There's something funny about 'The Friend Zone'

MANILA, Philippines - The Internet has serialized comedy into memes, “fails” and “epic fails.” And quite honestly, it’s not funny anymore. It’s just plain redundant. 

9gag, 4chan.org, FML.com, and other time-eaters have made “epic” lose its real weight. “Epic” used to be exclusive to describing Homer’s or Dante’s works, or even The Lord of the Rings saga. But with the Internet culture using the word to describe anything and everything, the word has turned into an equivalent of “good,” “okay,” and “nice.” Also, sentences like “angry cat is angry” and “awesome dog is awesome” are just plain stupid.

What these humor sites forget is the fact that the heart of comedy is unpredictability. Take a British man who seldom talked, put him on the road to the Cannes Film Festival, and you have Mr. Bean’s second movie. Take a six-year-old boy, have him talk with his stuffed toy tiger, criticizing the world and its ways, and you have Calvin and Hobbes. Since the beginning of time, great comedy has always been a combination two things: smarts and creativity. You just can’t make a stencil for it. Or in Internet lingo, “meme-ify” it.

This is why “preemptive supalpal” and “abangers” come as breaths of fresh air. In Tales from the Friend Zone, Ramon Bautista, RA Rivera, and their crew of misfits steal comedy back to where it belongs.

Youtube sensation

Tales from the Friend Zone is an ongoing “show” on YouTube which has gradually gained ground among netizens. The point of the whole series is to give love advice to the heartbroken, true to the Joe D’ Mango tradition. To be more specific, Ramon Bautista entertains letters sent in by those who have been “friend zoned” — the unlucky ones who have been told “I like you as a friend, nothing more,” or one of its unlimited variations. The letter is read out loud while unhandsome actors and good-looking actresses dramatize the events. At the end of every episode, they award the story’s sender with a shirt that proclaims one’s membership in the friend zone. And as the recipient’s luck would have it, the shirt only comes in baby tees.

Love and its nuances have been done and re-done, not just by Hollywood, but also by our very own sentimental, melodramatic teleseryes. The rich amo falling for the poor kasambahay, the whole character and/or inheritance switcheroo, even the Ugly Betty (stretched to physical deformity, skin tone, etc.) twist have all been done before. Coupling self-deprecating humor with love is, however, new.

Drinks with good company

When a friend comes over to tell his unfortunate story of getting snubbed by the first girl he ever loved, you don’t really go crying with your friend. Instead, you propose that you go out for some drinks with good company, sing at some karaoke bar, and try laughing about ever falling for her. Come to think of it, laughing at our heartaches is probably the way most of us get over a forgone love affair. More than crying over it, we laugh our feelings away.

Nobody really does that whole act of getting drunk in front of the bartender anymore. Well, if you’re still sane after a heartbreak, you probably won’t. But if you’re no longer sane and you decide to do just that, well, at least you and your friends would have something to laugh about the morning after.

Tales from the Friend Zone puts out something new, and at the same time, something familiar. With the Internet getting cluttered with humor porn, the series of shorts by Ramon Bautista and the gang offers a different kind of “sitcom” which is, aside from short and barely educational, hilarious. As I watched the episodes over, I have come to realize that what we’re laughing at here, really, is ourselves and the all the persons who have friend zoned us. In the series’ own words, “To all the girls we’ve loved before, makatapak sana kayo ng Lego.”

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Tweet the author @sarhentosilly.