I enjoyed Curb - I made it through one and a half seasons - but I couldn't continue watching it. I may just have a low threshold for enduring discomfort, but Curb just keeps pushing and pushing the cringe meter. For Louis CK, it's about what happens WITH the discomfort. Curb, to me, is a DISPLAY of discomfort that is funny to a point, but then just has very little redeeming value beyond that.
Another example of the same dilemma would be Ricky Gervais - I really enjoy his comedy specials and stand-up work, but I couldn't watch the original Office or something like Extras. It's funny alright, but if I have to pause it for the cringe to go away every other minute, it just looses focus to me. Cringe->Funny is a proven vehicle these days, bit it's to a point where I find it a little too simple, really.
Anyhow - Louis CK (and, to a point, Gervais in his stand-up) glances at the cringe and then opens up a world of insight around it that is way funnier than just having the cringe meter top off every thirty seconds.
I know exactly what you mean here. I also sometimes have trouble tolerating cringe-comedy situations although seemingly not as bad as you.
I actually used to get very uncomfortable while watching some Shakespearian comedy-of-errors plays. The type where the audience knows something that the actors don't. Makes me want to shout at them which is I guess the point however I feel like it is not an enjoyable type of anxiety.
Perhaps it is the engineer/nerdy part of us but I really don't enjoy watching people make mistakes.
Yes, I do think that is the case. I also just, very plainly, don't see that much craft in drama-from-ignorance. Sure, "x knows something that y doesn't, subsequently y runs into a number of cringeworthy encounters" does make for drama, but if somebody saying "no y, actually, it's THIS" would destroy the entire plot from thereon, I find the whole setup a bit stale.
Same goes for "x is a twat, situations involving x will make you cringe" shows - there are only a few like that which I can tolerate and they make a huge effort to assign enough other redeeming qualities to x to make up for it. For Curb, I do like Larrys character, but after a while, it seemed like he existed solely to feed the cringe.
And yes, I have it bad. The last episodes of Curb that I watched, I permanently had my finger on the space bar. Sometimes, I would have to pause it for periods of time that were longer than the show itself.
An awful lot of it is, yes. I suspect it has something to do with what John Cleese once coined to be the Brits' paramount desire to just make it into your grave without being embarrassed once.
Another example of the same dilemma would be Ricky Gervais - I really enjoy his comedy specials and stand-up work, but I couldn't watch the original Office or something like Extras. It's funny alright, but if I have to pause it for the cringe to go away every other minute, it just looses focus to me. Cringe->Funny is a proven vehicle these days, bit it's to a point where I find it a little too simple, really.
Anyhow - Louis CK (and, to a point, Gervais in his stand-up) glances at the cringe and then opens up a world of insight around it that is way funnier than just having the cringe meter top off every thirty seconds.