No Heroics

I GOT PASSED this terrific six part UK sitcom about a bunch of second-tier superheroes hanging out in a bar. It's not just wonderful in its sense of love for comics and genre stuff, it's cleverly constructed in that way that we seem to have forgotten in North America.

Fully ninety percent of the "action" takes place in the bar where the heroes hang out, "The Fortress," where there are "no masks, no capes, and no heroics." The characters are well drawn -- the quibbling couple, the shy and socially awkward girl (who happens to have super strength,) and the broody, gay, Spanish superhero who's more of a "modern" take on the character. Ie: the rest all have bright spandex costumes, while he has form fitting body armor, is tortured and broody and prone to violent rage and heroin abuse.

And, of course, the Superman-inspired character is a total, total asshole.



The show is very, very amusing all the way through, start to finish. I don't know if you could do 100 episodes of it. But after six, they seem to have no problems with slowing down or running out of story. And again -- 90% of it is just arguing in a bar. Proving that if the characters are sharply drawn and you have a hook, that's 90% of the show right there.

I just worry that the particular vagaries of the development grind in this country make a show like this utterly impossible here. Nobody learns here. There is no deeper meaning. There's heart, but it's always undercut with acid. And the result is freaking hilarious.

And here's a surprise...the female characters are better drawn than the men. I know. In a comic book show.

Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder Dares to Say The 'S'-word

WHILE I STRUGGLE to get twenty-six hours of work out of a standard twenty-four hour day, Friend-of-the-Blog Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder dips his gnarly, wizened comedy toe into the big bad blogosphere, with some truly spook-tacular, scaaaaaary thoughts about a scaaaary word that has a lot of people running scaaaaared these days. And though he writes specifically about the industry here in Canada, I think what he has to say is actually pretty universal.

So read on. Wake the neighbors, phone the kids, and as always, please...

...no wagering.

A Dispatch from Matt Neffer, Boy Spotwelder

So there's this interesting phrase I keep hearing a lot when it comes to comedy in Canada. It's something I've heard from network executives and producers over the years, to be sure. But, more often than not these days, I hear it from fellow writers, particularly emerging writers, about whose future I care deeply, if only because they may be in a position to hire my tired old carcass in years to come.

The writer has a pitch. It's an idea for a half-hour comedy program centering on a small group of individuals, let's say 4 - 8, who either live or work or play together on a regular basis, and each week some sort of problem comes up that needs fixing, and in doing so, the characters interact with one another and try a bunch of solutions and most of those solutions fail until maybe one succeeds, or doesn't, and there's your show.

Hopefully the pitch has a little more meat on the bones than that, but you get the general idea. At that point, the writer often takes a deep breath and says this: "But it's not a sitcom."

"It's not a sitcom." It is a phrase perhaps second in popularity only to the old standby, "We know your show will be funny, but what else will it be?"

(Well, you don't know it'll be funny. A thousand things have to go right before that happens. My name could be Giggles McChucklepants and you'd still have no guarantee the show I'm pitching you will be funny. We should be so lucky. Comedy is hard.)

But I digress.

My little theory is that there are three reasons why the fear and loathing of the word "sitcom" tends to persist. The first, I've grown to suspect, is particularly unfortunate: The writer in question refuses to use the word "sitcom" because it gives them a sort of insurance policy just in case the show isn't actually funny. For some reason, calling their project a "half-hour comedy" or, God forbid, "half-hour dramedy," seems to ease the pressure, because that way, if the jokes are few and far between, it was done on purpose. It's not a sitcom.

This is an important point because it distinguishes the "sitcom versus half-hour comedy" issue from being purely one of semantics to an issue of actual quality. It could just be me, but I believe that a comedy, no matter what you call it, should be funny. Quite funny. Like, ideally, a-couple-of-chuckles-and-one-big-laugh-on-every-page funny. If you're writing a comedy pilot and there aren't a lot of actual laughs, it's a bit like writing a Die Hard movie where there isn't a lot of actual action. The audience comes through the door expecting something and when we don't deliver it we shoot ourselves in the foot.

Now, please note I say "laughs" here and not necessarily "jokes." Personally, I like jokes, and lots of them, but I will labour to make the distinction because it speaks to the second reason people are sitcom-phobic, which is that the word "sitcom" seems to conjur a certain creaky set-up/punchline/my boss-is-coming-to-dinner-and-all-I-have-to-serve-him-are-my-pot-brownies kind of show, like, say, Three's Company (which had its merits, but whatever).

Personally, I say enough. It's time to re-claim the stupid word. The old adage that a sitcom should have "three jokes a page" may sound hacky and tired, but keep in mind that it's not all sarcastic retorts. It's wordplay, it's pratfalls, it's cutaways, it's bad behaviour, it's reactions to that bad behaviour. Things that are not all necessarily "jokes" but things that are clearly, demonstrably funny. Comedy scripts should be chock full of them. That's not to say we can't have dramatic moments, or land an emotional punch here and there, but if we're doing comedy, we have to earn that stuff, not just cram it in because we ran out of gags.

Cheers, Taxi, Everybody Loves Raymond, Will and Grace, Two and a Half Men, and Happy Days are all sitcoms. But so are Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Office, Flight of the Conchords, 30 Rock, Extras and so forth.

Now: You might look at that list and note that none of those shows are Canadian, which brings me to the third and possibly most common objection to the use of the word sitcom, which is that we don't have that kind of history up here. Well, you're right, we don't, which is why any time I get into a discussion about sitcoms in Canada someone invariably brings up The Trouble With Tracy. Truth be told, that was a perfectly good argument twenty years ago. Maybe even ten.

But I think we should move on. The Trouble with Tracy was nearly forty fucking years ago, and the tide has, I believe, finally turned. If we accept that Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, Rent-a-Goalie, Little Mosque, Made in Canada, The Newsroom, etc. are, by definition, sitcoms, then we have to come to the conclusion that we have, in fact, rounded some kind of corner in this country, and that there is nobility in building on this new tradition. Television comedy isn't dead. People like to laugh. It's like some sort of weird thing with them, in fact.

What kinds of sitcom are we going to make, traditional or groundbreaking? I'm not sure. I recently had a conversation with a very talented Canadian television writer who argued that not only is sitcom a dirty word, but that comedy had "evolved" past shows like Cheers.

I like this guy, but I say that's bullshit. The traditional multi-cam show has run aground in recent years, no question, but I am convinced it is resting and not dead. Much has been made of the fact that CBC are currently looking to produce traditional, family-oriented, multi-cam sitcoms. Some people question the idea, but I happen to like it a lot. There is something to be said for zigging while everyone else zags, and I actually believe that the Ceeb, rather than dragging behind the curve on this one, are in fact out-front, anticipating a time in the near-future when frenetic, uber-ironic, 40 locations-and-65-scene comedies wear out their welcome. People like shows where they can drop in to a place they know and actually hang around a while. It was nice to go back to the WJM Newsroom, or Mary's apartment. It felt good. Shows like Arrested Development had no real home base, and I think suffered because of it. The show was hilarious, but the emotional connection wasn't there.

This is related to my "Friendly Giant" theory of television, which is that people like a certain amount of repetition in their TV because it's ingrained in us at an early age ("I'll close up the draw bridge when you leave...") But that's another post.

Similarly, it's been a while since I sat down with CTV, and they may not be as interested in doing the multi-cam thing, but I can't believe they wouldn't love to have another Corner Gas on their hands. Are they gonna back away from the next great idea or vehicle simply because the man or woman pitching it calls it a sitcom? I doubt it. (Though if I'm wrong, don't sue me).

So, that's my little rant. Be curious to find out if I'm alone on this one.

Oh, one other thing: Assuming we ever get over the sitcom thing, could we also possibly put a moratorium on saying things like "It's a comedy about a family, but it's not "Frasier." Or, "it's a show about young people, but it's not "Friends." Or, "it's quirky, but it's not Seinfeld."

Why do we always pick the most successful shows in television history as an example of what we don't want to do? I'm not saying we should set out to re-make a show that's already been done, but wouldn't it be nice to at least duplicate that kind of success?

It always seems to me like it would make more sense to say "It's a story about a guy on the radio, but it's not 'Hello, Larry.'"

Now there's a pitch I could get behind.

"Hello, Larry"? Anyone? As I say, I'm old.

If you're an industry professional, and you'd like to guest blog here in Sticksville, drop me a line at the email link on Ye Olde Sideboarde. Thanks to Matt Neffer. Promotional considerations by Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat. This guest blog is a Mark Goodman/Bill Todman production.

How'd I Get To Meet Your Mother In the First Place?

REVISED OUTLINE, you are my nemesis.

But Carter and Craig seem like nice guys, and they get pretty detailed into the "big break" question, which I know everybody always wants to know about...so maybe I'll just keep banging my head against the wall and linkslut this "Watch With Kristin" interview with Carter Bays and Craig Thomas.

On any given day during the production of How I Met Your Mother, what are you actually doing? How do you go from a blank page to the product that's ready for air?
Well, in two years of doing the show, Craig and I have sort of discovered what's important and what isn't. And what is most important is story. So, we'll sit down with—not the whole writing staff—but me and Craig and usually two other writers in a room, with a dry-erase board, to figure out what the episode is going to be about.

You know, Phil Rosenthal wrote a book called You're Lucky You're Funny, which Craig and I are both reading right now. He talks about how Carl Reiner, on The Dick Van Dyke Show, would shut all the writers in a room and say, "What happened at your house this weekend?" And that's where the story comes from.

So, it sort of starts off as a few hours of therapy, talking about what we're feeling. You know, we'll be talking about what secrets do you tell your partner, and what do you keep from them, and that will eventually turn into [the] Robin Sparkles [episode]. Or we'll say, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if Robin was a Canadian pop star?" and we'll work our way backward, figuring out how you get to that. We sort of chart it all on the white board, and then we can assign that story to one of our writers.

When the story is broken and the scripts are locked, is the bulk of your job done, or are you heavily involved in what's happening on set and in the edit?
Well, it seems like so much of the great stuff comes out on the set and in the edit room, but if a script is solid, it is like a huge, weeklong sigh of relief. But with some scripts, you know, when the actors are rehearsing scenes for camera, to figure out angles, we're completely rewriting those scenes in the midst of it.

Requiem for a Jane

SO GLOBAL has canceled The Jane Show after two seasons.

From the Playback Daily article:

Global Television will not renew the homegrown sitcom The Jane Show, which starred Second City alumnus Teresa Pavlinek, for a third season.

A spokesman for Global tells Playback Daily that a mid-season replacement for the Shaftesbury Films comedy has not yet been chosen.

The second season of The Jane Show, which featured Pavlinek as Jane Black, a struggling artist-turned-copy editor in an advertising firm, aired on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. on Global.

Christina Jennings, executive producer at Shaftesbury, expressed disappointment that the comedy was not picked up for a third season for want of sufficient viewership. The second season averaged an overall national audience (2+) of 147,000 -- down 13% from season one, according to Global.

I have to admit that I drifted away from The Jane Show early for the usual Canadian TV reasons -- pre-emptions, they kept moving it around, wasn't sure when it was on due to lousy promotion, etc...

I wrote about it when it first premiered, but only saw about 4 or 5 episodes after that -- and only one from the second season of the show.

But I will say this: I had basically the same conversation with two Canadian TV writers I know, who both work for shows that get watched. And they both related how they tuned in an episode of the Jane Show and found it really funny. So I'll take that and file that away.

The real issue here, of course, is who are the people involved and what are they doing now? In Canada, very often we all start over from square one every time. The writers of the Jane Show now have experience under their belt, or more experience, and whether you think it was the best show in the world or not, those writers, I guarantee you, are better than when they started. In the USA, they'd be free to go to other shows and they'd be seriously being looked at. But in Canada, it's more likely that they'll be left twisting in the wind while more "new writers" are given a chance; so that in two years, those "new writers" who aren't so new can be the ones to twist, lather, rinse, repeat...

Is there a half-hour in development, or getting greenlit somewhere for them to go to? I don't know. But I hope so. I remember hearing from several places that when Traders shut down, the scattering to the winds of everyone who learned on that show set the Canadian TV industry back five years.

We have to stop starting over.

Bye Jane. Probably not enough people watched the show to say convincingly, "you'll be missed," But I sure hope everyone connected with you doesn't end up with a 323 area code...

And Somewhere, down in the Tropics, a Fat Roach is Macking on a Hottie Roach

IN THE FUTURE, after global warming, fundamentalism of all stripes, scorched earth politics, weird weather, unchecked capitalism and the metric system have finally murdered we rough beasts and rendered the planet a hot, gassy, barren rock -- only two things will remain:

1) The Cockroaches
2) According to Jim

Yeah, I know, I know. But people liked Jonathan Livingston Seagull, too. And c'mon. That book was bullshit.

Greg Daniels, Part II: Long Skinny Notebooks, and The Five-To-One

NOT ONLY has Greg Daniels co-created one of the two best animated tv series of the last 20 years, King of the Hill, but he also wrote for the other one. (The Simpsons) He's written for Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live, and won Emmys galore. In fact, three of Daniels' Simpsons episodes are ranked as among the most popular Simpsons eps of all time. That's a feat.

This is the conclusion to my conversation with Greg Daniels, Creator and Executive Producer of the American version of The Office, which took place at the Banff Springs Hotel during the 2007 Banff World Television Festival.

For Part I, go here. To hear an NPR feature on writing The Office with Daniels and Mindy Kaling (writer, "Kelly") go here.


DTOS: I hate to go to the lame place -- this whole journalist driven, "death of comedy" thing -- but one of the great things about The Office that maybe points what's missing in a lot of other tv comedy today is the idea of truth. There is something true in the work you've done, both in King of the Hill and now in The Office. I recognize the America I see in The Office. And the America that I saw in your years of King of the Hlll. And I don't see that on Television a lot.


GREG DANIELS: Well, we have a couple of things that we do. And one of them is I get these reporters notebooks for the writers, and pass them out. And for King in the Hill we used to go to Texas and go around with our reporters' notebooks and here we're always going to offices, talking to people, and so there's a lot of observational comedy -- seeing what's going on and making humor out of that, rather than coming up with the comedy first. So that's one reason. But another thing is that the cameramen on The Office, specifically Randall Einhorn, although Matt Sohn his number two is also very good...but he's our DP and I used to sit him down when I told him what we were looking for and I'd say, "truth and beauty. we're going for truth and beauty." He really responded to that. "Cool," he'd say -- he lived in Australia, he'd go, "Truth and beauty, mate!" And then he'd go out...so he was always trying to find that moment of behavior, or that thing in the camerawork. So I think that's a lot of -- well, it's a combination of a lot of factors, but I'm glad you pointed it out -- because that's always our sort of secret thing we'd talk to him about.


DTOS: From a standpoint of...for the writer geeks reading this, now. Is there anything in your process that you've learned -- your secret "Office" weapon, the way that you do things that is a better way to do things than maybe a lot of other shows are doing?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I think surprise is extremely important. Which means originality. And I think people have to be really careful when they're doing creative writing that they're not remembering things. Because I think a lot of times you're going, "oh wow, that would be really cool if this happened, and then that happened" and you're not really thinking of it for the first time. You're actually remembering bits and pieces of things that you've seen on other TV shows. Or movies or something. And I would try and steer away from other shows and look toward real life to try and make the writing be fresher. And find stories that people tell you. Stuff like that -- not go, "remember that classic Lucy episode? Well a couple of tweaks and adjustments..." I think a lot of people do that, you know? "I know, how about a 'locked in a' something episode? That's always worked before." And I think that's just the wrong way to think about coming up with ideas. It's so much better to get these little skinny reporters notebooks that fit in your back pocket and try and go out and try and look at things and think of what would be funny in the things that you see out in the real world.

DTOS: Just because you've been so great with it, and have tried so many experiments with it -- what have you learned on the show about using the web, and the internet, and webisodes?


GREG DANIELS: Well, I would love to do way way more stuff on the web. Right now there's certain, um...Guild considerations, which I'm very respectful of, because I think the Guild is a great way to protect a good life for creative people and they've identified that these things are not appropriate for Guild members to do. And for some reason, the companies have not wanted to set a precedent by negotiating a Guild-covered agreement, which is silly because it's the same price, you know. But I guess these are issues that are coming up for negotiation in the next Minimum Basic Agreement, so no one wants to touch it now, which is too bad. If they did, I would be all over the web with all sorts of programming. As it is now, you know, once you pick around all the Guild issues -- we're still trying to do a lot of stuff. Just not as much as we would do. Why do it? To me it's because the whole thing with our show is that we've made it much more disposable because it's a fake documentary. So if there's a boom in the shot it's okay, and the lighting doesn't have to be perfect. And that kind of relaxes everybody in the sense of, they can try weird things. And if it works it works, and it goes in. And if it doesn't it doesn't and we haven't wasted an enormous amount of time and money. It's the ease of production -- and I think that's even more true with the web. Because nobody expects glossy, Hollywood values on the web now. So it's really all about the writing and the ideas, not the execution. And it makes it easier for people to just throw their ideas on. So to me if we have weird ideas, that we don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars of the studio's money on because I can't justify it, cause it's just too weird. I still could maybe justify a couple of thousand dollars. And that, creatively is maybe is the most exciting part...these weird, late night kind of ideas. The 1am sketch at Saturday Night Live.


DTOS: The five to one, yeah!


GREG DANIELS: Yeah, the five to one, they just throw it on! Yeah, I'd love to do more of those. That's what the web is to me.

New episodes of The Office return to NBC this fall.

In Conversation: Greg Daniels, Executive Producer/Showrunner of The Office (U.S.)

IN PERSON, Greg Daniels is in many ways, the comedy writer in my head. That is to say, he shows up for our interview late, distracted, in a long coat. He's a bit harried -- the interviews have started earlier than he thought they would, and I'm first up. I have a sneaking suspicion he got lost on the way to the room. The Banff Springs Hotel can be kind of cavernous and medieval that way. No paintings that follow you with their eyes, though...which is a shame.

If you didn't know The Office was an American remake, based on characters created by Gervais and Merchant, you'd swear that you were seeing a character who was a bit of Jim Halpert, and Ryan at his most harried. Playing the writer-as-performer game is always a slippery slope, but the heck with it -- I see a bit of Bobby Hill in there, too.

Daniels gets more animated as he gets talking -- and he's downright passionate when he speaks about he craft of writing. TV also runs in the family - his wife, Susanne, is the President of Lifetime Networks. All the best comic minds, I find, aren't shy about showing their serious side, and Daniels is no exception.

Diane Kristine also did an excellent, wider-focused interview with Daniels for Blogcritics, which you can accces here .

DTOS: I guess one of he first things I'd love to know about the show relates to the show I'm working on now. I'm struggling with the size of the ensemble and the cast, and how you service all those characters. And you have an enormous cast. And all those characters breathe, and live, and I'm wondering if that has anything to do with the fact that some of those actors are writers as well. Does that help you service all those characters?


GREG DANIELS: I think that probably is true. Some of the characters are working on the show in a different capacity. So they don't care as much if they don't have as much screen time. So that helps with three characters at least. But it's very difficult, mostly because it's very expensive. I came from doing animation for the last ten years [King of the Hill] and one of the fun things is that people do multiple voices, so you get an actor who does three voices, you get three characters out of them, and you can have a giant cast of characters to play with, where in ordinary tv terms you don't have that because if you want an ongoing character, you have to make them a series regular, which is very expensive. And you generally have to guarantee that they'll be in every episode, or seven out of 13, or ten out of 13. So we recently made series regulars out of a few fantastic actors that we've had, such as the character of Darryl, Craig Robinson, and Ed Helms and Creed Bratton...but you know, it's expensive. It's very hard to do starting off.


DTOS: I know you've probably answered this question a thousand times before but hopefully I'll try to get at it a slightly different way. One of the first things I noticed about the American version. that I thought, "that's interesting, that's a very smart American translation" is that the Jim character doesn't seem to hate his job like the British character did. So now that you've got three seasons under your belt and you know these characters arguably better than we did in the British version I'm wondering how you view-- now--those differences. And what makes your Office American, versus the jumping off point.


GREG DANIELS: Well. (long pause) I don't think a lot of these differences came into play until the second season. Some of them might have, but we were really respectful of the original, the first season. Maybe a little too respectful. But we didn't really start to do our own thing as much til the second season. We certainly had a lot of psychological discussions. I like to have a lot of psychological discussions before writing. And the idea behind Jim and why he was still there was, was at first he was there because of Pam. He would have left but he had this unrequited crush. But then I think we started to decide that he had a few character flaws that kept him there, like he was a little bit of a slacker, uh, I mean you can consider these flaws or not depending on your point of view. But you know...I sometimes think about the Jimmy Stewart character in "It's a Wonderful Life" kind of, how he spends his whole time, his whole time there and he realizes that he hasn't had all the adventures his brother has, but he's become very important to all the people in that town. So, it's kind of like, well, perhaps there's value in that too. So I think we started off thinking that a guy like that would be ambitious and do all these other things, and now we're kind of coming to the conclusion that just being ambitious and moving to New York is not the measure of a good person.


DTOS: I'm a huge fan of your version, and I have been since the beginning. But it's funny, as a viewer, but also as a writer, I can look at one early episode and think, "wow, this show is really finding its feet" and that's where the episode where you managed to do what nobody in America can do right now, which is deal head on with the subject of race.

GREG DANIELS: The Diversity Day episode?

DTOS: To start with, yeah...

GREG DANIELS: Wow, that was our second episode. I was at least thinking that you'd pick one at the beginning of the second season -- but that's pretty good!

DTOS: But that was the one to me that was the shot across the bow. I know a lot of people who watched the first episode and went, 'meh' but to me, this was what you would have to deal with in an American version, and you didn't shy away from it.

GREG DANIELS: Well if you know about the realities of TV production, you'll know that first episode was filmed a year before the other one. The first episode was the pilot, and the script had to be a situation where, you know, you're trying to get picked up. And since they had bought an adaptation, completely starting from scratch would be a very risky thing to do. So you know, that was the episode where we hired all the people, we didn't know who any of the actors were when we started shooting. The second episode is...The first episode really should be buried, really, of any new series. Because you don't know who the actors are. The second episode we knew it was Steve Carell in that part, we knew all the other actors, we knew Stanley was black, we knew all these things that we didn't before. I'm glad you liked it. I liked it too. But that was also one of the things where, Howard Klein and Ben Silverman and I went to England to talk to Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and one of the things we talked about, this was before even the pilot rewrite, was that a big issue in American offices would be race. Huge. Bigger than class. That would be the equivalent to class in Britain. So that's why we hit it dead on.


DTOS: There's another key scene, I think that defines what's surprising about the show. And this one's from last season. Where you finally showed everybody out on the sales call. And the thing about that, the scene that almost had me getting out of the chair was the scene where you show that, despite everything, Jim and Dwight work really well together -- that they're a really good team. I thought that was brilliant.


GREG DANIELS: Thanks. There's a lot of deleted material in that. I'm trying to remember what actually aired and what didn't. But there's ... I think in the mythology of the show they used to go on sales calls a lot, but they got so irritated with each other that they didn't anymore.

Come back for Part II of my Greg Daniels interview tomorrow.

Sensitive Men Everywhere Go "Ooohh!"

Oh Jenna, Jenna, Jenna:

NEW YORK (AP) - Jenna Fischer of "The Office" has fractured her back in four places, but it could've been a lot worse.

Her publicist tells the New York Daily News that Fischer fell down some stairs at a bar where a party for "The Office" was being held. The publicist says Fischer "avoided anything scary near the spine and she'll make a full recovery in time to shoot season four of "The Office" this summer.

Now, I admit, I've been a bit of a "Karen is way hot" guy this season. But after walking over hot coals and her scene last week, and now this, all I can say is:

PAMMMM!

On Can-Comedy Shows Generally & Jeff Ltd In Particular: Why These Pretzels Aren't Making Me Thirsty

WILL DIXON came out recently as a Jeff-hater. That's not exactly fair. If you read the post on his site, what it actually says is:

...Jeff Ltd. is a pretty tough watch.

But Mr. Dixon doesn't stop there. He delves a little deeper exploring the inexplicable comparisons some have made to Curb Your Enthusiasm:

You see, Larry David is a little petty and narrow-minded for someone who essentially 'has it all', but in the situations that arise, he generally has good intentions. And so when things blow up in his face...hilarity ensues. On the other hand, Jeff is just so...I dunno, unlikable? He's intentionally smarmy and lecherous and he seriously tries to nail chicks and scam people...and yes, it generally blows up in his face (like a trick cigar, according to the CTV site), but because the blow up is expected, and because he doesn't really have good intentions...the show, Jeff Ltd. is just not that funny. Or if there's hilarity ensuing, it's not for me.

I sure there's a good comedy 'do and don't' rule in here somewhere, but my little scifi/paranormal action adventure pea brain can't seem to articulate it.

Coincidentally, while Dix is suffering the low blood sugar in the explaining-things confidence, he's actually pretty dead on the money. I've been talking with several people I know who write comedy. Some have toiled in the thankless ghetto of stage sketch comedy, and they seem to be consistently frustrated because, in their estimation, there's a few people on the scene who always get laughs who just aren't that funny.

I'm redacting all the names -- but the truth is, the people talked about, indeed, probably aren't the most funny stage comics I've ever seen. But I laughed like a drain when I saw them onstage. Why? Because they had a likable persona that you just wanted to laugh at -- or with. They made you enjoy yourself.

This is a part of comedy that doesn't get talked about a lot -- at least in the circles I run in. But when you look at those shows that stay on the air for years and you don't know why -- likability is a factor. The guy on King of Queens is likable. So is Leah Remini. According to Jim cruised through a bunch of seasons because, for whatever reason, some people found that character redeeming and likable.

This likability factor is not something that always crops up for standups. There are standups out there who have met with great success by essaying an abrasive, obnoxious, or even unlikable comic persona... from Louis Black to Louis C.K. to Mike McDonald... you can definitely get laughs behind the microphone without being someone people like.

But the moment you transition to something character-based, either in sketch or in narrative comedy like TV, likability becomes a factor.

The most successful comics to make that transition from stage to soundstage always have help. Big help. Jerry Seinfeld counted on Larry David. Ray Romano had Phil Rosenthal. I don't know who did the yeoman's work, but though Home Improvement might have been based on the comedy of Tim Allen, I've heard plenty enough stories to know that it's not Tim who you credit for making that show fly.

Comics, like other actors, can sometimes be their own enemy. I was watching the new Larry Sanders boxset a week or so ago and an old ep with Brett Butler came up. And I went, "oh yeah!" I had completely forgotten about Grace Under Fire. There's a show that had incredible promise, which flamed out because the star didn't know what was good for her.

Vide: Roseanne. The Lottery. Seriously.

Comics come from that cutthroat world where any moment they might have to take out a heckler. So they're prickly. They need someone to tune that sensibility for TV.

In the USA, this happens naturally because of the writer/showrunner culture. If you're a comic and you're really great in comedy, well, the hell with you, we're still not letting you have a show without having a showrunner in there. From there it's a delicate walk to glory or disaster. If the show hits, then maybe the balance of power shifts, and maybe there's producer clashes. Or maybe it's a fruitful collaboration that lasts for years.

I bet you anything that there were times when Ray Romano was doing his supposed "breakout" live action film Welcome to Mooseport, where he wished that Everybody Loves Raymond co-creator Phil Rosenthal was around to tell him why his bid to be the next Jimmy Stewart was sucking so hard.

But in Canada, because the writer-showrunner platonic ideal isn't fully recognized (We're working on it, Chester, we're working on it) we very often get comics trying out their own series hands without having anybody else really behind it. They'll give actors shows here, they'll give comics shows. Yes, comedy is in decline everywhere, but in Canada it's in decline for a very specific reason:

The shows aren't funny.

I'll give the standard caveats here: Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys (where the writers are actually working in deep concert with the onscreen talent.) I have high hopes for the second season of Little Mosque.

And while comics with development deals have trouble making that transition from fearsome commander of the stage to likable living room guy, actors often have the opposite problem.

They assume that they're likable, so anything they do will be likable. I kind of think that's what's going on with Jeff Ltd. I think Jeff Seymour's a really interesting actor. I think the screen likes him. I have no doubt he could be a big hit. But in his eponymous show, he was smarmy and incredibly unlikable. His personal charisma didn't translate. And because he was the producer, the final say, the guy who worked without a writing staff (except for a writing partner) -- only Jeff's judgement ruled. And it resulted in a product that wasn't really very funny at all. It had its moments -- but nothing that pulled you through and kept you watching. It seemed narcissistic, not in a funny, "Larry Sanders" way, but in a creepy "Don't Hassel The Hoff" way.

The other conversation I had with a pro comedy writer the other day comes into play here, too. If Canadian comics, developers, and network people could realize one thing, please, please could it be this:

The cast of Seinfeld were not unlikable.

That's what gets said, constantly. "We want this to be like Seinfeld...or Curb...you know... unlikable."

Which is a desperate misread of the history of that show, and of the entire Larry David sensibility on display in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The cast of Seinfeld for the first few seasons of that show were VERY LIKABLE. You don't get applause for Kramer's every entrance because people don't like him. Elaine was sassy, and didn't take the boys' guff, George was a lovable loser. Jerry was bemused, sure, and shallow about dating women, but the point was he was the guy who would get dragged to see the baby. He was the guy who would give up the perfect apartment. He would let his friends inconvenience him. He didn't shove Kramer up against a wall when he came into the apartment and raided his stuff.

Yes, it took a while for an audience to find the show, because it was smart. Cheers took a whole season and a half to find an audience, too. But once that bond with the audience was there, it allowed them freedom. Freedom to start pushing the boundaries. Seinfeld pushed them pretty far. To some people, too far. (Including me. When George's fiancee died, I wasn't exactly on the program with George anymore.) But the point is, you can't push those boundaries with someone who you don't care for. If you don't care for the characters, why would you ever return, week after week?

People go back to Dog River because they like the people in Dog River. They want to spend time in that Trailer Park because behind all the swearing and dope smokin, those guys are pretty decent, eh?

This likability is intangible. And you can definitely overdo it. The things that make the characters likable should also make them funny -- so stop sharpening those pencils saying, "we need more heart here," Mr. or Mrs. Network. Giving dramatic scenes to comedy characters will not solve your problem. It will simply take all the air out of the supposed comedy.

Larry David in Curb gets into situations he doesn't want to be in because he's trying to be polite. (Aw, how likable,) but he's cantankerous and doesn't want to put up with the bullshit niceties (funny!) He just can't help himself. You accepted transgressive behavior from the cast of Seinfeld because these things were being done by characters you already liked.

You found them likable because they were funny and you found them funny because they were likable. And that very simple thing is what's missing from so many scripted comedy shows in Canada, be it Jeff Ltd, or...

...well, I'm certainly not going there. As always, YMMV. Think I'm full of it? Have at it below in the comments. And while you're at it, how about listing some more examples of TV comedy characters where what makes them funny also makes them likable?

Stan Daniels at The Turn

JAIME WEINMAN reminded me of something in the comments below about Stan Daniels. He, of course, is eponymously immortalized with his own type of joke: The Stan Daniels Turn.

It's kind of a self-aware, almost meta-humorous type of joke, because it's sort of a game between the writer and the audience -- see if they can set up something and find a creative way to contradict it in the very next moment -- and because it often depends on something happening oh-so-conveniently on cue, as in the above joke. When it works, it works really well, though.

Weinman wrote about it last year, and posted a great example from Mary Tyler Moore, and the incomparable Ted Knight. This is a great lesson for Comedy writers. I actually use appreciation for the Stan Daniels Turn as a litmus test for writers, directors, and network people.

Audiences love the Stan Daniels Turn. It's a really satisfying joke when executed right. And I've been in lots of meetings where directors, network people, and other writers pooh-pooh it. Because they're too good for the Stan Daniels Turn, you see.

I call these people, "people who do not understand comedy." When I am handed power, they will be shunned in accordance with the laws of the tribe.

Thanks, Weinman, for allowing me to skate through another day by glomming onto another's work.

Um...It's homage?

Wow. It's a Bad Day for Writers

I'M SURE we'll see some better recollections from those who knew him -- but a sad loss to TV writers:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Stan Daniels, the Emmy-winning co-creator and executive producer of "Taxi" and a writer on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," has died. He was 72.

The Toronto-born Daniels died of heart failure April 6, according to Mount Sinai Memorial Park, where a funeral was planned for Thursday. Daniels won eight Emmys during his long television career, including three for "Taxi" and three for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Daniels apparently passed away April 6, but it was just announced today. If you read this blog and you knew Stan Daniels, I'd love to hear any anecdote. Especially anybody from the Toronto days.

Bring Out Your Dead, Bring Out Your Dead

Andy Barker.

God-Damn-it.
I hope you fuckers really, really, really love your According to Jim.

"Maybe You And Me Were Never Meant to Be..."

Sigh.

So Jaime Weinman got ahold of the DVD release for WKRP: Season 1, and it's a hack and slay job with nearly all of the music replaced.

Since this is a show set in a radio station, this is a lot more significant than you would normally think. Like The Wonder Years (which also is MIA on DVD) 'KRP used music not as wallpaper (a la the dewy "montage" shots of shows like Dawson's Creek, and the O.C.,) but as a character -- underscoring and informing many of the scenes. Since there are no original elements, and the tracks are mixed, this sometimes means the elimination of entire scenes. It's a terrible stitch up job. Click the link above and you'll see how.

Over on his Maclean's blog, Weinman gets into more of the why; why FOX did what they did, and why maybe shows like this really belong on smaller labels with larger price points -- like SHOUT! factory.

What we're really facing here is the fact that big companies are essentially hopeless when it comes to non-current TV shows on DVD. It's not because the people who work there are big meanies; they're not, and many of them are doing their best. But a DVD set from Fox or Paramount or Warner Brothers has to be mass-produced and mass-marketed. For the most part, they don't do limited releases or special collectors' editions; everything has to be priced and sold at Wal-Mart level prices. The only way to do WKRP or The Wonder Years or a similar music-heavy show is to pay for the music and then make up the costs by jacking up the price of the set, but that's against company policy.

Also, big companies have a heavy amount of overhead, meaning that it's tough enough for a set to make back its cost even without paying for music. Which is why shows with even fairly decent levels of sales get abandoned after one or two seasons.

This is why most of the best TV on DVD releases come from independent or semi-independent companies, like Shout! Factory (which did Freaks and Geeks, SCTV, and the Electric Company best-of sets among many others) or Image (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Twilight Zone). They can charge more to make back the costs, market the products to collectors and fans rather than trying to break into Wal-Mart, and put people who are actually familiar with the series to work on it.

In the post on Macleans, Weinman shows a clip that fully illustrates what's been lost. And it's heartbreaking.

I'm so torn about this DVD. I know it's not what I want. I don't want to support this kind of butchering, but at the same time, there's the reality that the set doesn't sell, and there won't be any more released. No matter what happens, it's a bad deal for the consumer.

WKRP is one of the shows that made me want to go work in the media. The other was the movie Broadcast News. The thought that it is now IMPOSSIBLE for me to experience the show that was so important to me growing up the way I saw it then, seems unseemly, somehow. Even out-of-print books can be found in a library. Commerce really gets to dictate the repository of cultural memory? Is that really the way we want things to go from now on?

This may seem trivial -- and it is. It is trivial. But remember, too, that music rights kept the greatest documentary made about the Civil Rights movement -- Eyes on the Prize -- out of print for several years. That's a disservice to education as well as to cultural history, and history itself.

Part of what's happening with the internet and the brave new world of content is a discussion that changes what we think of as content, and what we think of as the audience's rights when it comes to that content. So far, corporations have kicked arts' ass on this score. Mickey Mouse is killing the public domain, just as remixing and mashing and a pastiche culture demand flexibiilty.

In Canada, there's much whining about a new copyright act. And when it's tabled, it will inevitably be retro and biased toward the corporations and against the consumers.

When's that pendulum gonna swing?

And do I really have to pay 30 bucks for this piece of KR(a)P?

GREAT News for Comedy Fans

NBC renewed 30 Rock today.. Yesssss. All Hail the Baldwin and the Fey!


The manatee has become the mento.

Comedy Week VI: Now What? OR That @#%*'s Not Funny

First of all, it's St Patrick's Day, and a Saturday. So any of you planning to go out there and get faced on green beer can kiss my Royal Irish Ass. Remember -- it's amateur night. Be sensible. Don't go nuts and leave the car the hell at home.

That being said...

Part of the exercise of this week has been me trying to work through what it is that I currently find funny. Because like a lot of people as they get older, I'm starting to find myself growing out of step with the culture. And when the culture is your business, that aint good.

Do I find Will Ferrell's antics funny? Sometimes. Talladega-not-so-much, Anchorman-yea.
Sandler? Not really, though his attempts to stretch usually do better with me.
Aqua Teen and most of the Adult Swim stuff (since Space Ghost) just leaves me flat. It's weird, but it's not funny. Kind of like that subset of Canadian films that are supposed to be quirky funny but are just....quirky.

(I would never describe anything as quirky without meaning it pejoratively, so has the term been abused in the service of Canadian film.)

I hate to bash Dane Cook (again) but there's something about the rabidness of his fanbase, the triumph of his marketing, and the hollowness of his material that I think really does portent storm clouds.

Will his stuff endure? Who knows? The college kids who love him will probably always look back on him fondly. And the utter lack of topicality in his material certainly means it might not date.

When I was a teenager, I loved Beyond the Fringe -- but that material's dated horribly. Lenny Bruce is interesting, but not funny when viewed today -- certainly not particularly shocking.

There's stuff that was lame that I loved when I was eight, like Happy Days, that doesn't hold up when you're an adult. There's stuff that was made long before I was born, like Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and Sullivan's Travels, that surely does. (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

But it keeps coming back to that frame: what do we find funny, why do we find it funny, and how do we craft more to go that way? George Carlin's routines, which I would listen to turned down low off the record player in my room when I was a kid, so that my mom wouldn't hear the bad words and take the record away from me -- well, they still make me laugh. But George Carlin today is not funny.

To be funny, truly funny, I think you need a connection to the age that transcends your connection with your audience. I don't pretend to understand the darkness in the comedy heart, the thing that maybe drove Richard Jeni and Spalding Gray to do what they did -- but it always seems possible to me that one day I might. That that's the thing lurking out there just beyond the breakers. You come unstuck in your culture and maybe, just maybe, the laughter stops and you can't go on.

This, by the way, is why I'm mostly an hourlong writer.

There's a line in a Sarah Silverman roast where she looks to Alan King and quips that the last person who finds you funny just died. I saw that and it felt like a punch in the stomach. Silverman's transgressive: that's her stock in trade. I kind of find her funny, but I sort of see the point of those who don't, too. But to have that said, like that, baldly, is almost too much.

Funny has a shelf life. It's the thing you can't escape and get away from. It haunts me.

Then there's the part, the theories, that have nothing to do with me.

There's the Jerry Seinfeld line my friend Rob quotes all the time: "I'm not sure comedy wants to be a movie." I have a secret sick desire to write a romantic comedy someday, so I hope he's wrong. I want "Knocked Up" to be as good as everyone says it is.

There's research, real research, like this NYTimes article helpfully posted by a commenter on one of our earlier posts:

Laughter, a topic that stymied philosophers for 2,000 years, is finally yielding to science. Researchers have scanned brains and tickled babies, chimpanzees and rats. They’ve traced the evolution of laughter back to what looks like the primal joke — or, to be precise, the first stand-up routine to kill with an audience of primates.

Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along.

The social consequences and root causes of laughter is something that's fascinated me for some time. But I think it also explains a little bit why we're at this deathly crossroads in television comedy. It's not just that the audience has fragmented, so has the need to get along. We live in a culture that's devoted to slaking your tiny little media thirst, no matter how thinly sliced. So YouTube can do it for you, or that obscure manga you get off the net, or old Bob & Ray routines or rescued kinescopes of At Last The 1948 Show.

What can't be done is to find a way to bring us all together to laugh at the same thing. Maybe Dane Cook is on to something. Maybe he's speaking to his group and has learned the new lessons of laughter, and those of us out here still banging our heads against the wall are missing the point. Maybe it's all come down to group identification now. And maybe never again will we have the experience of having everyone able to go in and talk about Seinfeld the next day: young, old, hip, square -- all finding it funny in different ways and for complementary but different reasons. Maybe Colbert, whose act seems so au courant now, is doomed to a slushpile of irrelevancy once our current age recedes, as it surely will.

Maybe the weird genre that Mazin can't identify is the future. Brrrrr.

Or maybe there will be a unifying force. If the Chinese continue their dominance, it's entirely possible that in fifteen years we'll all be laughing at a comedy about us as the underdog, poised against the inevitable onslaught of Asian need and rule. Could happen. I don't know.

What I do know is that, increasingly, "that's not funny" is a battlefield that's not caught on the nail of political correctness, as it was in the 80s or early 90s...it's merely a recognition of the gulf of understanding between us. Maybe, finally, we've all outgrown comedy -- except within our tiny little subsets.

Which makes it difficult to think that a comedy will ever break through on TV, and speak to everyone ever again. I'm sad about that, but is that just me being sentimental? Maybe that space in our consciousness has been supplanted by the performance shows (which are unstoppable because they swim against the trend: it's the only thing that families watch together.) Maybe that bastard Howie Mandel's shaved dome reflects not just the studio lights, but the future.

I would love to develop and get a comedy to air. And in doing so, I would follow the only rule that has ever resulted in success on television: I would try to make something that I would find funny.

Is that enough? It's sure starting to look like...maybe not.

I don't know. What do you think?


***

Thus endeth Comedy Week here at Dead Things on Sticks. The astute among you may realize that the above seems, well, a little more rambly than usual. That's by design. All week, it's been my intent to sit down with this last post and just let it all come out. I had no plan when I started writing -- and there are no answers or even very many solutions above, because this is all something I'm currently working out for myself, too. I'm interested, as always, to hear your thoughts below.

I'm also probably going to take some time out now and recharge for a few days, so blogging will be light. Have at it.

Now I'm going to go get some brunch.

And if I see any green beer, somebody dies.

Comedy Week IV: Andy Barker's Going To Break My Heart

Do you miss Andy Richter Controls The Universe?

It's one of those comedy litmus tests I like to use to suss out whether people have a similar comic sensibility to mine.

Long before they started talking seriously about the sitcom slump, ARCTU was a sacrificial FOX comedy that I thought pointed the way out. It wasn't as brilliant as Arrested Development, to be sure. But it was very enjoyable. The characters were good-natured and well delineated. You had the object of desire as receptionist, Paget Brewster as the boss, a ghost and an even more neurotic coworker of Andy's. There was the good looking guy who everything came easy to, because he was good looking. TV never deals with that. It was satisfying to see that as a running joke. It made the unfairness of the world seem, you know, bearable.

I liked ATRCTU despite the fact that Andy's character wanted to be a writer (a solipsistic device I usually hate in shows, 30 Rock and Studio 60 notwithstanding...um...or maybe not. Ask me again if the latter comes back.)

However, high is the pile of bones from the ripped and dessicated carcasses of the sacrificial FOX sitcom; ARCTU shuffled off this mortal coil after only nineteen episodes. Man I wish they were on DVD.

Anyway.

It may surprise you to know that Richter's new sitcom, which premieres tonight on NBC, Andy Barker, P.I. doesn't really have all that much in common with ARCTU. That's a good thing. I don't know if it ultimately means that it's any more sustainable than the first show. (I never saw Richter's second attempt at a comedy series; I don't even remember what it was called, I just know it had kids. I got two minutes in and bailed.) Considering the fact that NBC only ordered six episodes of Andy Barker, P.I. I can't say I'm overly optimistic.

And that's a shame. Because once upon a time, this sitcom (created with pal and former couch-mate Conan O'Brien) might have been a fixture on the NBC Thursday Night Lineup. I'm talking back in the days when Cheers sucked hard water in the ratings for a whole year, and still got renewed -- time enough for people to come around and decide they loved what they saw.

There's something deliberately old-fashioned about the cant of this show, though the references are all up to date. (One of Andy's friends runs a falafel store that, post 9/11, is whored up so far in the red white and blue that Karl Rove himself couldn't find a way to further exploit Yankee iconography.)

Andy is a CPA who opens up shop in a strip mall above a video store that never seems to be busy (again, funny in the age of Netflix and VOD.) For comedy refugees and Arrested Development freaks, it's pleasing to see AD's Buster, Tony Hale, show up doing a slightly more functional riff on the Buster character.


And then there's the element that to me, makes the show sing: Harve Presnell as Lew Staziak. Staziak is an old-school, hard drinking, screwing, dangerous P.I. like you remember from all those noir films. Except now he's passing into the sunset. He lives in a home and dreams of past glories. (He's also, in a hilarious run, deathly afraid of chickens.) His story is essentially over, until Andy comes into his life.


In fact, that's where Andy Barker begins. Andy has rented Staziak's old office, and a femme fatale walks through the door and hires him, not realizing that he's a C.P.A. not a P.I. He winds up going to Staziak for help.

So comes the loving tribute to movies and film culture long gone by. Andy is kind of out of time himself. He says things like "Oh, Fudge!" and is married to a straight-arrow sweetheart (Clea Lewis) living a boring suburban life.

Of course, once he stumbles into the P.I. world, he likes the excitement. Yet he never changes his essential nature, like all great comic characters -- Andy remains a C.P.A. He's still concerned about filing on time. He's still impeccably organized and deliciously upright. It's left to Staziak, (who sees in Andy a chance to mentor a young buck) and Buste--I mean Simon, sorry -- to provide most of the wry asides and modernity.) For a senior citizen, Staziak is also remarkably spry in his execution of a beat-down.

What's great about Andy Barker is that the fusion of these character elements is more than affectation. The mysteries that Andy is asked to solve are never very mysterious (so there's lots of room for the comedy) but the solution usually involves him blundering into something because of his innocence and getting out of it because of his knowledge as a C.P.A. (In one episode, the ticking clock is the quarterly tax filing deadline. Yes, it works as a ticking clock. And yes, it's pretty funny.)

Barker is blessed with a great, amiable cast (and some great guest stars, including Ed Asner and Amy Sedaris,) a very cool retro-minimalist opening credit sequence, and some great behind the scenes writing talent too. Including she-who-blogs-and-can-do-no-wrong Jane Espenson, Alex Herschlag (Will & Grace, Ellen, and Fred Goss' late, lamented Sons & Daughters) and O'Brien himself.

I've seen all six episodes (courtesy of Itunes..thank you U.S. credit card) and I have to say that the series really does maintain a consistent, amiable comic quality. The characters are good natured. There's a bit of action and jeopardy, it's mostly pretty clean (by today's standards, anyway) and shows a sense of both comic and film history that goes back more than three years.

And I suspect that's exactly why it will fail. Let's do a test. Do you find these episode titles funny?

1. The Lady Varnishes
2. Three Days of the Chicken
3. Fairway, My Lovely
4. The Big No Sleep
5. Dial "M" for Laptop

If you do -- if you've seen the movies being referenced, if you have a feel for that world and that history, you're going to like Andy Barker. If not, you're liable to sit there stone faced.

There's something just so immensely likable about Richter that I really, really hope this show scores.


But I'm not holding my breath. Or my gun. Or my chicken.