Lies are Only Funny on TV

Lucy!, a photo by pdw's atelier on Flickr.

I've been analyzing comedy in movies and television, and it doesn't matter if it's decades-old or more recent modern shows, the vast majority of humor deal with deception and telling lies! This lie-telling humorous formula consistently incorporates the element of some type of deception taking place which then requires a series of more deception to validate and try to make the lie into the truth.

We love to laugh at the likable funny person as they go through their series of humorous cover-ups and all the new problems which each new lie brings. Sadly, I've experienced several real-life people known for their lies and falsehoods and their cover-ups are quite real indeed... but never so humorous. Ricky Ricardo so often had to sternly reprimand "Lucy!" and the canned laughter and music brought the episode to an end with chuckles. Unfortunately when we deal with liars in our non-humorous lives there are seldom chuckles to end these all too real incidents.

Though there are many exceptions to this popular comedy rule, and several other sub-humor categories are easily identified as well, the old 'bury yourself deeper' humor is so prevalent in one form or another that you would think that lying would become a thing of the past when viewers constantly see the negative repercussions which go along with it. That said, the problem with the majority of comedies, in spite of the main character's chronic untruthfulness, is they almost always come out smelling like a rose in the end. We laughed as their lies got them deeper and deeper into trouble but the far reaching repercussions of such deception disappears when the story concludes. Real life seldom has such a happy no-harm-done ending.