Comic Relief

So I know over the course of the next 24 hours, the internets is going to be awash in reactions, criticism and appreciation for How I Met Your Mother, and I assume rightly so either way.

I make the assumption, of course, because I've never sat down and watched a single one of the 208 episodes it's cranked out in its run.

*Editorial Note: Yes, I had to look that number up.

I can also say the same thing about virtually all the big TV sitcoms that have come out in the last ten years. Big Bang Theory hurts my brain with how over the top it is regarding geek culture. Two-and-a-Half Men was funny for about ten minutes and I lost interest in it, and I don't know half the other shows that my friends are seemingly invested in anymore.

With how little television I watch these days, I also realized something over the past weekend after watching one show I've grown rather enamored with. I seem to get more enjoyment out of watching macabre and potentially horrifying things like Hannibal, Luther and the other heavy psychological thrillers out there than I do watching something with a laugh track, and I'm not entirely sure why.

I mean I get having the need for being able to stand back and just laugh at the absurdities of life and when I was out with my brothers celebrating one of their birthdays two weeks ago, I probably laughed more in those four hours than I had in the previous four months.

Were I to try and pin it down, I guess the simplest reason I can throw out there is I seem to have lost the ability to see the funny side of life most of the time. Over the last few years, my perspective has shifted to see the world in a much darker and distorted light dominated by the more malevolent parts of the human psyche. It's not all awkward situations, easy resolutions and guarantees that the guy ends up with the girl in quasi-happy endings.

There be monsters out there. Real ones. And they are nothing to laugh at.

But it's in the midst of having such a cynical forced perspective that having any sense of humor to push those shadows back a bit is all the more important. I know I have sense of humor and I do genuinely like to laugh as much as anyone else does. I know because I make people laugh all the time, whether intentionally or otherwise.

It's just more than a little scary to think of all the things I may have lost in the last few years, my funny bone might have been one of the biggest casualties, because maybe more than I ever have, I need it.