Guilty Pleasure?

This holiday weekend, I’ve been binge-watching a semi-legendary British comedy from the early 2000s called, “The IT Crowd”. It’s not the greatest British comedy I’ve ever seen, but Chris O’Dowd and Richard Ayoade are hilarious, and the whole thing has this strange undercurrent of the surreal that makes it’s rather obvious jokes a little more memorable.

Last night I saw Season 2, Episode 1, “The Work Outing”, which made me laugh longer and harder than any of the episodes I’ve seen so far … but also confused the hell out of me in how it used disability themes.

I have set up the embedded video to start where the disability stuff starts, when Roy decides to use “the disabled” restroom …

The reason I’m confused is that I’m pretty sure this is an offensive portrayal of disability. On the other hand, I read it as a sly satire of peoples’ sentimental attitudes towards disabled people.

Either that, or the thing made me laugh in spite of myself, and I’m trying to rationalize it.