She looks like a ladyboy in that pic. It’s the eyebrows.
Better of Ted was so much better. ( I know: different network. ) I also found it a little distasteful to mock our country’s current economic hell. Really funny for someone sitting at home, unemployed because their jobs were outsourced. Hey look, an empty office! Ha, ha, ha.
Bring P & R back.
P.S.
Amy Poehler is hosting the SNL season premier.
If it were an actual office park in India, you would hear car horns beeping every 5-10 seconds.
Not in gangbangalore. Our offices feel exactly like silicon valley. Manicured lawns, air conditioning, cubes, etc.
I thought the movie version was a nice little film. Too bad the TV show isn’t living up to it.
One of the characters they cut from Devil was the NBC exec that bumped Parks and Recreation.
I didn’t get a chance to see it yet but if the call center in this show was portayed like that of Slum Dog Millionaire, it’d be a winner.
I actually have never seen a single episode of P&R, so when I say it’s possibly one of the worst and most offensive comedies I’ve seen this side of the 90s…
Does this post make sense to anyone else?
Has it been that long since you watched CBS? Anyone who thinks Outsourced constitutes some kind of crime against the format isn’t very familiar with the current (or past) state of the sitcom landscape. Hell, Shit My Dad Says, which premiered an hour earlier than Outsourced, was repugnant.
Well the best part of the entire episode was the 2 minutes that Aussie woman had of screen time.
Since when was the entire premise of Shit My Dad Says an excuse propagating offensive stereotypes of a foreign culture?
So, you haven’t seen either? The entire premise of that Shit My Dad Says is that the titular character is a grumpy old racists prick. And Outsourced spent more time humanizing the Indian characters and making fun of the white boss than it did “propagating offensive stereotypes”.
Except for the part that he’s not “racists,” (or “racist”) and that William Shatner is playing the same boring cranky archetype from every family sitcom ever. The offensiveness of that show, like Outsourced, stems a lot from how safe and unfunny the ostensible humor is.
An insultingly obvious curry joke and a couple of equally obvious “funny name” jokes amongst a litany of jokes about how ostensibly backwards Indian culture are now considered Desi advocacy? In the right hands, it could be a keen, sensitive look at culture clash, but it is not in those hands. Instead it is being done by bumbling and clumsy morons with little understanding or care for the culture they are portraying.
There hasn’t been any suggestion that Indian culture is “backwards”, actually it’s been more about how obscene American excess is, and a joke about how spicy food might disagree with a recent transplant isn’t racist. It’s a fairly well known phenomenon and would apply in many, many parts of the world. If that’s your best ammunition than you’ve already lost.
I didn’t say it was actually a racist joke, but the lame curry joke has all the sophistication and subtlety of Jay Leno on steroids.
Incidentally, I did kind of like the joke about how “Americans eat hamburgers for breakfast lunch and dinner, and don’t try to tell me that isn’t true because I know it is.”
And yes, this was more insulting to the intellect of the audience than to Indian culture.
I thought it was incredibly lazy, and just flat and sloppy.
In one corner I’m watching a movie like Dostana, a fluffy Threes-Company-esque sex farce about two Indian guys who scam their way into an awesome apartment in Miami by pretending to be a gay couple. The setup is predictable, the jokes are broad, but the people are living in a modern world I recognize.
Meanwhile on Outsourced, a guy is going “Manmeet? Your name is Manmeat? HAW HAW! Also let’s do a joke about how cows are considered sacred here! Fresh Indian humor! I’m a giant douchebag!” I mean, 1. making fun of odd sounding names, 2. making fun of funny accents (the humor in the “american pop culture” scene is mostly just about hearing popular movies and songs in a funny accent), 3. making fun of spicy foods/travellers diarrhea? It’s like below the lowest common denominator.
Yeah it’s lazy comedy for sure, but I don’t think it’s actually racist. But the fact that the conversation about this show is about wshether the jokes are just dumb and obvious or actually evil doesn’t seem to bode well.
Then again, a lot of you guys like Modern Family, so what do I know?
I hate agreeing with alexlitel, but he’s right about Shit My Dad Says. The show’s offense is that it’s awful and unfunny, not that it’s really trying to propogate racist stereotypes. The character making the racist statements is meant to be unlikable. What it’s really trying to do is create a new Archie Bunker Show, except that’s not going to happen. Or maybe it will happen times ten thousand because this show did insane numbers and most viewers are idiots.
Shockingly little, I guess!