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It really does seem like almost everyone I know absolutely loves The Inbetweeners. I guess I must be a little weird or something because I just don’t get it. Honestly, I have found every episode that I have had the misfortune to watch to be incredibly weak comedically. The beginning of the third season on Monday night proved to be no different with ‘The Fashion Show’ being as devoid of laughs and inappropriate as I’ve come to expect. I’ve now officially given up on the hope that this spectacularly unfunny sitcom will ever amuse me.
The concept behind The Inbetweeners is decent enough – the disastrous adventures of a bunch of misfits at school could be suitably funny. The reason it isn’t (for me, at least) is due mostly to the fact that the show really mishandles the way these events are depicted - it’s both very predictable and only operates on a superficial level. The Inbetweeners doesn’t even try to find the comedy in anything beyond cheap, sexual innuendo and the most obvious of poor-taste jokes (there’s a Princess Diana joke in the premiere episode). Somehow, it still surprises me that there really is nothing more to this poor attempt at comedy than a few incidents of cringe-worthiness and a group of idiots pointing fun at each other.
In fact, those idiots are probably the most irritating aspect of E4’s teen comedy. Not even the slightest effort is made to portray them as anything more than a crass collection of stereotypical horny teenage boys, and as a result, it makes one of the biggest mistakes that a comedy can by having an unlikeable set of core characters (with very little chemistry). I have no way to empathise with them or care about what goes on in their pathetic lives. In fact, these characters are so despicable that I actually hate watching them.
The Inbetweeners doesn’t seem to realise that good comedy is all about balance. As I’ve already mentioned, comedy won’t work if you dislike the characters... Unsurprisingly, it also won’t work if it relies too much on one particular gimmick. For The Inbetweeners, that gimmick is to make you cringe so much that it becomes physically painful to watch. It’s like they just take every situation and deduce how it could be made more ridiculous, disgusting or inappropriate and then they go ahead and film it. The finished product is both mindless and offensive with unsophisticated jokes about paedophiles, homosexuality and anything else that might make an adolescent giggle. For anyone else, I can’t see the appeal.
As ever, I’ll judge a comedy by how often it makes me laugh and The Inbetweeners has never entertained enough to get even one laugh out of me. I honestly don’t understand the level of praise the show has received because, when I watch it, all I see is as little effort as possible taken to make the most clearly obvious jokes by an annoyingly unlikeable cast.
- The new series of The Inbetweeners continues at 10pm every Monday on E4.
absolutely, i don't get why it's so popular
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