Yet, as Season 20 opened, the show was doing precisely what a year earlier it had warned against: treating Garrison's Trump as an absurd, borderline-sympathetic joke figure, portraying him and Clinton as identical dangers, a choice between a "giant douche" and a "turd sandwich".
He did it while creating a sympathetic story, funny jokes and an overall entertaining movie.
Word of the filmmaker's difficulties quickly spawned waves of jokes, and sympathetic comments, on social networks.
Men in WIP films are sometimes villains, love interests, jokes or sympathetic characters, but they're virtually never heroes.
In Trevor Griffiths's 1975 play, "Comedians," set in a Manchester class for aspiring stand-up performers, the sympathetic teacher, Eddie, preaches against jokes rooted in ugly stereotypes or merely aiming for a cheap laugh.
The more or less good guys and the more or less bad guys often share a joking camaraderie, and everyone is sympathetic in some degree, however small.
"Let's try to build a lot of sympathy for your character, and have the rest of the cast bounce their jokes off you... as only sympathetic comedians have a chance for long life on the air".
Critic Mark Vogler wrote that The Killing Joke "provid[ed] the Joker with a sympathetic back story as it presented some of the villain's most vile offenses".
It combines academic authority with some very good jokes, first-hand political experience with a sympathetic imagination, and grand strategy with intimate domestic detail.
Improv comedy often gets the benefit of an overly sympathetic audience, which tends to be impressed with rapid-fire jokes invented on the spot.
