Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

your-husband

2016-09-21 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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your-husband
Votey panel for your-husband
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Explanation

The Joke

The comic opens with a scene of a building collapse or fire, with rubble and flames visible. A firefighter solemnly tells a woman, "I'm afraid your husband is under there." The woman, tearfully, asks "Under where?" The firefighter, now also crying, replies: "Made you say underwear."

This is a classic "under where / underwear" homophone pun -- one of the oldest and most childish tricks in the English language -- placed in the most tragically inappropriate context imaginable. The firefighter has apparently set up this entire devastating scenario just to land a juvenile pun, and he is crying while delivering the punchline, suggesting he feels terrible about it but could not resist.

The Humor

The comedy comes entirely from the juxtaposition of extreme emotional gravity with an absurdly childish joke. The "under where / underwear" trick is the kind of thing a six-year-old pulls on a classmate, yet here it is deployed during what appears to be the worst moment of a woman's life. The firefighter crying as he delivers the punchline is the perfect final detail -- he is not a sociopath, he is just someone who saw an opportunity for a pun and physically could not stop himself, even though he knows it is horrible. This captures a very specific personality type that many people will recognize.

The votey panel shows the firefighter saying "He would've wanted you to appreciate my joke," doubling down on the inappropriateness by invoking the dead husband's hypothetical wishes to guilt the widow into laughing at the pun.

View History (1) Original Comic