Earlier quoted context omitted.
I enjoyed Curb - I made it through one and a half seasons - but I couldn't continue watching it. I may just have a low threshold for enduring discomfort, but Curb just keeps pushing and pushing the cringe meter. For Louis CK, it's about what happens WITH the discomfort. Curb, to me, is a DISPLAY of discomfort that is funny to a point, but then just has very little redeeming value beyond that. Another example of the s…
I know exactly what you mean here. I also sometimes have trouble tolerating cringe-comedy situations although seemingly not as bad as you. I actually used to get very uncomfortable while watching some Shakespearian comedy-of-errors plays. The type where the audience knows something that the actors don't. Makes me want to shout at them which is I guess the point however I feel like it is not an enjoyable type of anxie…
Same goes for "x is a twat, situations involving x will make you cringe" shows - there are only a few like that which I can tolerate and they make a huge effort to assign enough other redeeming qualities to x to make up for it. For Curb, I do like Larrys character, but after a while, it seemed like he existed solely to feed the cringe.
And yes, I have it bad. The last episodes of Curb that I watched, I permanently had my finger on the space bar. Sometimes, I would have to pause it for periods of time that were longer than the show itself.