Reviews Series / Jam

Yes it does.

Yeah, you're right: When you think about it, is something shot with a camera that... made it to something, so in that regard, you are right.

See! He Gets it.

Mr Kinker, I run an agency that employs thick people, and I believe you would be an exceptional employee. Would you like to schedule an interview?

^ Well that\'s needlessly rude.

I\'ve just realized that sketch comedy shows aren\'t all that common these days, I wonder if Kinker has even seen them before and isn\'t familiar with the format?

So, here\'s the thing. I\'m torn about the reaction to this review.

And to start with, I want to say that I generally try to defend the notion that people are allowed to like what they like, regardless of whether or not I like it. This is not always an easy notion to defend. I once read a scathing review of one of my favorite card games of all time, in which the writer repeatedly called its easy, simple, clean rules \"some of the worst I\'ve ever had to deal with,\" and described every game as a too-long slog.

Then I read a follow-up where he talked with his friend about the experience, and revealed that a) he was playing a game intended for 2-5 players completely solo, which can technically be done but increases the mental load a great deal beyond what it was originally designed for and b) that he really just doesn\'t like to think very much at all or pay much attention to what\'s going on when he plays board games; that he wants to have a podcast on in the background and just kind of go through them on autopilot, and considers it the game\'s fault if he has to actually stir himself to keep track of everything that\'s going on.

And, you know what? It\'s... fine. I don\'t get to tell him he\'s playing the game wrong. I might strongly disagree about whether or not that\'s a fair mindset to judge a game, but it\'s his game, he bought it with his own money, and if he can\'t play it the way he wants to... he\'s within his rights to complain about it on the Internet.

So, from that perspective, here I am. Looking at Jam. The Movie 43 of British sketch comedy. Designed from the ground up to provide as unpleasant, abrasive a viewing experience as possible. Intended, from the ground up, to center around shock value at the expense of literally all other forms of viewer engagement.

And I want to say that the only people who could possibly enjoy Jam are jaded hipsters with the air of decadent Roman patricians, chortling to one another as they watch Christians and natives being creatively tortured to death in blood-soaked arenas, unbearably pleased and smug with their own delicacy, with how the common hoi-polloi could never appreciate something like this. I want to say that its only possible value to the viewer is picturing some third party, offended and miserable at its existence clutching their pearls, and deriving indecently smugly self-satisfied pleasure at how much more refined one\'s own comedic palate is by comparison.

I want to trot out my old standby that hipsters are people scraping sludge out of the bottom of the dumpster and gulping it down, while telling one another how much better they are for preferring it to good, wholesome food, well-prepared.

And I know I shouldn\'t. Because, at the end of the day... judging a work\'s audience for liking it is wrong. Just like there are unironic Movie 43 fans in the world, God help us all.

Besides, even if in context they go on too long and are played far too darkly to reach their full flower, there\'re a couple halfway decent seeds of jokes in there. I thought the indecisive man repeatedly throwing himself off the first-story because he might change his mind about suicide partway through could\'ve potentially been reworked into a howler if it weren\'t, you know, on Jam.

But I guess I also don\'t like everyone piling on the reviewer and insulting his taste (and, in several cases, explicitly his intelligence) just because he didn\'t like something designed, again, from the ground up, from sketch concepts to audiovisuals to cinematography, to be unpleasant. It\'s not like he seems unfamiliar with the concept of sketch shows; sketches can still have \"stories\" within their contained format.

Only one person left an insulting comment, tho?

Only one person left an explicitly insulting comment. There were a few other catty ones implying that they just didn’t understand it.

I wasn`t trying to be snide, I was genuinely wondered if the reviewer was familiar with sketch comedies as a format. The complaint about a ``lack of story`` made me wonder.

Then I’m sorry. I suppose that is a completely fair reading that I completely overlooked. Probably part, when he said “story“ I thought he meant story within an individual sketch, rather than demanding story which connects the existing episodes.