Making your wife look stupid for depending on you is not funny

Shakespeare's Sister gives Knocked Up a thumbs up!

clipped from www.shakesville.com [Director Judd Apatow] deftly handles an issue I’ve rarely (if ever; none that I can recall) seen addressed so pointedly in his genre—the idea that a guy who makes himself emotionally unavailable to a woman he’s married is (Apatow’s term) a shitty husband, that withdrawing from the relationship whenever one feels like it because one “needs a break” is (Apatow’s term again) mean.  It’s the categorical opposite to the ubiquitous sitcom built around the inattentive, immature husband and nagging, substitute-mom wife, in which being precisely that kind of mean—hiding out in the basement, lying and scheming to avoid family obligations, making your wife look stupid for depending on you—is routinely exploited for laughs...“The ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ relationship between Alison’s sister and brother-in-law is exposed as the miserable hell those relationships really are, and there’s no tidy resolution for their problems.

Comments

[Claire]

Lance, the clipmarks doo-hickey is cool.