Desultory, self-loathing, completely hopeless losers

Watching a recent episode of Modern Family featuring a sad character going through a difficult divorce, I was reminded that there's an American archetypal comedy character of the desultory, self-loathing completely hopeless loser, as typified by the character Steve played by Jon Lovitz in the Friends' episode The One With the Blind Dates, and also perhaps Charley Brown in Peanuts. I don't think we have this sort of character in British comedy (or do we?) , and indeed I can't really identify with such a totally despondent personality. Why do Americans find this sort of thing funny, is it just more acceptable there to laugh at losers, even if the are 2-dimensional caricatures? Or is this sort of thing based on real American life...and there is a tradition of self-loathing?

It's true all our Brit losers are full of misguided optimism and self-delusion,that's why we love them.
Perhaps the Americans crave success more than we do.

Quote: wigwam willy @ 22nd February 2017, 3:52 AM

It's true all our Brit losers are full of misguided optimism and self-delusion,that's why we love them.

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You're right, our losers think they're winners. Maybe it's got something to do with us identifying with the plucky underdog?

Jon Lovitz is unique in my book. He makes every part beautifully Lovitzy.

If you take Friends, apart from Chandler, none of them have a decent income or successful career, but they can afford a pretty big apartment with all the trimmings. They are presented as successful by virtue of being beautiful, physically and morally. In the UK success is linked more to class and manners. So Joey would be cast as a failure in the UK (as per Top Gear).

Yeah they call them "sad sacks" in the US.
More examples are:
Ted- the lawyer from Scrubs
Jerry - the fat one from Parks and Recreation
Scully and Hitchcock- the fat ones from Brooklyn Nine Nine

The other characters have carte blanche to treat them like shit. I say it satisfies a need in Americans to stigmatise failure. Maybe there are people like this in the States - demoralised by the constant competitiveness.
Still these characters can have some very funny scenes; for example, when Jerry in Parks and Recs drops a major chain fart as he has a heart attack.

Stephen Fry made an interesting comment on the difference between UK & US comedy and characterizations. Imagine a down-on-his-luck, unattractive guy playing a guitar; in US comedy, a better looking guy would take the guitarists guitar and smash it around the players head and this is the 'hero', however if it was a UK comedy, the loser guitarist would be the 'hero' - we pretty much always make the underdog the interesting characters.

Quote: WarmWasp @ 16th August 2017, 6:36 PM

Stephen Fry made an interesting comment on the difference between UK & US comedy and characterizations. Imagine a down-on-his-luck, unattractive guy playing a guitar; in US comedy, a better looking guy would take the guitarists guitar and smash it around the players head and this is the 'hero', however if it was a UK comedy, the loser guitarist would be the 'hero'

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Yes, that is interesating. I know a very good stand-up out here in Italy and he told me audiences warm to failure far more than to success. A stand-up says, 'So I get in my limousine next to Cameron Diaz and Megan Fox and we're on the way to Stringfellow's...' A stand-up says he gets into his shitty Skoda and the police stop him and the guy next to him turns out to be not a guy...

This is possibly one of the reasons I generally don't like American sitcoms.