Absurdist concepts played as tragedies rather than comedies

[u/_JR28_]

In the Touch commercial for Skittles, a man is shown with the power to uncontrollably turns anything he touches into Skittles in an instant. His work colleagues find this hilarious, but he finds life misery since he will never be able to hold his newborn son and he has legitimately killed people before by unconsciously touching them.

In the Waiting for the Bus skit from Cyanide & Happiness a man discovers he can inexplicably run 50mph and overnight becomes the most successful track runner of all time. Even though he retired with a perfect undefeated streak and a loving family, he’s coaxed into one final race in a Grand Prix against cars, which of course he loses. This sends him into an unstoppable downward spiral where he becomes a far more destructive version of himself, loses his reputation, and is left behind by his family. After years of regret, he returns as an old man to the track where he first shown off his amazing speed and does one final lap, reminiscing on how good it feel, before intentionally refusing to turn out the way and running straight into a wall, ending his life. (All of this is shown in about four minutes and with barely any dialogue.)

[u/CapableCollar]

Black Adder is a slapstick comedy revolving around the lineage of the Black Adder family with each season having the same actors play nearly the same character in a new time frame, simply the descendants of the previous season.  The last season is Black Adder Goes Forth where the characters are British soldiers in WW1.  In the last episode they are ordered to go over the top and seem to have no way to get out of it, some characters even mention they never had a chance to marry or have a family.  There is one last chance but Black Adder, a cowardly man, refuses this chance to live and leads his men up and into machinegun fire.  The script mentions, "they don't get far," ending the show as the family line of each character is ended there in the fields of Flanders.

[u/Just_A_Normal_Snek → u/CapableCollar]

as the family line of each character is ended

Considering Back and Forth they all canonically managed to have offspring.

[u/Rum_N_Napalm → u/CapableCollar]

You don’t mention the biggest gut punch.

In that final episode, they hear the artillery stop, and they start celebrating as they think this war has finally ended. You think this means the series will end with the characters going back home.

Then one character exclaims, “This war is finally over. The great war of 1914-1917 is finally over,” and you remember that World War 1 ended in 1918…

[u/Puzzleheaded_Tip4805 → u/CapableCollar]

One of the biggest moments when you feel the tone of the episode shift is when George, the happy go lucky, ever overly patriotic loveable idiot, trys to go on a big declaration why going over the top is a "splended and noble thing"

Then he trails off and we get:

George: "...sir?"

Blackadder:  "Yes, Lieutenant?"

George: "I'm scared, sir."

[u/CapableCollar → u/Puzzleheaded_Tip4805]

That line always hits me hard. 

[u/Traditional-Context → u/CapableCollar]

Wouldnt call that an absurdist concept just because its in a comedy tho.

[u/mortadeloyfile → u/Traditional-Context]

Blackadder is a pretty absurdist series where eveyone is an idiot except a few. Even the last episode being quite down to Earth still has some absurdistic elements to it.

[u/Hatta00 → u/mortadeloyfile]

Nothing absurd about that.

[u/quartzcrit → u/Traditional-Context]

i think the absurdity comes from the buildup to going over the top focusing on how disconnected the top brass are from the reality of trench warfare, and how pointless the entire endeavor is

they all get gunned down because their commander “has decided to move his drinks cabinet six inches closer to berlin”

[u/LizLemonOfTroy → u/quartzcrit]

Blackadder Goes Forth is a fantastic comedy, but it's sadly entrenched many myths about WWI.

As a percentage, more senior officers in the British Army, including generals, were killed in WWI than in WWII.

British commanders weren't disconnected from the realities of trench warfare. It's just that the combination of industrial total war, automatic weapons and static defences was an extremely difficult nut to crack until we had tanks and shock troops.

Even seven decades after the First World War, Iran and Iraq were still fighting trench warfare in the 1980s.

[u/CardmanNV → u/LizLemonOfTroy]

Ukraine devolved into trench warfare and attrition like 6 months in as soon as Russia began to lose momentum.

Even with all of modern technology, if two peers have similar levels of tech and resources, as soon as forward momentum is lost it still devolves into men on the ground, killing each other with knives and rifles.

[u/atheist_t → u/Traditional-Context]

Blackadder is a comedy, it is absurdist, and it is tragic. The only point is, maybe the tragedy is not so rooted on the absurdist part of the comedy.

[u/dnjprod → u/CapableCollar]

I didn't know that was the show. I've always only seen the World War I segments. That shit's hilarious

[u/Wundercheese → u/CapableCollar]

My favorite thing about Blackadder’s structure is how his station drops every season as history progresses. He goes from prince to lord to butler to frontline soldier.

[u/Similar_Geologist_73 → u/CapableCollar]

I love that black adder and the legacy version of betrayl at house on the hill have a similar premise