The exceptional fun of undeserved loathing
In the cold open to the 9th episode of the Office’s 5th season (“Frame Toby”) Michael Scott is in the middle of grabbing 2 brownies from Dunder Mifflin’s conference room when he is informed by Jim that “Toby works here again”.
Michael doesn’t believe him (“can you imagine?”) and goes to what he thinks is Toby’s former desk in the annex only to be surprised to see Toby does, in fact, work here again.
Steve Carrell’s reaction, a series of “no’s” interrupted perfectly by the opening credits, might be the best single moment in the Michael vs Toby feud; a feud that underlies every episode of the Office, hilarious contempt bubbling just under the surface.
Another strong contender for best Michael vs Toby moment has to go to Michael’s brief monologue from Season 2’s finale “I hate so much about the things that you chose to be”, but I digress.
Toby is The Punching Bag We Love to Hate
The pure negativity with which Michael reacts to Toby’s mere existence pays off pretty much endlessly throughout the run of the series. The meaner Michael is to Toby, the more we laugh.
Toby is a punching bag and while we, as good productive people in society, wouldn’t find someone getting bullied very funny, given the right circumstances, a pointless feud can be endlessly entertaining.
Before we get into what makes up the tricky tight-rope walk of a good pointless feud, let’s look at why Michael hates Toby.
A Risky Dive into the Unstable Psyche of Michael Scott
Michael Scott, early in the series says, “Toby works for HR which technically means he works for corporate so he’s really not a part of our family. Also, he’s divorced so he’s really not a part of his family”.
There’s so much in those two sentences.
First of all, Michael thinks of The Office as a family and refers to it, inappropriately, that way for the entirety of his time at Dunder Mifflin. This might be due to his upbringing which he mentions sparingly, yet unsettlingly, during his time on The Office.
Whatever trauma he endured as a child, his lonliness, the fact his mom is divorced and he was raised by his step dad Jeff, or his estrangement from his sister, it becomes clear that Michael believes that having a family equals a successful life.
To make it worse, Michael, by this measure, has failed at life because he does not have a family.
| Michael, from Season 6’s “St. Patrick’s Day” Do I really wanna turn out like Gabe? 26. Single. Tied to my desk. No life no family. I want to have been married by the time I would’ve turned thirty. That’s just… that’s just depressing. |
Because Michael has failed to form a family, he places himself as the surrogate father of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton Branch.
Toby threatens Michael’s authority as Father because he does not report to Michael (“works for corporate”).
Toby is both outside of Michael’s authority and simultaneously, the only one in the office able to challenge that authority, to go over Michael’s head. Toby often steps in and tells Michael to stop one of the numerous inappropriate, ridiculous ideas that Michael thinks of as “having fun”.
“Stopping Michael’s fun” may be the only reason Michael thinks he hates Toby, but even that reason, is never spoken aloud.
Secondly, Toby is divorced.
This upsets Michael because it means Toby did actually start a family, which Michael himself has failed to do, meaning Toby is more successful in the most important area of life that Michael Scott values: having a family.
To make things worse for Toby, not only did he succeed where Michael has failed, he then chose to leave his family, which upsets Michael even more.
Here’s someone who had everything Michael Scott could’ve dreamed of and he threw it away.
All of this points to the first key ingredient a pointless feud must have in order to make it fun and continuously funny: the punishment outweighs the crime.
It Takes Two To Make A Ridiculous Thing Go Right: The Keys to a Pointless Feud
The key to a classic pointless feud is how fun it is.
How a fun a feud has a lot to do with 2 key factors.
The first, is how much the punishment outweighs the crime.
However complex or simple Michael Scott’s feelings towards Toby are, we as a viewer have no reason to believe that Toby deserves what Michael is dishing out to him.
If we thought Toby deserved even a little of the things Michael was saying (” If I had a gun, with two bullets, and I was in a room with Hitler, Bin Laden and Toby, I would shoot Toby twice.“) , it would actually make Michael seem even worse, as we’d be able to judge how much he’s overreacting based on how we’d react to Toby slighting us in a similar manner.
Knowing Toby did something to hurt Michael, and seeing what would likely be the result, Michael overreacting, would also make Toby more sympathetic. This cannot happen. It seems counterintuitive but Toby must remain as innocent as possible for us to laugh at his pain.
The second key factor to keeping a pointless feud fun, isn’t the innocence on the receiving end, but ironically, the innocence of the antagonist.
In order for us to laugh at Michael’s mistreatment of Toby, we have to believe Michael has no alterior motives. His hate of Toby must be pure.
If Michael were doing it for some exterior motive (impressing a love interest, increase social standing with the office) or made it apparent he was aware of his internal motives (Toby representing his own lack of family and power/control in his life), we would be able to judge his actions against our own, and we’d be able to sympathize with Michael as we would with a hurt child.
But because there is no reason, because the source of the disgust is disguised, the absurdity is kept intact, and absurd things are often funny things.
With those factors in mind, let’s look at…
The Most Successful Pointless Feuds of the 21st Century
#1. Michael vs Toby
#2. The 2 Feuds of Parks & Recreation
Andy vs Kyle
This one’s kind of subtle. Only after searching for clip after clip of Parks & Recreations more famous feud (below), did I find this gem of an overlooked feud.
When Andy says “Oh Kyle, please stop talking” in a way that makes you sympathize with Andy but also laugh at how rude he’s being, you know you’re in the middle of a good feud. Nothing Kyle says, and he doesn’t talk much when he’s on air, deserves such an exhausted response.
Everyone vs Jerry
Jerry may be the nicest, most innocent character on TV. He is annoying only in that he is clumsy. As Ron Swanson says in Season 2, “Jerry is both a shlemiel and schlimazel” but he in no way deserves the extreme lengths everyone in Parks and Recreation go to destroy his self-esteem everytime he speaks up.
Everyone’s overreaction – hating a nice person who doesn’t deserve it – is what makes this feud so fun from the outside looking in.
#3. Jimmy Kimmel vs Matt Damon
Matt Damon did nothing wrong. Jimmy Kimmel shits on him constantly. We all laugh.
This is an excerpt from The Washington Post which explain the feud – likely the highest profile feud on this list – better than I could.
In 2011, Damon explained the origins of the joke to Parade. He wasn’t even in on it initially. In fact, he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that Kimmel had been saying, “My apologies to Matt Damon, we ran out of time” for the better part of a year. In 2006, when Damon was finally invited to be a guest on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” he asked the host about the gag. Here’s Damon explaining their offscreen conversation:
And he was like, “You want to know what happened? I was doing a particularly lame show; I think my guests were a ventriloquist and a guy in a monkey suit. We were wrapping it up, and there was a smattering of applause in the audience. I was having kind of a low moment, and I just said, ‘My apologies to Matt Damon; we ran out of time.’ My producer was right off camera and he doubled over laughing. It was just gallows humor. Nobody else got the joke. But it made us laugh, so we started doing it every night. I have no idea why I said you; it could have been anybody.”
#4. Karen vs Grace’s Clothes, Hair, and Overall Appearance
On Will & Grace, Karen pretty much insults everyone and everything, especially, poor people. (This was a cutting edge comedic angle at the turn of century). Coming in right after poor people is anything that Grace is wearing.
Looking back with 20 years of distance, Grace wasn’t really dressing that out of character for the show. That didn’t stop Karen from belittling her.
Because Grace’s clothes really aren’t that bad (most of the time), it’s even funnier that Karen is so harsh. Unlike Karen’s feud with the poor working class who can’t defend themselves and are only represented on the show by Consuela who gets 5 spoken lines per season, Grace’s tops are an easy, fun target for all of us to laugh at.
#5. Red Forman vs His Son
Now granted, Eric Foreman probably is a “dumbass” from time to time, what with all the teenage shenanigans he gets into over the course of That 70’s Show, but he never does anything so bad as to deserve child abuse.
No, instead it seems that Eric’s birth and continued existence is enough of a provocation for Red, to the point that the moment the two share the screen we begin to anticipate with joy the moment that Red will snap and unleash his verbal tirade on the boy.
It has everything a pointless feud needs: schadenfreude at how angry Red is getting and how well he insults Eric, a lopsided level of passion for the feud on Red’s side, and the fun that breaking the taboos of the PC father-son relationship can bring.
#6. Dre Johnson vs His Son
In Blackish, hardly an episode goes by where Dre Johnson doesn’t remind us that his oldest song isn’t masculine, sports-loving, or black enough to avoid derision.
We know Dre loves his son, like we know Red loves Eric, so he’s able to get away with more, and like all good pointless feuds, we know Dre is being unfairly harsh to Junior, but even from the pilot it’s clear they’re setting Junior up to be the reciptical for his dad’s, and vicariously, we the viewers, insecurities.
This trailer doesn’t do Dre’s insulting of Junior justice over the course of the past 5 seasons, and there should be more highlight clip collections of Blackish.
Dre and Junior watching Game of Thrones gives a little bit of insight into the dynamic.
#7. USA vs Canada
It’s alway been funny, and easy, for Americans to make jokes about Canada. Canada is completely inoffensive, doesn’t play any real threatening role in American life, and is right next door. An American actually being upset at Canada is like someone being completely unhinged by their elderly next door neighbor’s habit of knitting on their porch at night.
It’s funny to make fun of Canada, or at least was a lot more fun before Trump (now it just feels like a disenfranchised kid making fun of the popular, good looking Prom King who has free healthcare).
Americans making fun of Canada works, again, because there is no actual reasoning behind it. No one’s mad at Canada, that’s why it’s fun, and funny, to be mad at Canada.
10 times South Park made fun of Canada
This USA vs Canada thing can stand in for any country that finds it fun and harmless to make fun of their neighboring country, the way Norwegians make fun of the Finns or the Swedes, or vice versa, or some other mixture of peaceful Nordic countries making fun of other peaceful Nordic countries.
#8. The Packers vs The Bears
Lol I just put this in here to upset Bears fans.
Whichever pointless feud you love it’s a fact that pointless feuds bring fun into life and life needs more fun so therefore life needs more pointless feuds. If you can’t take out your frustration in a vicarious, passive aggressive way at the end of a long day what do you really have to live for? Certainly not David Bowie’s cover of Alabama.