I’m actually kind of surprised at how much I’ve been looking forward to this episode. This show is just a lot of fun – it’s witty, colorful, and endearing, and has a great sense of humor that isn’t tied to any single gag. Basically, the world itself is funny – a world where the Great Ruler Kate actually makes sense, a world where those meddling do-gooders can be fooled by flipping the sign on your secret base, a world where you decide to conquer the world just because you want a bigger family. When your world is inherently funny, you don’t have to stretch too far for jokes, which is good – trying too hard is the easiest way to kill almost any joke.
Not that making jokes look natural and effortless is easy, either. They have to emerge naturally while still being witty – the fact that the base world plays with your viewer’s expectations in a way conducive to humor doesn’t mean you get to slack off.
And trying too little is also death – even when you’re going for simple jokes, that just puts that much more weight on every tool you do use. You can’t just have a character make a funny face – first the audience has to buy into that character, then the audience has to buy why that face would be funny relative to that character, then you have to perfect your pacing and direction, and even then the face better friggin’ convey what you’re trying to convey, since so much of the humor in funny faces is based in “wow, that expression makes complete yet ridiculous sense,” not just the face being silly.
Basically, humor sucks. I don’t know why anyone would try to be funny, it’s too much work and no-one appreciates it. As far as art forms go, it may be the one that gets the least credit relative to the work involved.
