LogFAQs > #961183738

YoukaiSlayer posted...

Thats not remotely impossible to do. Even with Komi, the awkward silence is a subversion of expectations the first time. You expect the beautiful ice queen Komi to have a refined or dominating response and then that is subverted when instead she says nothing, further subverted when you realize it's because she is too awkward to speak and isn't actually this cool beauty she appears to be at first glance. That's the joke and it lands well the first time. But the second time we see it, we already know all those things, it's no longer subverting any expectation, it is the expectation. The show tells the exact same joke 5 times an episode, every episode.

There's also Komi's classmates. Initially they seem a bit obsessive over Komi but otherwise like elite students at this elite school and then it's revealed in situations that actually, everyone at this school is completely insane. The expectation was setup and then subverted and it was funny. Once. The second time it happens, we already know everyone is crazy, it's not a surprise.

The show tells both of these same jokes over and over and over again.

That's not to say the show is never funny, but they run these 2 gags into the ground. When it tells other jokes, sometimes it's still funny. Like in the last episode I watched, they switched to their summer uniforms and we see one at a time each person freaking out over how cute Komi looks in her summer uniform until it gets to the "dog" girl who is chubby and she is just looking with dismay at the now visible flab on her own arms instead, subverting the expectation that she too would gawk at how cute Komi is.

Those moments are too few and far between though.

Recurring gags are a huge thing in 4koma and they tend to hit pretty reliably, with the exception of series that just aren't that funny (Uramichi Oniisan, for instance). A lot of it just comes down to how the supporting characters sell their reaction. And you can get a lot of mileage out of a reaction. It's why the straight man in a comedy duo is often the workhorse.