This is Not a Sex Joke

Allow me to share something I once considered a hilarious sex joke. The lead character on Herman's Head (stop laughing) was a fact-checker and had approved a line of text that said the average weight of a testicle in Denmark as 1.5 pounds (not ounces). To which co-star Yeardly Smith replied "Maybe that's where the expression Great Dane comes from." Maybe it's because I was eleven at the time, but that was hilarious. I'm reminded of this because I just read a script with a great premise that was ruined by a plethora - nay, an invasion - of sex references trying with more than a faint wiff of desperation to pass as jokes. Have you ever seen Marshall's stand-up routine on How I Met Your Mother? He essentially says 'Fish are funny, right? What's up with fish?' He then goes on to just throw out some names of fish. That's the joke. That's all of the jokes. But they're not jokes. They're references. A joke has creativity. Sometimes in wordplay, sometimes in visuals. A joke is more than 'Hey, sex is a thing. Maybe you want SEX! Maybe we could have SEX!' Referencing sex is not inherently creative. Or funny. Which means it's not a joke. I'm all for a good sex joke. I think I've revealed here that if you travel back in time to my middle-school days, my standards aren't high. But there has to be a joke in there somewhere. Go back over your scripts and look at every sex joke. Ask yourselves, are these really jokes? Or is it the sexual equivalent of 'What's up with fish?'