'Two and a Half Men' actor calls his show 'filth'

[hifiguy]

59. Crude humor can be crude and very funny,

crude and kind of funny, or just plain crude. To me what counts is whether it is genuinely funny or not. Carlin and Pryor worked very blue and they made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to pass out. They also made me think. Smarmy sex jokes that never would have made it into a Playboy cartoon back in the bunnymag's '60s-'80s heyday just aren't funny unless you're 14.

Too much of today's TV humor - and I don't watch much anymore - is crude for the sake of being crude. And yes, I am looking straight at you, Seth McFarlane, even though I enjoy Family Guy more often than not, and BTW, your other shows suck donkey turds with hurricane force. There is nothing wrong with a well-timed fart joke as such, but when entire episodes of sitcoms are nothing but fart jokes or their comedic equivalents, things become desparately unfunny and very quickly.

I think the bronies are on to something in their enthusiasm for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. It's cute, smart, designed for audiences of all ages (so says creator Lauren Faust) and beautifully animated and acted. It's a welcome oasis of what is good, praiseworthy and decent (in the non-puritanical sense of the word) and a wonderful escape from the crude, the crass and the gross. Not that I want the latter to go away entirely as it is necessary once in a while. But there's no need to be as dumb and all-pervasive as it has become.

So while I will still watch Family Guy, I find MLP:FIM more satisfying entertainment on many more levels, and I don't have kids (though I am a lifelong animation geek).