Season 2, Episode 10
About
a month and a half ago, a friend of mine was asking me questions about the difficulties
facing television (specifically comedies) in the light of every increasing ad
breaks and the related decreasing of shows’ actual running times. It was a question
that I sort of left unanswered for a while, both because I was in the midst of
finals, and because there wasn’t anything substantial to my response that I
deemed worth of writing a blog post over it. However, this latest episode of Happy Endings – a show that illustrates
how comedies can work with only the room of 20 minutes and change to tell a
story – seems to poised to raise that question once again, as it sought about
to upend its regular formula for something more traditional, and frankly a
little off-putting.
While
the increase in the number and running time of commercial breaks has been a
boon to the drama series, in that they been forced to streamline their episodes
and avoid spending time on useless tangents, the same can’t be said for comedies.
In comedy, the tangential is usually the comedic, and limiting the runtime of
comedies forces them to choose between storytelling and jokes. Some comedies
(like How I Met Your Mother) end up
choosing story first, but most comedies end up choosing jokes, and in order to
compensate on the story side of things, they choose to go with simple and familiar
story beats, so that they don’t have to spend the screen time set up the
stories because, well, the audience already knows them well enough. (This statement
best applies to just about anything Chuck Lorre has ever made.)
My
main line of thought since I’ve started doing these reviews is that Happy Endings make for a good comedy
series for pretty much one reason above all else: not that it eschews complex
storylines in favor of the ability to cram as many gags as possible within an
episode, but that it frankly eschews any story beats whatsoever. Instead, we
get initial setup of a story, and the show lets the jokes proceed, escalate, and
build on top of one another until the episode reached what seems to be a
natural end of things. This is a hard move to pull, because you have to keep
throwing jokes at the audience to make up for the lack of storyline, but you
also have to make sure that the jokes proceed in a logical manner. Get to crazy
with your jokes and you just end up being like Family Guy, and nobody wants that.
This
set up also tends to give the show a bit of leeway when it comes to setup/stories
that it tells. The show can use a more tired setup and rejuvenate it if the
jokes are wild and different enough that the story seems to take on a different
angle than past iterations. This holds for the Max/Jane storyline. Fighting
over a items of clothing? That’s definitely been done before. But from there,
the show took it on a different bent not by having them fight passively aggressively
over the sweater directly, but instead having a ridiculous bet where they tried
to shame each other through the outrageous outfits they chose for each other. From
there is got even more ridiculous, as their personalities took the bet to the
extreme.
By
comparison, the Alex/Brad storyline is one that never seemed to rise above its initial
premise. Just about every comedy centered on a group of friends has done an
episode where two of the friends apparently don’t know each other that well,
and seek to correct that. For starters, I have a hard time believe that as
close as this group seems to be, that Alex and Brad would be that uncomfortable
around each other. The show was smart to play up the “they only know each other
as in-laws angle”, but I’ve seen them interact enough times in the past that I
find it hard to believe that their relationship isn’t a little bit stronger
than what was presented here. From there, things only got worse, with a whole
lot of jokes about "out calls", though it did perk up a bit around the end.
Though to talk about that, we’re going to have to back up a bit.
So
with all this success that the show has with telling purposely half-formed
stories, what are we to make of the closing minutes of the episode, which set
up what seems to be a will-they-or-won’t-they storyline for Dave and Penny. Happy Endings started out as a romantic
comedy of sorts, what with the dissolution of Alex and Dave’s marriage right
there at the altar, and as I’ve written before, I think the show’s stronger for
having dropped that line of thinking. So for them to now bring up another rom
com sort of staple with Alex and Penny seems not only out of left field, but
also an ill-advised return to a tone that didn’t work previously.
But
perhaps not. The episode opened with what seemed at the time to be a meta sort
of gag where the group poo-poos romantic comedies, and thus the show’s original
premise. Yet, when you take that in context with the resolution of the
Alex/Brad storyline, where they enjoy rom coms (and the show implicitly makes
fun of them so more), and the fact that the end of the Dave/Penny storyline
mirror those of the in-show film “That’s the Way It’s Gotta Be”, it appears
that the show is serious about pulling off this plotline, and that it believes that it can do so without resorting to rom com
phoniness. I hope that’s the case, because I would hate for the show to make the
mistake of breaking out of the mold that works by reaching for some higher, and
then just end up going through the motions of a stale old story.
Quotes and Other
Thoughts:
I will say this for the Dave/Penny pairing: Casey Wilson
does not fit the look of the traditional leading lady (remember the rumor that
she got fired from SNL due to her figure/weight?), so for the show to make her
the first female character to get a serious romantic storyline seems positively
progressive. Good on you, show.
That was Ken Marino as Dave's shrink, giving an appropriately smarmy performance. I hope the show keeps bringing in such skilled comedic actors, because it worked like gangbusters here.
“How many times has your grandma died? Because you said
the same thing about half a sandwich.”
“Seriously, I get stuck with the check again? What is the
point of having white friends?”
“The war? Which war?” “The war on drugs, and we won.”
“He touched me here, and here. I wanted him to touch me
here, but he wouldn’t. Why wouldn’t he?”
“No phones sound like that.” “Shush babe, I’m on the
phone.”
“Are hip-hop and rap the same thing?” “YES.”
“‘Richard Rickman’ is the name of a respected therapist.
‘Rick Rickman’ will sell you a used Grand Cherokee.”
“My personal best was a butcher, a baker, and a
candlestick maker, and yes, they were all in one tub.”
“And it should be easy to fool her, because I’m super
easy to fool, and we’re sisters.” “I’m beginning to think that I dodge a bullet
there.”
“Seriously, am I the only one who thinks Rick Rickman is
a ridiculous name?” “We’ll, it s a lot better than Dick Dickman.” “No, you
can’t change the last name….forget it. I dodged a bullet there.”
“People don’t really come to my store between 5 and 7:30,
and sometimes between 10 and 5.”
“Jane, I thought we agreed to say ‘in our pants’. The
fire is in our pants.”
“And why are you putting air quotes around ‘platonic’,
and ‘leaving’, and ‘man’?”
I wrote this long post, and then stupid blogger deleted it, so this you only get the question without the fluff.
ReplyDeleteHow much of the shortening of shows is also due to the shortening attention span and overall ADD-ness of American culture today?
Actually, I would argue that it goes the other way around, that shortened acts contribute to the increasing ADD-like society. There are still many quality dramas - especially on cable - that aren't afraid to have acts go on as long as 10, 15, even sometimes 20 minutes.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'll admit that children's television shows are specifically planned out to match up with their supposed short attention spans, but that bleeding over into fare that's aimed at an older audience is just networks being afraid that any show that has acts longer than what people were used to as children might scare them off.
It's more of a systematic problem that a societal one, is what I'm saying.