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  3. Unknown's avatar

    I don’t think there’s anything more than what was already said in the original post, and I don’t think I would have gotten any of the wordplay without it. “Just do it.” “Just do I.T.” Pennywise the clown interpreted the former as the latter. His inclusion is another “It” reference that doesn’t really matter to the other two, just makes it weird enough to be worth drawing. A generic character wouldn’t be as interesting.

    Now though, I have to wonder where they are. It’s been a long time since I read the book, and I didn’t see the new movies, but I don’t remember Pennywise hanging out in some sort of strange attic/loft space with either a dropoff, or non-Euclidian stairs. And what is the curtain there to cover?

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  5. Unknown's avatar

    I am generally a fan of Jonathan Lemon, but I guess not being a fan of Stephen King put me at a disadvantage here. Thank you, CIDU friends, for explaining this one.

    I looked up Chris O’Dowd, and found that I have seen exactly none of his appearances, so I stand nowhere about him.

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  6. Unknown's avatar

    I like Chris O’Dowd in general, probably more than Downpuppy does (they panned the “The IT Crowd” series but didn’t get into the cast) but don’t like everything he has done. His work on G I R L S was strong even though those were among the more cringey episodes.

    But one thing with him I did enjoy last year was a series called State of the Union made up of 10 short episodes (about 10 minutes each) and pretty consistent concept scripting by Nick Hornby. O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike are a couple going in to marital therapy, and each week before their session they meet up in a pub across the street from the therapist’s office; their conversations in the pub are the scenes we see.

    IMDB reference page
    YouTube intro . I can’t tell if YT has the full episodes or just extras material.

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  8. Unknown's avatar

    That’s how I saw it – as a stage. Is the balloon a Pennywise thing, because otherwise it doesn’t fit? And that’s a joke I’ve heard before, in my jobs as programmer and IT tech – “Just do IT”.

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  9. Unknown's avatar

    “There’s some mix of Nike’s “Just do it”, Stephen King’s novel IT, and I.T. as abbreviation for Information Technology”

    Oh! Now I get it!

    “— but how those are supposed to be cooked into a coherent joke is beyond us. ”

    but…? You just explained how…. There’s some mix of Nike’s “Just do it”, Stephen King’s novel IT, and I.T. as abbreviation for Information Technology…..

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  10. Unknown's avatar

    I agree there’s probably nothing more, but IMO “here are three things that can be described with the letters I and T” doesn’t constitute a “coherent joke.”

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  11. Unknown's avatar

    Yes, balloons coming up out of storm drains is part of the IT story. I haven’t read the book or seen the movies though.

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  12. Unknown's avatar

    “I agree there’s probably nothing more, but IMO “here are three things that can be described with the letters I and T” doesn’t constitute a “coherent joke.””

    Why not? How is that any different than a pun? The meanings are quite different and to connect them is clever and the set and reveal flows smoothly. What more is needed to be a “coherent joke”?

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  14. Unknown's avatar

    For those who do not know the Rabbits Against Magic strip: yes, they regularly perform in a magic show on a stage.

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  15. Unknown's avatar

    You’re correct that this is not a coherent joke. It’s a jumble of things related to the letters I and T. Like us, the cartoonist tried to come up with some joke that tied all three together. He couldn’t, so he just tossed all that stuff in there and sent it out. The meta-joke “Making jokes is hard.”

    As for the IT Crowd, I like the cast. Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry are all terrific. The show, not so much. I think it comes down to how UK sitcoms work. They’re not about jokes, they’re about cringe.

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  18. Unknown's avatar

    Ricard Ayoade was SO wasted in IT Crowd — I was pretty dismissive of him when I saw him on other things, when I recognized him at all, but then it quickly became clear how good he is, and I really had to wonder about how they wasted his talent in IT Crowd…

    And is it racist that until very recently I thought Chris O’Dowd and David O’Dogherty were the same person?

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  20. Unknown's avatar

    Having just watched State of the Union, I can see that it must be David O’Dougherty, but I’m pretty sure I would have guessed Chris O’Dowd before…

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  23. Unknown's avatar

    So I just went on IMDB, and have discovered that what I was sure (in my new found knowledge) was David O’Doherty, was in fact Chris O’Dowd — after learning they were in fact two different people, I was sure that the one I’d seen in all those Judd Apatow crowd movies was David O’Doherty, but it turns out it was Chris O’Dowd. The only place I’ve seen David O’Doherty turns out to be all those British panel shows where I (wrongly) pegged him as the Irish guy from IT Crowd, and then in my over-compensation, went and assigned him as the Irish guy in all those Judd Apatow/Kristin Wiig where-Jon-Hamm-is-sure-to-show-up movies, which he isn’t.
    Glad to have cleared that up…

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  24. Unknown's avatar

    I found the ten-minute episode approach of State of the Union made for a fresh experience in that the timing and pacing was different than it would have been for four 25 minute episodes or one 100 minute movie. Being as you’ll just end up binge watching the whole thing in one go anyway, it was nice to have that fresh approach. (Had I been confined to watching one a week for ten weeks, I don’t know how it would have landed.)

    Or was the gimmick being you only ever see them for the ten minutes just before their therapy session?

    Either way, we found it enjoyable and fresh, and considering that in the end the story arc is very predictable and really almost one dimensional, they managed to trick you but good in making it seem fresh and new and exciting.

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