Jokes you don't/didn't get

[GlenTokyo]

>I honestly find the idea of Doug knowing what “Cincinnati truffles” means incredibly unlikely.

This.

I also doubt his light reading is Urban Dictionary, probably more of a New Scientist kinda guy. If it is a reference to being farted on while rimming someone, then that doesn’t have Doug’s fingerprints on it for my money, maybe a suggestion from elsewhere.

[bloodteller]

>If it is a reference to being farted on while rimming someone, then that doesn’t have Doug’s fingerprints on it for my money, maybe a suggestion from elsewhere.

maybe it was Andrew Ellard. he’s written some pretty unusual stuff for TOS (kill crazy murdering a 5 year old child, the london jets manager forcibly removing the teeth of a mexican child) so i wouldn’t put it past him to sneak a little reference to having someone fart in your mouth into a red dwarf episode

[Lily]

Or … and I realise this may be a stretch … it could be a reference to the film The Cincinnati Kid with Steve McQueen about a poker player.

But yeah, the farting during rimming thing is far more likely.

[GlenTokyo]

Thank you Lily.

Hope you’re around when someone decides that Smoke Me A Kipper is actually a reference to curling one out in someone’s arse crack and then resting your chap on it.

[Dave]

Just when I thought this thread couldn’t get any weirder.

[clem]

Too weird for turds?

[Ridley]

Jokes you don't/didn't get

[Warbodog]

“A Cincinnati truffle… like Martha used to make. Thanks, Rimmer.”

[Petrovich]

I didn’t initially understand “Do as the Snamor do” in Backwards.

Mostly because he says it quickly, I wasn’t familiar with that ‘When in Rome’ saying, and it sounded on VHS to my 10 year old ear like “Do the snamordoo”

[Warbodog]

Quality username, Petrovich.

More youthful VIII misunderstandings: since my main knowledge of alcohol at 13 came from TV adverts, I thought there was some product placement going on with Lister mentioning “Metz drinkers” and “Baxter’s Hooch” being a reference to the controversial alcopop, rather than these being more generic names.

[Petrovich]

Ha thanks :) I’m no dealer though! Also I would have been 12 or 13 not 10. I think I remember thinking Francis Bacon probably wasn’t a real person and just a silly name, although of course that would be a weaker joke.

[Petrovich]

Actually the biggest would be Kryten’s idea of going to “Dallas, 1963, stand on the grassy knoll and shout Duck!” I had to have that one explained to me at the time for sure.

[bloodteller]

in Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg, there’s this one line i never got:

“RIMMER: What’s wrong with me?

CAT: I’d give you the list, but by the time I was through I’d be cold!”

what does being cold have to do with anything?

[Ben Saunders]

He will have been dead for so long his body will have gone cold

[Petrovich]

Doesn’t Rimmer call Lister a ‘modo’ in a S1 or S2 episode?

And… what is a modo?

[International Debris]

I always thought it was the opposite of “I’m hot” (ie I’m very attractive), although Ben’s suggestion makes far, far more sense.

[bloodteller]

just had a rewatch and he actually says “coal”, not “cold”. which only makes it more confusing really, why is the cat becoming coal?

[Dave]

I guess he would have died and the carbon in his body would have become compressed into coal.

[bloodteller]

that’s a bit of an unusual joke though isn’t it?

[Dave]

Yes.

[Warbodog]

Modo’s future slang like gimboid, goit and the all-time number one, it just didn’t catch on in the same way.

[GlenTokyo]

Modo is made up, think they talk about it in a documentary or something, coming up with smeg and other future words that got them around swearing.

Cold or coal are perfectly reasonable to me, think coal is funnier because that’s millions of years rather than 60 or so.

[Pete Part Three]

I feel “Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg” should be excluded from this thread on the basis that it does not contain actual jokes; just deeply strange dialogue and improv.

[Dave]

Are we excluding Series VIII on the same basis?

[Warbodog]

Surely VII is the humour vacuum? If VIII didn’t have jokes, there’d be nothing to wreck through over-explanation. I can’t tell if the VIII hate has grown to eclipse it over the years or if VII’s been rehabilitated into society. Probably both.

[Dave]

You’re right, VIII does have more traditional jokes, even if I find VII generally funnier.

[Warbodog]

Though VIII certainly has its share of improv (“you haven’t heard the news?”, “I’m Nigel, Doug said I could be in the show”) and deeply strange dialogue (open script book at random and point).

[GlenTokyo]

I always think VII is still Rob and Doug style Red Dwarf but a bit crap, VIII onwards is different in style, traditional gags that could be in any sitcom, less conversational/character based.

[Warbodog]

I only got Chris Barrie’s ‘Vat 69’ smeg-up joke recently. I used to mishear the last mumble as “so I don’t have to pay tax,” which I figured was somehow funny if you knew who Lester Piggott was. Now I know he’s saying [19]69 was “the last year I paid tax” and it’s an actual joke about the drink’s name… and maybe funny if you know who Lester Piggott is.

[Warbodog]

“It would be average for my height if I happened to be a pregnant hippo.”

This never sounded right to me. Shouldn’t the comparison be something very tall, not something very fat? Hippos aren’t notably tall and a pregnant hippo isn’t average for its height, it’s fat even by hippo standards. Maybe the rhythm and imagery matters more than the logic.

[GlenTokyo]

A hippo is roughly as tall as a human give or take a few inches, and they’re heavy, a pregnant one even more so, basically in as boring language as possible, it’s

“I am 5’8″ but I am a human so this weight does not make sense, it would make sense if I were a pregnant hippo of similar height, as they are considerable denser”

So it makes perfect sense.

[Warbodog]

Your interpretation makes sense. I was expecting him to say a ludicrous height that would balance out to give him an average BMI, so I got stumped when they went in a different direction and then tried to dig myself out.

The older series should really have Holly explaining all the jokes.

[Dave]

“No bugger’ll drink it. So that’s why it lasts a really long time, you see, because no one will drink it, rather than due to any inherent properties of the milk itself.”

[Warbodog]

“We are talking jape of the decade. We are talking April, May, June, July and August Fool. That’s right: I am Queeg. Queeg never existed; it was me all along.”

[q u i n n _ d r u m m e r]

If only Holly had over explained that joke, then we might know if it had only been a couple of weeks, or the several months the jokes suggests which some of us take as the case to make it feel all the more harrowing.

[Ben Saunders]

People think Queeg literally takes place from April to August? Surely you’re making a joke

[Warbodog]

I always took it as reworking the April Fool / six months gag in Me², but the other interpretation fits in the timeline, if people want to think it. Thanks for the Memory takes place in early January (worked out via Me²), so Queeg could begin in April. I think the next date we have is Polymorph taking place over ‘Easter.’

[GlenTokyo]

The jape is so big it’s covers more than just one month’s fool.

If anyone seriously doesn’t understand that that’s the joke, then I don’t know what to say.

If its literal then Lister would have died of malnourishment.

Think the main things people wouldn’t get is references to Britain in the 70s and 80s which is fair enough, everything else is pretty straightforward.

[Warbodog]

Well that’s what this thread’s for, clearing things up or realising you’ve held on to a bit of a strange idea from childhood viewings and never thought to question it before. Seems most of the forum has wanted clarifications on something or other.

[q u i n n _ d r u m m e r]

I know that the joke isi meant to be the Queeg con is so big it’s bigger than April Fools, but I love the idea he kept it going for 5 months, just to keep himself entertained.

[Plastic Percy]

It would explain what happned to Holly. He went off to take over from the Jigsaw Killer.

[By Jove its holmes]

Winnie-the-Pooh is a good example of when you have to decide between honey and trousers.

[JamesTC]

I’ve just remembered an odd one from when I was a kid from Series II.

RIMMER: They don’t do they? You say “keep an eye on that lamb” and they do. They sit there for three hours and watch it burn.

I didn’t make the connection to him cooking a lamb and just imagined Rimmer asking the Skutters to take care of a live lamb and then returning to find it on fire.

[Dave]

That makes the joke 200% funnier now.

[Plastic Percy]

As a boy of 11, I thought Lister’s story about his geography teacher not thinking men were better than machines was suggesting that Lister caught her being bummed by a robot.

Now, as a boy of 30, I’ve realised its just hinting at her using a vibrator.

[Unrumble]

Huh… I’ve spent the last 25 years thinking it was ‘lamp’ not ‘lamb’…

[Moonlight]

I have this theory that “the fictional serial Robbie Rocketpants” is very specifically a reference to Commando Cody, a cheesy early 50s sci-fi serial starring a jetpack-clad hero who flies around saving the day. Considering Red Dwarf has an affinity for classic Hollywood, and has parodied B sci-fi before, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I have no basis for this beyond the vague superficial similarity, but it’s definitely at least a reference to the KIND of cheesy sci-fi serial that Commando Cody is.

[Dave]

I always liked to think it’s a reference to Johnny Fartpants.

[ARossiEsquire]

My 12 year old self never understood the context of the “who fancies a kebab?” line from Only the Good. Only managed to join the dots after the first time I got properly drunk a few years later.

The whole time I just thought they were making a jab at crap food.

[Ridley]

I have this theory that “the fictional serial Robbie Rocketpants” is very specifically a reference to Commando Cody, a cheesy early 50s sci-fi serial starring a jetpack-clad hero who flies around saving the day. Considering Red Dwarf has an affinity for classic Hollywood, and has parodied B sci-fi before, I wouldn’t be surprised.

I have no basis for this beyond the vague superficial similarity, but it’s definitely at least a reference to the KIND of cheesy sci-fi serial that Commando Cody is.

IWCD references King of the Rocket Men so it’s entirely possible.

[Author]

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