch', has a proud tradition in American comedy," the evening's M.C., Jerry Stiller (Zoolander, Seinfeld), told a packed house. "Ever since it's first appearance on The Lucy Show, way back in 1964, up to it's inclusion in the Will and Grace program, 'The Relationship Switch' has represented the freshness and creativity of America's sitcom writers."
Many celebrities came out to celebrate the further beating of the dead-horse joke, including hacks Jason Alexander and Ray Ramano, as well as many other prime-time purveyors of stale, trite comedy. The stars of Will and Grace themselves made an appearance, and the actual 100,000th teller of the joke, Sean Hayes, got onstage to say a few words.
"I'm so lucky to have been given such an opportunity to make my mark on the list of historic sitcom moments," he said, weeping, of his meager accomplishment of hauling out another boring, inane bit of pandering inuendo and dropping it into the vapid arena of impotent after-dinner humor. "I've never been prouder."
Matt Muthcnick, the joke's "writer", even had a few sad, self-aggrandizing words to say about his "creation". "In all my years of writing comedy, from my early days on the last season of Mama's House, up until the present day, this is maybe the most important contribution I've made to the world of television. But I couldn't have gotten here without the help of my colleagues, executive producers Dave Kohan, James Burrows, and Jeff Greenstein, as well as co-executive producers Alex Herschlag, Jhonit Marchinko and Kari Lizer, and not to forget supervising producers Tim Kaiser, Tracy Proust and Jon Kinnally, or producer Bruce Alden, and last but certainly not least in my heart, associate producers Steve Sandoval and Peter Chakos, and consulting producers Adam Barr, Cynthia Mort, and Laura Kightlinger. Oh, and also co-producer Bill Wrubel," he said, cravenly kissing the asses of each of the humorless, airheaded suits who have their names listed next to vague job descriptions at the shows credits, revealing for all the world what little character it requires to cut and paste a few near-plagerized lines of brain-dead regurgitation into a script.
After a little playful chiding from Stiller, representatives for the Screenwriter's Guild mock-vowed to retire the joke, at least temporarily. They did not, however, vow to stop churning out further lame, ripped-off, not-even-funny-the-first-time insufferable crappola at a mind-bending rate.