Ab Fab - abusive / narc relationship...?

[LadyShirazz]

Used to love Ab Fab back in the day, and still do unconditionally love Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley. This is a given.

But rewatching series 1 of Ab Fab (reminding ourselves of the plot before seeing the film), and I found it really hard to laugh.

I promise am not some generally anal type looking round for opportunities for offence / kill joying / otherwise reading too much into the most innocuous of things - but ffs poor, poor Saffy.

She's a mere 16 in episode 1, and imagine how bad 15, 14, 13, 12 etc must also have been - alcoholic mum / semi-absent father / malevolent presence in the form of Patsy (clearly resentful of very existence...).

I just couldn't find it funny. I hope she's gone NC in the film.

Ha! I too used to LOVE Ab Fab; Patsy was my heroine when I was 17.
I watched the first series reruns the other day with dd1 (12) and was appalled at how utterly hideous Eddie was towards Saffy!
I'm not professionally offended as a rule, so I was surprised at how shocking I thought her behaviour was; really spiteful and nasty at times.
I still liked the scenes where she and Patsy got pissed and cackled like a pair of hyenas though 😂

PsychedelicSheep It really, really was brilliantly observed. It was so well done that I've been using Ab Fab as a shorthand to describe my childhood for, well, years.

I always found Ab Fab grim for similar reasons, YANBU OP.

I get you OP! I rewatched it all before seeing the film and all the things Saffy endured are definitely abusive. Obviously I watched and laughed but I did have a couple of "OMG" moments. I think shows we watched in the past become dated faster than we realise. We're standing up to things more than we ever have in the past. I watched Fawlty Towers and cringed at the racist abuse Manuel endured!

I love Ab Fab but have always found it uncomfortable to watch the scenes where saffy gets picked on. I've always thought it would of been better to have a sister figure rather than a daughter figure to have the threes a crowd arguments with. But hats off to Joanna lumley she plays the role brilliantly.

Men behaving badly is funny but also very dated now.

Yanbu op. And don't expect to laugh in the film, the plot is insultingly silly!

I'm afraid I never saw anything funny about it and don't now. Why aretwo such unpleasant women amusing in any way.? Doesn't help that I hate slapstick / pratfall comedy of all kinds- cf Vicar of Dibley, Miranda.
Prefer verbal humour, eg Blackadder at its best, Frasier.

Like PP I always assumed we were meant to be on Saffy's side.

The pilot episode of Ab fab Dawn French played the role of saffy

It is about totally dysfunctional relationships and Jennifer Saunders is well aware this is the case- it is meant to be close to the bone. I think she intends us to sympathise with Saffy, but also wants to show how dysfunctional that relationship is.

I think the presence of June Whitfield helped ease Saffy's situation. Yes when she was growing up Eddie was clearly far from the "ideal" mum - that was the humour - but Saffy did have gran to bridge that gap, and gran was almost the stereotype of a 50s mum.

I know what you mean OP. I feel the same with Meg in Family Guy. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy both shows, but I do find some bits uncomfortable.

Yup I totally get you :)

It's very close to the bone which I think is where the humour lies, bang on obvervational insight, twisted and manipulated into all sorts of fantastical shapes for the somewhat uncomfortable humour of it all.

I grew up loving Saffy, as I identified with her as more than the dull tool to contrast with the insanity and extravagance of Eddie and co. I always got a little annoyed when Saffy was shown as being warped in her own way as well! I think younger me wanted the archetype of down trodden heroine emerging through adversity to shine ... And yet she wasn't actually written to be that way.

I've always seen Saffy as the 'normal' counterpoint to everyone else in AbFab.

"Eddie and Patsy are monsters but they're caricatures with very little resemblance to anyone you're likely to meet in every day life."

I knew a woman that could put Patsy to shame. She had her own daughter who she decided she didnt like once she hit puberty and became a threat to the mother. They went nc for years before the mother passed away.

Strictly speaking you're probably right OP, but I think you're missing something important about fiction and dramatic forms. Someone once said of Shakespeare 'Farce is tragedy at 100rpm', or in other words if you speed up the pace of any grinding tale of misery it becomes funny.

Yes, looked at deadpan the relationship between Saffy and Eddie is horrific. But so is the relationship between Blackadder and Baldrick - and it's still funny, because it's played that way.

The point of a lot of humour is that it has a thread of real tragedy running through it but just whizzes over the top with a flippant remark and a pratfall. To be honest I think a lot of life is like that as well. And I think if you tried to prune the tragedy out of humorous fiction you'd be left with a very short list of possible stories.

Yeah Saffy was the 'normal' one, the audiences perspective. Patsy was a cartoonish grotesque. Eddy slightly more complex and harder to define as a 'good' or 'bad' character.

Oh dear.

Are we going to be able to laugh at comedies any more if people just find fault in absolutely everything? Anything we watch will be so sterilised in case of offence, comedies will be sanitised to the point they will just be boring and unfunny.

So many comedies that were on TV when I were young are totally shocking in this day and age, but at the time we knew no different. Google "Love Thy Neighbour" and "Till Death Do Us Part" and you'll see what I mean. AbFab is totally tame by comparison and I think the balance is right for comedies at the moment.

It's just a lighthearted daft comedy programme OP.

I always felt very sorry for Saffy, but I think we are meant to.
I don't thing Saunders wrote it thinking "people will think Eddie is such a great parent"

But I do understand why your saying OP. Comedy can be pretty cruel.

I don't think Saffy's normal at all. Her taking on the responsible adult role as a form of teenage rebellion is totally dysfunctional, as it's supposed to be.

Ab Fab is brilliant because you can look at Edina and Patsy and know they're narcissistic selfish bastards but still laugh because they are funny.

I don't think it's "just lighthearted". I think we are meant to cringe at Edina's abusivenessness and Patsy's malevolence. And I think it's very much like real life, where the trajectory is to skip over it and focus on the comedy and fun stuff, but as with all really good comedy, tragedy lurks just below the surface if you've got eyes to see it.

I just never over think fictional characters. If it was a documentary then fair enough.

I love the sitcom Bottom but never worried about the two of them continually injuring each other with frying pans etc.

Eddie always reminded me of my aunt, who, it's pretty much agreed upon by lots of the family, had BPD and was a narc. But, I did, and still do, find it funny - the relationship between real life and comedy is complex, but surely there's something about working-through situations that are difficult in real life through laughter and reflection.

Just regarding offense taking, I think there's a difference between finding a piece of art (and it is art) uncomfortable, and finding it offensive - I find all depictions of narcissistic abusive parents uncomfortable to watch, from Mommie Dearest to Rapunzel. But if the depiction is good, if it rings true, then I am actually grateful that someone put it up on a screen, and showed it to be abusive. When the depiction is a bit rubbish, doesn't ring true, when you get the feeling that some of the blame for the dysfunction is being levelled at the kid - then for me it tips over into the offensive.