"Nerds," part of the New York Musical Theater Festival, is noticeably a work in progress, though, with as many dud jokes as inspired moments.
On stage, he is so glassily removed from what he's doing, indeed from life generally, that when dud jokes fizzle they get no more acknowledgment from him than when the room explodes in laughter.
It's not awful, not great, with enough laughs to keep you watching but too many dud jokes to be satisfying.
They engage in a running battle with Beth's pumped-up, 'roid-raging boyfriend, go to a big party, take showers together at the high school -- and generally fill 100 minutes of screen time with dud jokes and sadistic slapstick.
And in 1998, when Mr. Douglas appeared opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in "A Perfect Murder," another box-office dud, stand-up comics made jokes about the incongruity of the middle-aged star pretending to be married to the coltish actress.
Just a few years ago, North Korea's weapons program was treated like a bad joke, better known for its duds, misfires and fakes than its ability to threaten the United States.
The name became very tiresome as the band's management continually wrote dud cheques, made payable to "Bruce Bruce", as a joke.
I have only watched seven of the thirteen episodes, and, while I enjoy the fast pace of the writing (the series was created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock) and the high ratio of intellectually funny jokes to duds, laugh-out-loud moments are rare.
We know fairly quickly whether our beautifully filtered photo of a grilled cheese sandwich or our joke about a philandering politician was a dud.
The table read had been a dud, possibly because the writers felt uneasy constructing multi-cam jokes, with their hard, vaudeville beats.
Nunes has become the man of the hour on Twitter, most notably for being the brunt of an overwhelming number of #YoMemo and #YoMemo Jokes that take jabs at the "weak" and "so dumb" dud memo.
