Wacky Races Forever pilot

@Known Unknown: Film? Seriously? You do realise that movie series rarely last longer than three movies; James Bond is the exception, and each of those movies is self-contained.

As for the other media you mentioned, let's look at anime. Even in anime, the more outright comedic something is, the less plot it tends to have. I haven't read Doctor Slump, so I can't comment on that; does it have a big ongoing story, or is it mostly that later chapters reference earlier ones?

As for live-action TV, the trend is even more true. Sitcoms don't have ongoing plots, they just have a single self-contained episode each week, and once in a while alter the status quo. However, changes to the status quo are rare, and doing so doesn't indicate a true ongoing plot, it just means that events occasionally don't get undone and are instead incorporated into next week's story. The series that do have ongoing stories are the soap operas, which are almost entirely dramatic.

For a perfect example, see Friends; as it went on, the amount of humour in each episode decreased in direct proportion to the strength of the continuity.

Also, I haven't seen Firefly either, but I was under the impression that it was an action/adventure series with humour in it, rather than a comedy.

Although, as I was typing this thread, I remembered The Order Of The Stick. OK, I'll grant that that successfully fused an ongoing story with proper comedy; then again, it was aimed at an older audience, and it doesn't have to build every single strip around one thing (ie racing).

Counterpoint to the "more comedy = less plot" thing. Bobobo Bobo Bobo of all things had an ongoing plot, vague as it was. Or at least, it had a fairly solid arc-based structure to its story.

^^ You consider a film series to be the only way a film can have a plot? A single film with plot is the idea I'm talking about - you don't need a series to do that.

Perhaps we should get something straight. Plot =/= Story Arc. When I said comedy works with plots, I meant stand alone plots. Sorry if there was some miscommunication there.

Also, just because most comedy series don't utilize an ongoing story arc doesn't mean that it can't or that it can't succeed. So far you're only argument is, "It can't work because no one did it before", which is a very flimsy argument. It relies on the idea that no successes means a ton of failures. Plus the idea that a series can't do much with a single topic, such as racing, is absurd. It's like saying that detective dramas can't be good because all they do is solve a murder every single episode. Or that superhero comics can't be good because all they do is fight crime. A lot can be said and done about a single topic. Just because they're racing doesn't mean they can't explore some meaningful plot.

Stuff like this should exist or that Problem Solvers crap. As a long time fan of wacky races I am disappointed once again in the poor choices the network has made.

Just going to point out that Plot it an omnipresent trope that's in nearly all stories. There are exceptions, like certain games (See No Plot? No Problem!) and many Porn stuff (which technically aren't stories, to begin with), but the stuff that has plot outnumbers the stuff that don't.

Even stuff like an Excuse Plot is still a plot.

Therefore, saying that comedies don't have plot is a very big misnomer, even if it's not that much.

Examples of single comedy films that have plots:

Silent Movie: A group of people trying to make a Recursive Canon film and trying to get said film to be a success.

Kung Pow!: About a being (literally) called The Chosen One fighting off an evil conspiracy in an apparent parody of China.

Naked Gun: "While trying to clear the name of Officer Nordberg, Drebin uncovers a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II".

All three are parodies of silent films, Hong Kong Dub kung-fu movies and cops films, respectively, and they all have plenty of gags.

EDIT: Apologies for necro'ing this thread - I Didn't Think This Through. -.-

edited 7th Apr '14 10:04:20 AM by KarjamP

I for one am glad, that was 8 mins well spent..id have watched that show

You mean it didn't become a full series?

Nope, it didn't.

Isn't there a Wacky Races-styled racing game using several new CN properties, like Gumball, Adventure Time, Ben 10 and Regular Show? It'd be interesting to see that in an animated format, although sadly red tape seems to be far more restricting nowadays than it was then (those shows interact all the time in bumpers, but I don't remember any major crossovers since the days of Billy & Mandy, much less ones that play with several properties at once).