I do agree that it’s full of cultural references and that lacking it would probably detract from it, but even so, I just don’t see how someone having that context makes the jokes funny.

One example I had in mind was when I brought up the fact that I just didn’t really find the jokes funny even through some people really did laugh. At the time, the show was showing some robots trying to pack boxes and they kept failing, because when they put them together, they’d eliminate them, in an allusion to Tetris. That is, indeed, a Gen-X reference. The guy I was watching it with was chortling. I remember asking him about it and him saying “it’s hilarious!”

I mean…I get the reference there. I’ve owned a couple versions of Tetris. I played it back when the game was young. But…even having the cultural context, it’s just…there’s none of the stuff that make something funny for me there. I just look at it and say “yeah, they’re alluding to Tetris.” Maybe it’s that there’s not enough buildup or something.

I remember some episode when a bunch of hippies are protesting outside Professor Farnsworth’s house. The Professor tells them to get off his property. A hippie says “You can’t own property, man!” The Professor says, “You can’t, because you’re a penniless hippie!” I mean…I’m not offended by it poking fun at communism, but…I see the political conflict there, but it just doesn’t make me laugh. Or the Dr. Zoidberg humor, which in significant part is him acting inappropriately…I dunno. It’s hard to figure out precisely what makes humor work for people — if we did, we could probably produce it a lot more mechanically — but whatever the writing team did just…consistently didn’t tickle it for me.