Overanalyzing Rodney Dangerfield's Best Joke

What a crowd, what a crowd! I tell ya, I'm alright now but last blog post I was in a rough shape, ya know... After the last blog post I wrote, Google recommended me – Hey, would you like to share this to all of your friend?... That's the story of mine life, I get no respect, no respect at all! And my wife, she ain't no prize neither. When we got married she had me take our wedding picture, that way I wouldn't be in it! Are you kiddin', I know I'm ugly. The other day I went for a prostate exam and the doctor shoved his fingers in my mouth!... And health, oh, that's another problem. I told my psychiatrist – Doc, I'm sad, I'm ugly, my wife hates me and I get no respect at all! And he went – Good, at least we know you're not crazy... But it's not all bad, Johnny, you gotta take the good with the bad, you know, and at least I get a little more respect than one man, and that man is Rodney Dangerfield.

Rodney Dangerfield was known as the comedian with a thousand jokes, or at least that's what I'm calling him now, so it's safe to assume he had many jokes there, a thousand perhaps, but for my money, there is one which rises above all the rest, a joke so good it may well be perfect, a brilliant joke which, coupled with Rodney's look of utter misery right after delivering it, makes him the best comedian of all time, and that joke is...

And I was ugly... When I was a kid I never got any girls either. One girl told me–Come on over, there's nobody home–I went over, there was nobody home!

Flawless.

An old chunk of coal once said that the perfect joke would have to be one in which the setup and the punchline are almost identical. If he's right about that then this Rodney joke is indeed the perfect one, it's the greatest joke ever told. For my money it is, without question, and I'll explain why... Let's start with the basics – how does a one-liner really work? I often like to think of it as one would of logic down at the university of science there. In a nutshell, and because I don't know enough logic to explain more than in a nutshell, there are valid arguments and invalid ones. An argument is valid if its premises logically guarantee the conclusion, for example,

All men own a doghouse.

Rodney is a man.

Therefore, Rodney owns a doghouse.

That argument is valid regardless of the truth of its premises because the conclusion is guaranteed, it logically derives from the premises, it simply cannot be any other way. However, when it comes to an invalid argument, the conclusion isn't guaranteed by the premises, for example,

Rodney gets no respect.

Rodney is a man.

Therefore, all men get no respect.

This argument is invalid because we can't logically conclude that all men get no respect just because it just so happens that Rodney don't, we can't make such a broad conclusion based on an individual case. All elephants are gray but not all gray things are elephants, that sort of thing... Now, why do I explain all of this gobbledygook? Because I think a good one-liner works similarly to the example of the valid argument, only difference is it springs the conclusion, that is to say, the punchline, in such a way that makes us realize that the argument was actually invalid all along, it makes us feel surprised that we didn't interpret the setup in that way, and therefore, we laugh. Of course it's all language games, it's all metaphor or trickery, it's obviously not logic per say, but the twist of the conclusion is what makes the punchline funny. If you see the punchline coming a mile away then it won't be that funny, and by the way, the same principle applies to compliments. If you're gonna compliment someone, leave the punchline of the compliment to the very end. If you do you might just get a wife better than mine, I tell ya...

Now, to test my theory, feel free to go through Rodney's act and take your pick. I think you'll find almost all of his jokes follow precisely that principle – he brings up a normal, everyday occurrence, sets it up with half of the story being played by a straight man, and then he hits us with the punchline, thereby revealing that we actually misunderstood the whole thing. For example, he says he got no respect from the time he was born. A very sad story that we don't really buy into, but that story is setting up the punchline. Then he mentions how after being born, the doctor smacked him. That's a bit of a weird way to phrase it since it's a normal occurrence after birth to make the baby cry so as to stimulate breathing, and thus the doctor is being the straight man in the joke. But then Rodney sadly mentions how the nurse got a few smacks in to... That's the punchline which makes that initial setup make sense, we learn that Rodney really didn't get any respect, and the doctor perhaps wasn't being much of a straight man after all. The whole thing is a basic setup-payoff which is almost a whole story in an of itself. So to rework the best joke of all we start with,

And I was ugly... When I was a kid I never got any girls either.

That's the basic setup we need to keep in mind but so often forget to, which is why Rodney was the best. He gets no respect, hasn't gotten any respect from the day he was born and nothing will ever change that, no matter how often his stories appear to begin with a silver lining, a forlorn hope in the distant horizon, a new dawn which will finally shine some light upon good ol' Rodney.

One girl told me–Come on over, there's nobody home–

Here is that silver lining. Maybe things are looking up for Rodney, maybe he's not that ugly nor that sad since there's this girl who's now interested in him and eagerly awaiting privacy in her own quarters so she can spend that sweet, ever-fleeting time by engaging in forbidden trysts with our funny man.

I went over, there was nobody home!

And then, boom! Rodney's heart is shattered once again, but not only that, it happens in such a way that makes so much sense when you consider his whole life's story, and furthermore, it's an incredibly heartless thing for the girl to do, and even further than that, it was wholly spoiled in precisely the previous sentence. This joke is like a thriller that keeps dropping hints of its twist, hints that you totally ignore or that go way over your head until the finale when the twist is fully revealed and you feel like an idiot. This joke is just that in an almost wholly identical way, and that's why Rodney was the best. Have you ever told a joke and accidentally spoiled an important detail or even the punchline itself? The whole thing is ruined right away or people can guess the punchline before it comes and then just laugh as a courtesy. But with this joke, the punchline is actually revealed, almost word-for-word, before its time. And if you can tell a funny story by repeating the same thing twice you really are a comedy genius.

Anyway, that's about it from me. I've been thinking about this for a while now and since my doctor told me I should write a blog if I wanted to quit watching porn, I figured what the heck...

What's new with you?

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