Comedies are often seen as simply light entertainment, and awards are rarely given to comedy programmes. Which is a shame, because, when you get a good one, they have the power to change the world, one giggle at a time.

While it might be a stretch to say that watching comedy shows is educational, sometimes we can learn some really important life lessons while having a laugh.

Here are 10 things you might have learned from watching comedy shows on TV.

10 Comedy Acts That Went Horribly Wrong

10 It’s OK to Be a Woman

I Love Lucy was a ground-breaking show in more ways than one. For starters, it was her show, and her real-life husband, Desi Arnaz, who played her on screen husband, was always only a supporting act. Which, in the 1950s, was unusual. Arnaz did manage to get second billing by the time the late 1950s, when the show was reinvented as The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Show. Which isn’t quite as catchy.

When their marriage ended in 1962, Lucille Ball bought out her ex-husband to own the production company outright, one of the few women to do so at the time. She was also one of the first women to appear on TV while pregnant, although she was not allowed to use that term. She was only allowed to be ‘expecting’, which was considered a much more seemly description.

The show featured a kooky Lucy doing silly things, while her straight-laced husband tries, and fails, to make her act like a married woman should. While those around her were sipping wine, she was having fun stomping the grapes the made it.^[1]

Sounds like much more fun.

9 It’s OK to Be Gay

Before Ellen Degeneres was a talk show host, she had her own sitcom, Ellen, which was incredibly popular. And then, in 1997, she told the world that she was gay. Almost at the same time, her TV character also announced that she was gay.

It’s probably fair to say that the announcement received a mixed reaction. The now famous ‘Puppy Episode’ where the announcement was made, led to her receiving death threats. It also won her awards. The show was picked up for a 5th season, but each episode now began with a warning that the comedy featured ‘Adult Content’.

Despite eventually being scrapped, the show has been widely applauded, and credited with paving the way for shows such as Will and Grace, which increased the representation of gay people on screen. Her contribution was rewarded by a Medal of Freedom, presented to her by President Obama in 2016.^[2]

Her show may have been cancelled, but Ellen Degeneres went on to become one of the most successful talk show hosts in the world.

8 It’s OK Not to Have a Life Plan

Friends changed a lot of things. The show made drinking coffee, in boutique coffee shops kind of cool. It made the term ‘on a break’, the subject of a million arguments between couples around the world. It gave a whole new meaning to the term ‘pivot’. But most of all, it said, it’s OK to be 30 and not have your life all mapped out.

With the exception of boring old Ross, all the friends had a go at a number of different careers before finding something that they loved. It was OK if they were broke, or out of work, or doing menial jobs to get by.

None of them (except Ross) knew what they were going to be doing in 5 years’ time, and they were OK with that. Sometimes its just nice to hang out with friends.^[3]

In a coffee shop.

7 It’s OK to be Bored at Work

Sometimes work is boring. And sometimes it’s REALLY boring. The Office did more than any other programme set in a workplace to show just how dull work can be.

So dull, in fact, that you might be compelled to hold your own Office Olympics.

With 8 hours to fill, and an endless supply of paper balls and coffee cups, what else are you going to do?

Not work, that’s for sure.

The Office showed that it is OK not to be enthusiastic about your job. You are there for the money. You are not really a team player. Don’t worry. No one else likes doing Team Building Exercises either.

Except, of course, Michael Scott.^[4]

And that’s OK too.

6 It’s OK to Be Neurotic

Seinfeld has regularly been voted the best sitcom ever. A fantastic achievement for a ‘show about nothing’. Despite the fact that almost every character on the show is neurotic in one way or another, the characters appear to be universally loved.

A group of psychiatry students ‘studied’ the programme, and concluded that Seinfeld himself suffers from OCD, with his obsessive compulsion for neatness, and Kramer probably has a schizoid personality disorder, while George is ego-centric to a fault. And then there is the original single-white-female “social justice warrior”, Elaine. She certainly has anger issues, but then she is the child of an alcoholic, which is a common trigger.

Apparently.

Despite the fact that the characters display some alarming mental health issues from time to time, they all seem to manage just fine.

Which is reassuring to the rest of us.^[5]

And it’s funny, too.

10 Hilarious Attempts To Rephrase Controversial Things

5 It’s OK to Be Pretentious

A programme about a couple of pretentious psychiatrists whose hobbies include wine-tasting, opera and not getting girls, doesn’t sound like the perfect recipe for a hit show. And yet Frasier, the most successful spin-off show ever, made it through 11 seasons of fierce sibling rivalry, classism, and constant references to Frasier’s Alma Mater (Harvard, just in case you didn’t know) in order to win an impressive 37 Primetime Emmys.

Despite living with his working-class ex-cop father and even more working-class British housekeeper, Frasier never quite manages to enjoy the less fine things in life. At the end of the 11th season, Frasier and Niles were just as pretentious and just as competitive as they had been at the beginning of season one.

There was that time they decided to write a book together. Or run their own restaurant. Or join the wine club. Every social occasion became an opportunity to get one over on each other or, even better, on someone else.^[6]

Despite that, the Crane boys were extremely likable, and painfully honest.

If only Frasier could manage to hang on to a relationship.

Happily, we can look forward to more from the hilarious brothers, as Frasier is set to return to our TV sets in a new series, date TBD.

4 It’s OK to Be a Nerd

The Big Bang Theory is said to have done more than any other TV programme to make scientists cool. Which is strange, considering that the cast consists of one genius with anti-social tendencies, one genius with anxiety issues, a genius who would like to be cool but knows he’s not, and an engineer.

Although they do share an unhealthy interest in dressing up like superheroes, watching science fiction and playing improbable games of chess, The Big Bang Theory really celebrates being smart.

And not only is it OK to be smart. You can also be a nerd. It’s OK to have your own spot on the sofa, or knock 3 times on a door. The characters bring academic rigor to the most banal situations, testing out theories that, really, just don’t need to be tested.

But it’s not just the characters who like to get the science right. The show employs scientific consults to ensure that the science is accurate. Because of this the show has regularly featured guest appearances by real-life scientists, including Stephen Hawking, who appeared on the show in Season 5 and had an entire episode named after him.

The show was so successful in making science look, if not cool, at least interesting, that interest in Physics received a huge boost in classrooms around the world.^[7]

3 It’s OK to Be a Dysfunctional Family

Although animated, The Simpsons is a classic sitcom based on the lives of a working-class American family. Having completed 32 seasons, and almost 700 episodes, the family have suffered almost every disaster it is possible to imagine. The father is lazy, a poor father and a worse husband. His wife doesn’t seem to notice. Possibly because she is so busy keeping the home and the children together, which, considering the children she was blessed with, is no mean feat.

Not only was The Simpsons the story of a family, however, it was also the story of an ever-expanding community of neighbors, work-colleagues, churchgoers, politicians and the media. Luckily for production costs most of the actors plays several characters, and celebrities compete for the honor of guesting on the show and being turned into a yellow caricature.

While The Simpsons are not the sort of neighbors you would want to live next to in real life, (what with the dog barking, saxophone playing and constant yelling), they have come to be one of the most loved families in America.

The show spawned a million memes, most of them beginning with Homer’s favorite word ‘D’Oh!’, but the phrase that made it to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was one of Groundskeeper Willie’s. He described the entire French nation as ‘cheese-eating surrender monkeys’.^[8]

Le ouch!

2 It’s OK for Old Women to Like Sex

In 1985 any sitcom that starred 4 women, was unusual, but a main cast of 4 old women was unheard of. The Golden Girls was a ground- breaking show. The 4 friends were all, one way or another, single, and, shock horror, they all quite liked sex.

They talked about having sex, about not having sex, good sex, bad sex and boring sex. Sex in all its forms, in fact.

The show was just as novel discussing gay issues, same-sex marriage, porn, and sexually transmitted diseases. Though the subjects were often thought to be controversial at the time, The Golden Girls managed to explore them with a mixture of innocence, interest and irony that made the show less threatening to many viewers.

Some audiences found the idea of people watching porn uncomfortable. But group of elderly ladies sitting in their living room watching a porn movie seemed somehow disarming.

Until, that is, one of them suddenly stood up, pointed at the TV and said, ‘I did that once’.^[9]

1 It’s OK to be silly

In 1969, Monty Python’s Flying Circus was like nothing ever seen before. In fact, the show is still considered to be the wildest, funniest, strangest sketch show ever made. Only 45 episodes were ever made, but they spawned a new brand of surreal comedy that inspired a generation.

The show has been a particular inspiration to astronomers, who named 7 asteroids in honor of the Pythons, and to paleontologists, who discovered a dinosaur-python fossil, and named it “Montypythonoides Riversleighensis”. John Cleese even had a woolly lemur named after him.

The term ‘Pythonesque’ was defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “resembling the absurdist or surrealist humor of Monty Python’.
Their lasting legacy, however, is the popularization of a word that does not describe an asteroid, a dinosaur, or a lemur. The word, certainly, is a Pythonesque one, that is used daily by millions of internet users to describe something that is unwanted and unappealing.

Thank you, Monty Python, for giving us Spam.^[10]

Top 10 Mandela Effects (Movie And TV Edition!)

As much of a national pastime as baseball, television has become ingrained in US society. However, there are a number of detrimental effects which researchers have uncovered. Here are ten ways that watching TV is killing you.

10 Gives You High Cholesterol

A 1990 study at the University of California, Irvine, studied the cholesterol levels in children, investigating whether or not watching TV or playing video games had an effect. What they found was shocking: Children who watched more TV had elevated cholesterol levels; those who sat in front of the television for four hours a day were nearly four times as likely to suffer from heart disease later in life.

The reasons for the elevated levels were that the children who watched television were more likely to eat an unhealthy diet and rarely exercised. (The study mostly followed white middle-class children.)

9 Makes You Violent

In 1960, Professor Rowel Huesmann began a study, trying to document the effect of media violence on children. Ten years later, Huesmann and his team found an indisputable link between media violence and actual violence. Children who were exposed to it were more likely to behave aggressively than those who weren’t.

While people may disagree as to whether or not media violence is a “public threat,” the correlation is said to be similar to that of smoking and lung cancer. Not everyone who smokes gets cancer, just like not everyone who watches violent media becomes violent, but it is a contributing factor.

8 Makes You Dumber

A Johns Hopkins University study led by Dina Borzekowski found that children who watched more than two hours of television a day, especially those with a TV in their own rooms, scored significantly lower on standardized tests than their counterparts. (The study also found that having a computer with Internet access actually increased the scores.)

Also, a New Zealand study discovered that children and adolescents who watched the most television attained the least amount of educational success. Around 1,000 babies were chosen at random and were followed until they were 26 years old. Those who watched less television were more likely to graduate both high school and college.

7 Lowers Your Sperm Count

Published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a study by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health concluded that men with a sedentary lifestyle, especially one with prolonged television watching, had sperm counts 44 percent lower than men who spent little time in front of the TV. The threshold for the lower sperm count levels was 20 hours per week. (That may seem like a lot, but it’s less than three hours a day.)

Conversely, men who exercised at least 14 hours a week had the highest sperm count. Note that the quality of the sperm itself (i.e. motility and shape) remained unaffected. When asked why television was singled out, Jorge Chavarro, the senior author of the study, said the following: “One of the important mechanisms appears to be TV watchers are exposed to commercials for food. That makes you hungry and eat more.”

6 Turns You Into A Criminal

A research study conducted by a group of British researchers looked at a sample of more than 11,000 children born between 2000 and 2002 and found that those who watched at least three hours of television per day were more likely to engage in antisocial activities such as bullying or stealing. However, when looking at children who played three or more hours of video games per week, no statistical link was found.

One of the reasons put forth for why television could be responsible for the increased risk of criminal activity later in life is that violence plays a prominent role in much of what is aired, which is what a New Zealand study of over 1,000 people concluded. The study stated that the average rate of violent incidents per hour is eight, with children’s programming (cartoons or otherwise) containing even more violence.

5 Lowers Your Odds Of Surviving Colon Cancer

A study of more than 1,500 people who underwent treatment for colorectal cancer concluded that those who watched more television before their diagnosis were much more likely to die within five years than those who watched a moderate to nonexistent amount of television. However, there was no appreciable link between patient mortality and their post-diagnosis television habits.

A separate study, conducted by the US National Cancer Institute, examined over 566,000 people and showed a relatively strong link between television, exercise, and patient survivability but couldn’t prove a causal relationship. According to Hannah Arem, the author of the study: “The risk of dying from colorectal cancer was higher among the individuals who watched more TV [ . . . ] but the associations were not statistically significant.” However, they did conclude what most of these studies do: Some physical activity is better than no physical activity.

4 Inhibits Sleep

In a joint study between MassGeneral Hospital for Children and the Harvard School of Public Health, researchers wanted to examine the effects of a number of different factors during pregnancy and early childhood. The following criteria were examined—how much time an infant was in a room with a running television, how much time older children spent watching television, and whether or not children slept in a room with a television in it.

What they discovered was that each hour of television watching contributed to seven fewer minutes of sleep, and having a television in the bedroom contributed to 30 fewer minutes of sleep. (It also seemed to have a stronger effect on boys than girls.) A similar study in Spain showed that a nine-year-old who watched a minimum of five hours of television per day got one hour less of sleep than an equivalent nine-year-old who watched a maximum of one and a half hours.

3 Decreases Language Development

While it’s not a risk the readers of this list have to worry about for themselves personally, two different studies have shown that the more time babies spend in front of a television, the more slowly they learn to talk.

One study, conducted by the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, followed more than 300 children. They were fitted with audio recorders, which were worn continuously for 12 to 16 hours. It was observed that each hour of television contributed to a significant decrease in the amount of words the babies heard (a decrease of 770 words per recording session). This in turn decreased the amount of vocalization done by the babies, stunting their growth.

A similar study concluded that babies learn better from a live conversation. When nine-month-old US babies were introduced to a Mandarin speaker, they showed an ability to tell the difference between certain speech sounds after only 12 sessions. However, when they were placed in front of a television and shown a recording of Mandarin speaker, they were unable to show any enhanced ability.

2 Makes You Drink More

A joint group of scientists from the Netherlands and Canada collected 80 young males, aged 18–29, and put them in a number of different groups and had them watch television with varying degrees of alcohol consumption on screen. The study found that people drank an average of 1.5 more bottles of beer or wine when watching movies or commercials which heavily featured alcohol than those who watched ones which did not.

Though the study’s authors admitted they didn’t find proof of any long-term change brought on by the television watching, the short-term effects were undeniable. Rutger Engels, one of the researchers, said that “it might work as a cue that affects craving and subsequent drinking in people who are drinkers.”

1 Kills You Early

A study of the television habits of Australians concluded that watching television can dramatically reduce lifespan. The researchers behind the work showed that watching six hours a day can take 4.8 years off your life. Also, every hour of television watched after age 25 decreases life expectancy by 22 minutes.

In a related study performed by the Harvard School of Public Health, scientists concluded that more than three hours per day of television, or similar sedentary activities, increases the chances of premature death by 13 percent (usually via things like diabetes or cardiovascular disease).