From Absolutely Fabulous to Veep, we deconstruct classic comedy quotes from the past 30 years.
Since 1990, the joke has been on us or at least on our minds.
(‘More single-camera-y’ doesn’t roll off the tongue, either.)
HBO
I couldn’t tell if he was trying to f— me or erase me."
Great punchlines are “divinely inspired when they’re right,” says exec producerMichael Patrick King.
“And they sometimes don’t even make sense!”
NBC
Both things are true about this blistering zingerhe wrote for Miranda.
(After all, most golf pencils don’t have erasers.)
All doubts were erased once cameras rolled.
Netflix
“The sound guy dropped the boom, he laughed so hard,” says King.
“He snotted and dropped the boom.
That’s validation.”
ABC
The cause of and solution to all of life’s problems."
Homer Simpson has said plenty of not S-M-R-T things over the last three-plus decades.
I have three kids and no money?
Comedy Central
Why can’t I have no kids and three money?")
On the other hand, he also has delivered statements of surprising depth.
“It’s a line that hits so many spots with so few words.”
ABC
Scully and Meyer lobbied to relocate the joke to the end of the script.
“It had that reverberating, encompassing quality you look for in a closing line,” says Meyer.
“A walk-off homer that sends the fans home happy.”
HBO
it should be a hard choice.
But your mind instantly goes to that line.
We’d love to say we’ve beaten it, but we haven’t."
Justin Lubin/NBC; Adam Taylor/NBC
The bar, like our glasses, remains forever raised.
“One giant step for man-on-mankind.”
Theyexpressed their excitementby referencing another stellar cultural landmark event and partaking in the sitcom’s spicy syntax games.
FOX
After Barney’s (Neil Patrick Harris) “Wait for it!”
catchphrase was established in the series premiere, the showrunners were wary about giving him another to constantly repeat.
“So I was like, ‘Here we go!'”
BBC
“What is this preoccupation with lactose, Chris?”
This is a classy publication."
“It’s this labyrinth of a sentence.
Netflix
That was our twist on it make it tortured right away.”
Adds Bays: “It really should have been the season 7 version of the sentence.”
“They’ve really done nothing else since leavingHow I Met Your Mother.
Everett Collection (2)
God bless Chris and Phil.”
A quip about the Canadian rapper and former child star does the job.
“We were on a break!
FOX
What does it mean to be Black?
(A bit in which Dre tricks Bow into admitting she hadn’t seenRootswas also excised.)
The on-set rewrite sent a clear message.
BBC Two
“It speaks to two things that have challenged us, fetishized us, ostracized us.
And it speaks to them with a sense of pride.”
I just think them up and write them down.”
Steve Carrell as Michael Scott on ‘The Office’.NBC
Parker points out that the joke is, worrisomely enough, more topical than ever.
“That particular line applies to so many things these days,” he says.
“The [45th] president could have said that.”
FXX
As the showrunner ofTGSwith Tracy Jordan, Liz Lemon knew how to deliver a perfectly timed quip.
But no one-liner better capturedTina Fey’s anxious, workaholic showrunner and her constant struggle between fun and fun-policing.
It goes… about as well as you’d expect.
NBC
You’re telling the world, ‘I give up!
I can’t compete in normal society.
I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'"
The search forSeinfeld’s punchline par excellence was so hard, that we almost gave up.
As you might imagine, David maintains some strong opinions on that sartorial choice to this day.
“They’re wonderful in the house.
you’ve got the option to’t wear them outside,” he notes.
“They generally lack pockets, which is awful.
The string constantly needs to be retied.
It’s just terrible Jerry’s right: ‘I give up.’
Because that is just a bad look.
Things can’t be going well in a person’s if they’re wearing sweatpants outside their house.”
“Gaslighting doesn’t exist.
You made it up because you’re f—ing crazy.”
This local-news banter gone very wrong serves as a Rorschach test of the viewer’s assumptions.
This winky wordplay Happy Endings’ sweet spot may be the most mathematically absurd joke on the list.
Just as impressive, it was crafted by rookie staffers.
“Just truly insane, at this point.
The line killed when Libman’s room performed it for the senior writers.
“That one beat out whatever else there was,” he recalls.
I once worked with a guy for three years and never learned his name.
Best friend I ever had.
We still never talk sometimes.”
The macho misdirect was this explicit declaration of Ron’s hands-off policy, as it extended to interpersonal affairs.
“That’s the thing Ron’s proud of.”
Schur then added that quasi-paradoxical topper.
“But it is a little playful for Ron.
He’s being wry when he says that, and he’s not often very wry.
In Offerman’s mouth,the joke became legendary.
“The corner of his mouth turns up by, like, four degrees into a tiny smile.
He has such command over his face.
He’s his own marionette and he operates himself perfectly at all times.”
“He was on CNN every night, he had hisUSA Todaycolumn.
So it had to beThe Larry Sanders Show.”
There will be no survivors.”
Still, the quip needed another gear, which led to that mic-dropping twist.
Fumero sees that line as a crowning moment in their opposites-attract courtship.
“They bring out the best in each other,” she notes.
In addition, the silly knock-out blow showed Amy’s, well, maturation.
There may have been no survivors that day, but the laughs live on.
“I don’t wanna be your father.”
“That’s perfect.
You already know your lines.”
An impeccable alchemy of irony and darkness yielded this very good bad-dad joke.
Abed’s search for truth through the camera mirrors Pudi’s own.
Ultimately, Pudi believes that the exchange earns top marks because it’s as economical as it is relatable.
That was really beautiful."
Atlanta
TEDDY PERKINS (DONALD GLOVER?
Everything you oughta know about the former child musician is expressed in this absurd declaration of daddy issues.
“We want what we want for emotional reasons, not logical reasons.
If facts get in the way, we absolutely do not want to hear them.”
That’s a reaction I have rarely if ever had."
And I think he wasn’t.
Fry’s overly aggressive enthusiasm may have been discourteous, but it is universally relatable, notes Verrone.
“‘Don’t get in the way of my technological satisfaction!’
I think that’s why it became such an internet meme that we all feel.
‘Take my money,’ is the irrelevant part of it ‘Just shut up and gratify me!'”
Because of your giant heads, I pee when I cough."
From then on, every time I said the line I broke up to the point of tears.
The line is SO true to real-life experience and I’m still laughing.
That’s my thang.
I surf the Web.
LOL: Laugh Out Loud.
OMG: Oh My God.
WTF: Why the Face?"
Eleven years later, Tudyk is still flattered that Lloyd and Levitan chose his line.
How did he conjure up that phrase?
“I share that with the character of Phil,” he answers.
Let me be more clear.
It doesn’t do the job, and it makes a f—ing mess!"
Vice PresidentturnedPresident Selina Meyer delivered plenty of withering insults during her administration.
(Andather administration, especially Jonah.)
But this season 1 classic proudly blends profanity and pastry.
“It was Julia who said, ‘I’m sure there’s more,'” recalls Iannucci.
We all laughed, and then we broke for coffee and croissants."
Louis-Dreyfus adds, “It’s such a flaky pastry!
D.C.
Living Single
Kyle (T.C.
I give to you, the sipping straw, better known as Elijah’s hollow drinking dowel.”
“So what you’re saying is, your family has sucked for generations.”
“The character and the relationships were designed after the two of us.
It was always a battle of wits and emotions.
And we’re still at it 20 years later.
We’ve evolved just as Max and Kyle did in the series.”
Bowser recalls feeling the burn in the writers’ room when this exchange was crafted.
During the previous season, the show had done a well-received Mother’s Day episode.
It started with ‘That should be easy, all test tubes are the same.'"
You venture to go high, Max is going to cut you low."
“Uh, you know there isn’t a hospital bar, Mother.”
“Well, this is why people hate hospitals.”
“Upon closer examination, it’s not obvious why.
Are we worried the patients will drink?
They have far more effective narcotics at their disposal.
They’re the ones who give out the drugs.
Who are we worried about exactly?”
“She would just pop out these absurd, crazy things,” he notes.
And we probably talked about, ‘Why aren’t there bars in hospitals?'"
Vallely salutesWalter’s tough-love, matter-of-fact delivery.
“She does no comedy spin on it at all,” he observes.
“It’s a hardcore fact that she knows.
Ninety-nine percent of actors go, ‘This is why people hate hospitals!!!’
She does it a little lighter.”
“She realizes she’s made a joke,” Vallely says.
That’s just the whipped cream and the cherry on the sundae."
Which Lucille wouldn’t want you to eat.
After all: “You want your belt to buckle, not your chair.”
“We didn’t have those people at the time we wrote the script.”
I look at it now and it hurts my ear," he says with a laugh.
“But it’s a funny word.
And if you know comedy, you end on the funny word.”
I’d rather be dead in that situation, to be honest.
I’m not saying people like that should be…you know, put down.
“Just the normal person not understanding what’s going on,” he says with a laugh.
As for the yoga kicker?
I want people to be afraid of how much they love me."
“It was terrifying.”
Says Eisenberg: “He’s emotionally greedy and intellectually unsophisticated.”
Speaking of, did the unseen documentarian even ask Michael the question he answered?
“He thinks he’s controlling the narrative of the show.”
This is like O. Henry and Alanis Morissette had a baby and named it This Exact Situation!"
It tookArchercreator Adam Reed a few tries to find Sterling Archer’s voice.
Thankfully, Archer often makes mistakes or misremembers things even ashe makes references with the utmost confidence.
You will be safe there until I can find you."
It’s so foreign to her it’s almost like they’re going into battle.
Constance played it perfectly, the anxiety and seriousness; it’s not a joke to her."
“There was a discussion: ‘Should we take this joke out?
Is it too much?’
Ultimately we were like, ‘Let it ride.
It was a joke two episodes in the making.
And part 2 was supposed to be his chance to romance her by taking her to Bora Bora.
Little did he know that his ex and her new beau were in the hut next door.
Levine adds, “We were trying to think of, realistically, who would Lilith go out with?
Butthat was one of those jokesthat, from day one, just stayed in.”
Like most of Frasier’s small talk with Lilith, this bon mot carries sinister subtext.
“The two rarely would just insult each other,” says Levine.
“The insults were usually disguised in passive-aggressive banter.”
The neighbors want your time.
The thieves want your things.
I’d rather give them things than time.”
As the creator and star of HBO’s curmudgeon-com,Larry Davidtruly did pump up the grump.
“If there were a 10 Commandments of Larry, No.
1 is, ‘Thou shalt not bother me,'” observes showrunner Jeff Schaffer.
“Nothing is more valuable than your own time and freedom.”
Adds David: “Yet we waste so much of it.”
Explains David: “It’s just something that seems to make sense once you examine it.
It’s such an unexpected thing to say.”
And it shines a new comedic light on the darkness of having neighbors.
“They’re there all the time, there’s no getting away from them,” laments David.
“Then you’re stuck with stop-and-chats every day.”
