Not to defend all the idiots we see, but I have to say; the people who do any sort of creative work tend to want to explore a deeper meaning. Not that the aesthetic or technical skill isn't valuable, its probably harder to have great technical skill.
I write, both poetry and short stories (just for myself not as a career or anything) and I don't want to do the shallow stuff either. But that doesn't mean your rupi kaur like 'poets' are 'bad'. Clearly strike some form of emotion for the readers.
A lot of comedians do have some deep material, both philosophical and emotional. Not talking about your clap comedians, Trevor Noah etc whose 'jokes' are meant to make them seem righteous and nget claps and cheers instead of laughs. (Not saying Trevor Noah doesn't have the capacity to pull laughs, he can be funny too).
But look at someone like Steven Wright, a postmodernist sense of humour that builds upon that kind of art.
"I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.' I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, 'E6."
Here's an example, I love this joke, it builds upon the Borges story On Exactitude in Science and elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."
Italian writer Umberto Eco expanded upon the theme, quoting the story as the epigraph for his short story "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1", collected in his How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays.
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard cited "On Exactitude in Science" as a predecessor to his concept of hyperreality in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation.
(I copied the last bit from Wikipedia)
So we can explore massive themes and ideas as comedians. And quite a few do.
My first thought was that it was a dunk on jam filled donuts and it meant the opinion of someone who likes em can't be trusted.
But now i think its the opposite and the jam filled donuts temped the tattooed guy which is why he hides his tatoo reading 'be the best you can be' as he can't resist them
But also, even Tolkien borrowed from those before him, thats the nature of art. Hell its the nature of everything. You build on the shoulders of those before you. Beowulf for example.
The prophecy of the witch king is inspired by Macbeth. The ent attack from birnam woods.
A lot of the book is influenced by the first world war, like mordor.
Also borrows from Christianity and the classical era. Feanor from Prometheus, Turin from Oedipus, beren and luthien from Orpheus and Eurydice.
I could make a million comparisons. Perhaps we wouldn't end up in the world we're in. Or perhaps all that was layed before him had already allowed a pathway to where we are now. He was just the incredible vessel.
Well there's a lot of shows with a dated sense of humour and morality. So I won't call any of those out. Y'know anything racist or sexist etc whether intentional or not.
I'm also ignoring the fact that many shows would fail now BC what they did back then would be cliche by now. If Tolkien wrote lotr now it would be a good genre book but not what it is.
Having explained my criteria I'll go for the comedies of Jim Carey. I guess anything with a laugh track for one.
I think comedy dates bad, slapstick physical comedy on the other hand is more universal and lives on, like Conan O'Brien for example. But I still don't think that dumb and dumber would work. I'd also add superbad to this.
The thing is all art is a product of it's era, being timeless is difficult and nearly impossible. An Alfred Hitchcock movie released today would fail since all that he's done has changed cinema already.
First upvoter just here to say this post is gonna do numbers