Catherine Cohen in The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous.
Photo: Aaron Ricketts/Netflix
One of the chief advantages of comedy set to music is that our ears like musical repetition. We get pleasure out of hearing the same song over and over again, but jokes rarely age well. This is patently unfair to jokes and joke writers: Any genre that leans on surprise and freshness is so grueling that it essentially becomes a prank being played on its own creators. But embedding comedy inside musical forms, while not a foolproof way of dodging the problem of aging material, can nevertheless act as a preservative. A joke with a too-familiar idea is rarely a good thing; a song that feels familiar is like a welcome friend you’re happy to…
