Is laughter the best medicine? Anyone with any sense four years ago would have said, “No, you imbecile. A vaccine is the best medicine. And a mask.”
But as I go through my list of favourite YouTube videos harking back to the dark 2020 lockdown months with my three favourite Irish lads – collectively calling themselves Foil Arms and Hog – dominating the list, I now know that when it comes to medicine, laughter is a very close contender in the absence of a vaccine and the presence of questionable mask-wearers.
Of course, when March 2020 plunged the world into unchartered territory, comedy did not immediately head the list of priorities. Lockdown brought with it a lot of unwanted hard lessons for humanity. For example, it opened our eyes to the large section humanoids who truly believed that strapping a mask across their chins (carefully leaving the mouth and nose exposed) would prevent the free flow of a deadly airborne virus. And lockdown taught me, personally, that schools adore inventing new unfathomable ways of teaching maths, all of which can be successfully implemented at torture facilities around the globe. It was not until a few weeks later, trapped in a house with the grocery run being the only escape route, that I – and the world – understood the importance of gold-standard entertainment.
Friends vs Seinfeld: What comedy should be about
Besides mask-wearing and unfathomable schoolwork, one of the biggest lessons lockdown taught was how low the bar can sink when it comes to entertainment, and I need provide no further proof to back up this argument other than these three words: ‘tiger’, ‘king’, and ‘mullet’.
However, as the showbiz world was forced to cease and desist after thrusting Tiger King upon us, Netflix did the next best thing: bring back Friends. The world may have looked bleak, but that didn’t mean that laughter should be the first thing to die! By bringing back Friends, at least, there was a chance the Millennials, at least, would binge and keep subscribing as they were transported to happier times, keeping the all-consuming dread temporarily at bay.
But some of us are past the tentacles of Friends and the canned laughter. Some of us prefer the absolute lack of morals displayed unabashedly in Seinfeld. Like Friends, Seinfeld was also saddled with the obligatory laugh track all sitcoms were forced to endure, but took pains to impart zero life lessons and made no attempt to elicit any emotions other than unbridled joy at the protagonists’ downfall.
However, if Gen Z audiences can find Ross Gellar’s stance on being on a break and asking Rachel to get off a plane problematic, then Lord only knows what they will make of George Costanza from Seinfeld. George racks up a multitude of sins during his time on the show. His highlights include inadvertently poisoning his fiancée by purchasing cheap envelopes laced with questionable glue, and then struggling to hide his glee at being released from impending marriage upon her untimely death. George later almost weeps (in public) when he learns that had the fiancée been promoted to wife during her lifetime, he would have inherited millions of her fortune.
What can we take away from this? We can safely conclude that at the hands of Gen Z, George would have been crucified well head of Ross, and Seinfeld reruns would be cancelled forever. It’s a good thing Netflix did not upload Seinfeld during this sensitive time period to a generation that had little else to do besides writing damning online theses of TV shows.
Internet comedy: finding a diamond in the rough
Naturally, with TikTok and YouTube shorts in our lives in a relentless pursuit to shrink attention span into ever smaller capsules, there is no shortage of internet comedians attempting to take over the world. Unlike a sitcom, you don’t need a big budget and a contract with a network to make a name for yourself – all you really need is a phone and an audience who will listen when you beg, “Please subscribe!” Is there any hope, then, of finding comedy gold?
Absolutely. There is a diamond in the rough, and that diamond is a trio of Irish lads going by the charming moniker Foil Arms and Hog. For the past few years, every Thursday, these three guys faithfully drop a new video at 8AM Irish time to brighten up a glorious three minutes of your day. Back in 2019, I was urged by a kindly soul pre-lockdown to check out the Foil Arms and Hog video on Brexit, and if anyone has covered this era of political history with more wit and finesse, I have yet to witness it.
Being Irish, Foil Arms and Hog took special pride in how the UK had managed to cook up a disaster for itself with no external help, and even composed a charming little song where they illustrated just how painful it is to break free from a union, cheerfully singing about all the countries in the British Empire that had been wronged as proof (complete with a fabulous tin whistle solo.)
But it isn’t just Brexit! Pick almost any topic under the sun, and in three-minute segments, Foil Arms and Hog will have covered it in a beautiful little skit. Vaccines, fruit, vegetables, football, Olympics, childcare, immigration officers, period dramas, the trauma of cancelling a gym membership, evil grandmothers, strict Irish mothers (eerily similar to Pakistani mothers), months of the year, days of the week, the contents of your fridge, prison life, encountering a snob on a plane – they’ve got it all.
At this point, you must be wondering how on earth anyone can make a video on days of the week without the target audience being a small child – and in response, I can only urge you to expand your mind by typing the words Foil Arms and Hog in YouTube. Soak in the comedy rabbit hole you are about to freefall into. Because sometimes, laughter really is the best medicine.
