Dear The Class, I Hereby Expunge You From My TiVo Forever

As a wise man once said: "That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more." The Class is officially off my watch list, and I’m not happy about it. Still though, I don’t have a choice any more, it’s gone. It’s been taken off the “Season Pass” list on my TiVo, I’ve removed all entries of it from the “To Do” list, and I’m even contemplating going into my “Recently Deleted” folder to permanently expunge any of the bad memories associated with it.

Call me foolish, but I believe a required part of being a comedy is being funny.  The Class intimates that I’m wrong about this, however. Here’s a comedy with nothing funny about it.  Let’s see: suicide – not funny, running people over – not funny, incredibly one-note stereotypical characters across the board – not funny. 

Let’s look at a quick example of not funny. Sam Harris’ character, Perry. And, sadly for Sam, it’s not his fault. Over the course of two episodes, he’s been given one joke and forced to tell it over and over and over again. The problem is that the audience got the joke with his first words: we know that Perry has all the affectations commonly associated with gay men. This is supposed to be funny because his wife Holly (Lucy Punch) had a crush on one of her classmates who turned out to be gay. See, that’s funny -- she married a seemingly gay man after having a crush on one. 

It might have worked as a joke the first time out, but by the end of the second episode it is incredibly grating.  Will & Grace’s Jack just went off the airwaves at the end of last season; did the producers of this show not get to see any of the eight seasons of episodes of Will & Grace in order to see how the character could be written? There were times when Jack got old, but Perry is less than a shadow of Jack’s character. 

I said this once before, but I’ll say it again: repeated jokes about someone trying to kill themself is not funny. Yet, the second episode of The Class ends with the another joke about Richie (Jesse Tyler Ferguson) getting interrupted in the middle of a suicide attempt. Yeah, that’s funny. This man is unable to kill himself because the phone rings, and then he might have succeeded in taking enough pills only to decide he may not want to die because the phone rings again. Not funny.

Article Author: Josh Lasser

Josh Lasser, formerly known as "TV and Film Guy," and complete with a Masters Degree in Critical Studies in said areas, gives his opinions on TV, Film, and Entertainment in general. All of which he does in a shameless attempt to try to get paid to do the exact same thing. …

Visit Josh Lasser's author page — Josh Lasser's Blog