We're just going round in circles. Yes, what has happened to your friend is horrendous. For anyone to lose their job because their industry was taken out from beneath them is awful and the humiliation of being out of work when you worked so hard is not at all funny.
I'm going to try once more to explain what I mean, because I know you take this seriously, and so do I. The gravity if the situations is not lost on me.
The Full Monty is a popular British film comedy/drama, about a group of workers from a steel works in Sheffield which has been closed down leaving them unemployed. To put this in real context, Sheffield was known as the City of Steel and "Sheffield Steel" was a worldwide brand. The city was built on it and when the industry died because of political decisions, the impact was massive. The North of England was all industrial and towns were built around their factories. Without the industry, the towns die. It's that simple and that sad. So why would anyone want to watch a comedy set there? Because the story of how some might try and overcome that adversity is uplifting. And in this film, bloody funny. (The out of work men decide to form an unlikely stripper group for no other reason than to give themselves something to do).
This scene epitomises the story. They've been training so hard for the dance show that they unconsciously dance in the dole queue, in time with each other, to the bemusement of others (I can only find it in Italian, but there's no dialogue anyway!):
The trailer is below. But can't you see what I'm getting at? In reality, those men would be on the dole with absolutely no chance of ever regaining a job worth their ability. Standing in that queue, waiting for a handout would be soul destroying. They are on life's scrapheap. But, they're dancing! And it's funny!
You can say the same thing about Billy Elliot. It's about a kid who wants to be a ballet dancer, but he lives in a mining town. Just as towns relied on factories, so they did on mines, the closing of which caused the famous strike in the 70s and later another in the 80s, the repercussions of which are felt today. There were picket lines of striking miners and when one broke the line to return to work, he would be known as a Scab and ostracised. There was a lot of violence, especially in riots, and people were killed, passions ran so high. The country was literally, no exaggeration, crippled (other industries went on strike in sympathy, causing black outs). In Billy Elliot, his dad finally realises his sons talent and decides he absolutely has to send him to a dance school, but for that he needs money. So he breaks the picket line and returns to work.
That is a serious thing to do, yet it's in a film about a kid who dances. Don't you see that these stories work because they're about the characters making the best of it? That's all I mean and I've spent far too much time trying to defend a sitcom that was crap anyway!
It was cancelled because it was rubbish, not because it was insensitive.
