--- title: Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies description: The Office — which ends its nine-season run this week — is a great example of a TV genre that makes us both squirm and... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/ author: Gary Susman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-05-13T09:45:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T05:42:10.779Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies og:description: The Office — which ends its nine-season run this week — is a great example of a TV genre that makes us both squirm and... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88eda7dbe2f686a2/698a8edd9d83e8690fb9fb00/curb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: CURB og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies twitter:description: The Office — which ends its nine-season run this week — is a great example of a TV genre that makes us both squirm and... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88eda7dbe2f686a2/698a8edd9d83e8690fb9fb00/curb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) May 13, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  HBO by [Gary Susman](https://time.com/author/gary-susman/) May 13, 2013 9:45 AM UTC _The Office_ — which ends its nine-season run this week — is a great example of a TV genre that makes us both squirm and laugh ## Notes From Dunder-ground 
When NBC's The Office goes off the air on May 16, it'll be the end of an era — not just for the staff of Dunder-Mifflin or the fans who've followed their every well-scrutinized move over its nine-season run. It'll mark the end of the signature example of the cringe comedy genre. And yet, many viewers may not even recognize that such a genre exists.



Cringe comedy is all about the painful laughs derived from the awkwardness of social interaction and around people's lack of self-awareness. Its building block is the painful silence that hangs in the air after a thoughtless remark. That's why cringe comedy often uses single-camera (documentary or movie-style shooting) and no laugh track, instead of the more theatrical three-camera, live-audience setup that's been the sitcom standard since I Love Lucy. Cringe comedy often borrows the techniques of reality TV – the relentlessly tracking camera, the confessional asides – to find humor in the difference between a character's self-image and the way he or she actually comes off to other people. That kind of clinical scrutiny is funny but merciless – that's where the "cringe" comes from.



For many viewers, the debut of The Office in 2005 was their first exposure to cringe comedy, but by now, the form has a long history, of shows and comic performers that either influenced The Office or were influenced by it. If you're already missing the gang at Dunder-Mifflin, here are 10 more key cringe comedy shows for you to laugh and squirm at. niennunb ## The Larry Sanders Show 
The granddaddy of all cringe comedies was Garry Shandling's classic HBO series that presented a backstage look at a late-night talk show. Shandling, whose entire career has been based on wincing, was ideal as the insecure, narcissistic host who spends a lot of time reacting in stunned, pained silence to his quirky underlings and to the even more egotistical real-life celebrities who cozy up to his desk.The notion that real-life A-listers – and B- and C- listers – would show up to poke fun at themselves, and to acknowledge their place on the Hollywood food chain, seems practically de rigueur in the age of Funny or Die, but it appeared shocking and brave 20 years ago. So did the single-camera filming style and the absence of a laugh track.



Ricky Gervais has cited Sanders as a touchstone for The Office and Extras. It was also a career launch pad for writer/director Judd Apatow, who would go on to mine the comedy of awkward interaction on such shows as Freaks and Geeks and Girls,,as well as in movies from The 40-Year-Old Virgin to This Is 40. niennunb ## Curb Your Enthusiasm 
Larry David, or at least the "Larry David" he plays on HBO's Curb, is so monstrously self-absorbed and oblivious to the fallout of his actions that he makes his Seinfeld alter ego George Costanza seem like a model of restraint and empathy. Of course, as the idle-rich Hollywood writer he appears be in real life, "Larry" is insulated by wealth, race, privilege, and geography from the impact of his selfishness. But he is not protected from karma. As on Seinfeld, no bad deed goes unpunished (and no good deed goes unpunished either).



Still, the curmudgeonly "Larry" is allowed (by the freedoms of premium cable) to behave in much more extreme and offensive ways than George, or to take even greater offense at perceived slights. As a result, Curb has been able to explore, say, whether it's ever okay for a white person to use the N-word, or whether it's permissible to hire a prostitute just to be able to use the carpool lane. As on Larry Sanders, real celebrities seem to enjoy guest-starring as themselves, though maybe that's because, on this show, they come off looking better than the star. That the dialogue is improvised only adds to the show's documentary-like realism. Which – let's hope, for the sake of David and those close to him – is entirely fake. niennunb ## The Office (BBC) 
Ricky Gervais took the lessons of Garry Shandling and Larry David to the next level with his BBC show about white-collar workers being filmed for a documentary/reality-TV-style project. He became famous for creating the show, writing it, and starring as David Brent, the clueless boss who has no idea what an insensitive jerk everyone thinks he is. And he had the good sense to surround himself with other equally odd-but-recognizable characters, none of whom realized how much of their true selves they were revealing in what they said, or didn't say.



The show turned the traditional idea of the workplace sitcom – since the days of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, M\*A\*S\*H, and Cheers, a genre built on the premise that the workplace is one big happy, wacky surrogate family – on it's head. Here, the family is an extremely dysfunctional one, made all the more so by power dynamics that workplace comedies usually gloss over. Gervais' show was the blueprint for the American Office, but while that show really did evolve into a workplace sitcom about a happy surrogate family of eccentrics who generally got along with each other, the original show never lost its uncompromising satirical edge. Maybe that's because it ended after just two seasons. As Gervais would display again, in his equally short-lived, celebrity-obsessed, Larry Sanders-like series "Extras," even the boss has to know when to quit. niennunb ## Da Ali G Show 
If you liked Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat, interviewing and gleefully offending real people who weren't in on the joke, and skillfully getting them to reveal their own prejudices in the process, then you'd have loved Da Ali G Show. Turning those kinds of gotcha interviews, often with powerful politicians, into cringe theater was Baron Cohen's entire raison d'etre, and he did it via three different, equally outrageous characters. One was white hip-hopper Ali G, who spoke in a belligerently stupid patois that made Jar Jar Binks sound like William F. Buckley. One was Borat, the naïf from a remote country where sexism and anti-Semitism lived cheerfully on the surface, instead of just beneath it, as in the West. The third was Bruno, the Austrian fashionista so flamboyantly gay that he made people of every sexual stripe feel uncomfortable.



Aside from their ability to embarrass the powerful and to display Baron Cohen's chameleonic skill at transforming himself, what these characters had in common was that they were funniest in small doses. (Baron Cohen would make feature-length movies using each of these characters, but only Borat, the least aggressive and slyest of the three, was watchable for more than a few minutes.) The way Baron Cohen incorporated real people into his cringe-comedy was mean and unfair, but if it hadn't been, it wouldn't have been so revealing – or so funny. niennunb ## The Comeback 
These days, there are a lot of Larry Sanders-like yuks to be had on Showtime's Episodes, a showbiz satire about two acerbic British writers (and spouses) who lose their souls in Hollywood when their middlebrow Brit-com becomes a pandering comeback vehicle for Friends alumnus Matt LeBlanc. But Friends castmate Lisa Kudrow got there first with The Comeback, a satirical look at a showbiz has-been that was so brutal and uncompromising that it lasted only a season on HBO. Shot in faux-documentary style like the most harrowing-ever episode of E! True Hollywood Story, the series chronicled the desperate efforts of the no longer young or hip Valerie Cherish to return to sitcom fame, even if it meant playing the wacky landlady on a comedy whose dewy starlets and jaded writers treated her with open contempt.



The show was so cringe-y that many viewers wondered where the comedy was in this portrait of a seemingly delusional woman being humiliated over and over. Well, it was in the evisceration of showbiz pretension, of course, but it was also in Kudrow's performance. Her Valerie had a Phoebe-like optimism and refusal to be fazed by any setback, and those qualities gave her a dignity – and humor – that transcended the show's venom. The Comeback isn't for everyone, but it's still treasured by cringe connoisseurs. niennunb ## Parks and Recreation 
When it began, under the supervision of U.S. Office producers Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, Parks looked like it was going to be an Office-clone, right down to the confessional asides and a central character who was an oafish boss. But in its second season, the show began to find its own voice, and it transformed Amy Poehler's Leslie Knope from an overzealous naïf who doesn't realize how annoying she is into a smart and competent do-gooder who doesn't realize that not everyone shares her passion for civic engagement. Certainly not slothful libertarian Ron, prematurely cynical April, or opportunistic Tom. And certainly not the locals of Pawnee, Indiana, a citizenry of eccentric, self-absorbed malcontents worthy of a Preston Sturges movie.

But these are Leslie's people, and she loves them all, and her overwhelming enthusiasm tends to win them over, just as it does the viewer. That unhip sweetness is infectious, and it makes Parks the rare cringe comedy show that doesn't seem to have a mean bone in its body. Well, except when it comes to poor Jerry, who, for no good reason, is the hapless butt of everyone's jokes. Fortunately, the lack of self-awareness that is essential to cringe comedy extends to Jerry as well. He's able to live in ignorance of the others' taunts and slights as he goes home every night to his supermodel wife. niennunb ## Modern Family 
Even after The Office became a hit for NBC, other networks were slow to embrace the single-camera sitcom. CBS didn't want one at all, which is why Modern Family ended up on ABC. Today, it's the most popular example of the mockumentary/confessional format used by The Office and Parks, perhaps because it blends the new style with traditional family sitcom beats. (Really, aside from the one gay couple, there's little that's modern in this show about three families that each have one working husband and one stay-at-home spouse.) The self-delusion and awkward silences of cringe comedy are there, but so are the snappy rhythms, frequent punchlines, and life-lessons-learned moralism of typical family comedies.



Patriarch Jay (Ed O'Neill), who's cranky, old, and wealthy enough to speak his mind without fear of reprisal, could once be counted on to say something hateful about nearly every one of his extended relatives, but he's softened a lot over four seasons. At least the show remains unwilling to let a potentially sappy moment pass without puncturing it with a gag. And the kids have grown a lot but not matured or become wiser, which means they'll be able to say amusingly silly things for many seasons to come. niennunb ## Louie 
On paper, Louie looks like a typically autobiographical series developed from a stand-up comic's own material, since Louis C.K. plays a version of himself, a divorced comedian living in Manhattan with his two little girls. But this unclassifiable, astonishing series on FX seems to have taken cringe comedy about as far as it can go. It's stretched the single-camera format in terms of both length (some stories run 10 minutes, some run an hour) and content. TV Louie often finds himself in extreme situations, whether its traveling on a whim to China, meeting a woman who says she plans to have her vagina removed, trying to talk a friend out of suicide, or taking a beating from a date when he refuses to reciprocate with oral sex.



He pushes cringe comedy past the point where you're laughing-while-wincing, to the point where you're laughing-while-fearing for his safety and his sanity. He's created some of the bravest moments ever on TV, whether its his exploration of how organized religion uses scare tactics to intimidate kids, his re-enactment of his USO tour of Afghanistan, or his reaching out to fellow comic Dane Cook to hash out their long-simmering real-life feud before an audience. C.K. has shown that cringe comedy is capable of addressing the deepest philosophical questions while still making masturbation jokes. It's hard to imagine where he'll take the show during its upcoming fourth season, but then, it's hard to imagine where else cringe comedy can go after three seasons of Louie. niennunb ## Girls 
Girls is produced by cringe veteran Judd Apatow, but its voice is primarily that of creator/writer/director/star Lena Dunham. In typical cringe fashion, self-awareness is rare among Dunham's Hannah Horvath and her three galpals, since they're all still young (Dunham turns 27 on May 13) and still trying to figure out who they are and what they want. Of course, Hannah's the least self-aware of all, with her Brooklyn bohemianism and her literary pretensions, which so far have not yet required Hannah to prove she has any actual talent or artistic vision.



Spoiled and undisciplined, all she really has going for her are wit, passion, youthful energy, and a willingness to take her clothes off if given the slightest excuse.For Dunham, nudity is one more weapon in her cringe arsenal, one that makes literal the cringe trope of embarrassing self-exposure, and one that offers an additional challenge to viewers. If Hannah/Dunham isn't embarrassed by her naked, plain-looking body or even finds it funny, why should we react any differently? Fans and critics may argue over whether Season 2 failed to live up to the promise of Season 1, or whether Hannah has simply become a worse human being (and therefore, arguably, a funnier character). Clearly, viewers have a lot of emotional investment in the fates of these Girls, so Dunham must be doing something right. niennunb ## The Mindy Project 
After eight seasons on The Office, both behind the camera (as a writer) and in front of it (as ditsy princess Kelly Kapoor), Mindy Kaling has perfected her own brand of cringe comedy. On her Fox series, which wraps its first season on May 14, Kaling plays a character who is a lot smarter than Kelly (she's Dr. Mindy Lahiri, an OB/GYN) but who still has trouble with personal boundaries at her workplace and still has a tumultuous dating life. (The show's original title was, It's Messy.) Mindy is more self-aware than most cringe characters – maybe too self-aware, frequently stepping outside herself to comment on her life as if she were the heroine of a romantic comedy movie.

Of course, the gap between her own optimistic drive for self-improvement, to live up to those ideals (the project of the title) and how far she falls short, given her tendency to backslide into shameful bad habits, is a classic source of cringe chuckles. The character blends Kelly Kapoor's cheery self-absorption with Leslie Knope's bossy boosterism and Hannah Horvath's gift for romantic self-destruction, but she remains a unique creation that matches the persona Kaling has established in her books and interviews, mixing girlish self-assurance with wry puzzlement. It's a persona that suggests a bright future for cringe comedy, one where painful failure is tempered by chirpy optimism. niennunb ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/"},"headline":"Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies","datePublished":"2013-05-13T09:45:13.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T05:42:10.779Z","description":"The Office — which ends its nine-season run this week — is a great example of a TV genre that makes us both squirm and...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/","keywords":["girls","Louie"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88eda7dbe2f686a2/698a8edd9d83e8690fb9fb00/curb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Gary Susman","url":"https://time.com/author/gary-susman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt88eda7dbe2f686a2/698a8edd9d83e8690fb9fb00/curb.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"CURB","caption":"","creditText":"HBO","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7118967/discomfort-zone-10-great-cringe-comedies/","name":"Discomfort Zone: 10 Great Cringe Comedies"}}]}] ```