Hey guys Harvey here for the joke analysis with joke genius-
So Grover opens up here saying Cazza and Harvey walked into a bar, the immediate response is to imagine these two walking into somewhere that serves drinks, somewhere potentially with *sniiiiiiffff* women 😃, women who indeed might be wearing open toed shoes 😃 *sniiiiiffff*- but Grover then plays with his foreknowledge of your thoughts (for his mind contains your own) by destroying the image of a drinks bar (perhaps a quaint English pub would’ve been more apt “mate” 😃) by mentioning that Robert has ducked (an evasive manoeuvre which involves either bending at the knees or waist) and forcing you to conjure the image of instead a metal rod (or, “bar”) fixed in a permanent position and the two English men’s heads foolishly bouncing off of it (whether they sustain brain injury is left to the readers imagination), with the humour deriving from this imagined slapstick as well as the “play on words”, “as they say”. He’s messing with your expectations, he makes you think left- and shows you right, yeah? Classic stuff.
Except for a start, when people say walking into a bar- I always imagined they meant a vertical one- but for Robert to have ducked it must be horizontal and at head height. So he’s messing with my head now on a second level, as I can’t picture a lamppost or a sign and am forced to wonder what this horizontal bar could possibly be, scaffolding? However any scaffolding which had horizontal bars at head height in the street would be breaking health and safety codes- unless perhaps the work of a gypsy cowboy builder? He’s toying with us here, forcing us to run our mind in circles trying to work this out, the likely answer is he hadn’t a concrete idea of this bar at all and is simply amusing himself with the mental wild goose chase he’s sent you on.
And of course- the third layer, as soon as you’ve read the first tired, dreary, overused start of a joke where so and so walks into a bar- the reality is you don’t think of a drinking establishment, as the joke is so played out you know exactly what’s coming and expect some clever punchline to eek some value out of this ancient format. And it’s here Grover makes his final joke, he makes the most obvious, dull and basic joke possible- Robert ducked. The final layer to this joke is he has wasted your time and possibly annoyed- or “trolled” you. Bravo.
