This is a Joke, Right? Part 1

Paul (age 51) likes comedies (as do I), and we watch them together. What I've learned is that comedy, like language or the Neocon case for creationism, is always evolving. (To watch a show with someone whose taste was formed in the sixties, the generation gap becomes obvious.) How I've learned this is when we watch a comedy he suggests, I get it, but sometimes I don't think it's that funny (like It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World which featured every significant comedian of the era and was a bad bad bad bad movie but for some reason was remade into Ratrace a few years back, and the Jack Benny Show which is from waaaay back in the day, but still pretty good). When we watch something that I think is funny, he doesn't get it (he doesn't like the Simpsons!? and thought the Big Lewbowski was just OK). So when we settled down to watch a memorial on the bygone days of Saturday Night Live's funniness because it's what he liked so much in college, I was amazed to find how smart it was, to find how it made its mark on our culture, setting the precident for shit like the afore mentioned Simpsons, and The Kids in the Hall (also produced by Lorne Micheals) amongst others (including non-animated shows). One sketch in particular stands out. In it, Dan Aykroyd parodies Julia Child, cuts himself, and the scene results in the blood bath. The reason this skit stands out is not for its artistic or creative ingenuity, but because the previous night that exact same skit was recreated on a brand new episode of Mad TV (a show that prides itself for being 'edgy'). To be fair to the cast of Mad TV, there were subtle differences, such as: 1, Julia Childs was replaced with John Madden, and 2, the butcher knife was replaced with power tools. The end result however, was identical.