Will Arnett has gone from being the star of the failed NBC Thursday night comedy Up All Night to the star of the CBS Thursday night sitcom, The Millers, and based on CBS’ track record, that’s probably a great move. On The Millers, Justified’s Margo Martindale plays Arnett’s mom that has just moved in with him after she and her husband (Beau Bridges) decide to split up, and it might be because she farts a lot. At least, having not yet seen the pilot, that’s what I’m taking away from the show’s creator, Greg Garcia, who is pretty pissed off that all people are talking about thus far is one fart joke.
“We’re not the farting show that some have made us out to be,” Garcia tells TVGuide.com with a laugh. “I’d like to say it’s not starting to bother me, but it’s starting to annoy the hell out of me. There’s a minute of farting — not even farting — fart jokes in the pilot. It’s a minute of a 21-minute pilot… and then it becomes every headline. There’s a scene with a few jokes and a callback at the end. It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, my farting mother has moved in with me! What the hell am I going to do?’ The basic fact is: If it wasn’t getting laughs, it wouldn’t have stayed in.” (Via TV Guide)
First of all, if you called the show My Farting Mother, it would be No. 1 on my DVR. As for Martindale, the Emmy-winning actress also doesn’t see the big deal, because like most classically-trained actresses, she’s also a sucker for a good fart joke.
“Overblown!” Martindale screams in laughter. “There’s so many jokes! I think people have made a mountain out of a fart cloud. … I find farting hilarious. Do I want to be the one doing it? Not really, but do I find it funny? I really do.”
If I can be honest for a second, I think that fart jokes are actually just about the lowest form of humor that we, as a society, can reduce ourselves to even associate with comedy. I, for one, can’t fathom what goes through a so-called comedy writer’s brain when he or she decides that in lieu of a clever riff on popular culture or an intelligent observation about an everyday situation, he or she will just settle for a gag (pun intended) regarding the passing of gas.
So do I feel bad for Garcia that his show is being pigeon-holed for one meaningless flatulence joke? Not one bit. After all, I believe it was the great writer Eugene O’Neill who penned the legendary phrase, “He who smelt it, should not have a pilot in development.”
