Punch Line: Difference between revisions

== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* Subversion: The boys behind ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' apparently felt no need to tack a punchline at the end of every sketch, no matter what [[The BBC]] told them. They usually offered a segue into the next sketch instead, though a few sketches made fun of such punchlines. The restaurant sketch with the dirty fork is an example of the latter, where the cheesiness of the punchline (which is marked by a title card saying 'And now for the punchline' and was {{spoiler|"Luckily I didn't tell him about the dirty knife."}}) is shown to ruin the humour of the sketch. When a later sketch is ended by a policeman who tries to arrest everyone for making a strange sketch, another policeman then enters and tries to arrest everyone else for trying to get out of the sketch without a punchline.

** In a particularly [[Zig-Zagging Trope|Zigzagging]] example of this trope, a rather long winded sketch about a door to door practical joke salesman ends with the salesman whispering "do the punchline". The actor is understandably confused and speaks to the producer to check if they are scheduled for a punchline. The producer pulls out a script, bursts out laughing at the punchline...and then drives off without telling either the actor or the audience. So the lack of punchline about a punchline about a lack of punchline was itself a punchline.

* Another subversion was ''[[A Bit of Fry and Laurie]]''. In one memorable sketch, Hugh Laurie stopped in the middle to protest that this was one of those sketches where Stephen's role just got sillier until there was no way to end things properly, and it was just abandoned. Stephen protested that of ''course'' there was a proper end to the sketch, and he'd go and get the script to prove it. After a few seconds, Hugh realised he wasn't coming back.

** Similarly, ''[[The Kids in The Hall]]'' sketch [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvn20p6HNbE "Comedy Inc"], in which a comedy writer's boss chews him out for writing bad sketches like "Comedy Inc", ends with a long pause, after which the boss asks the writer, "You forgot to write an ending, didn't you?"