How a TV love letter gained prominence on the internet
“I don’t care if they come up with a decent sitcom, Roy.
Do you not get this? That is not the show. This is the show.”
- Jeff Tucker
I am not afraid to say that I enjoy the television shows that Bill Lawrence creates. This may not put me in the critical majority – most critics are ambivalent about Scrubs, Lawrence’s flagship show, if not outright contemptuous, and there are still many who refuse to give Cougar Town a chance. But there is something in Lawrence’s wacky, heartfelt, completely irony free approach to television shows that appeals to the optimist in me, that part that wishes shows don’t always have to feel the need to be so cynical.
Such sentiment in never more prominent than it is in Nobody’s Watching, Lawrence’s very obvious lover letter to the sitcoms of television’s past, and his belief that they could still be good again. The pilot follows Will and Derrick, who are invited to Hollywood to develop a traditional, four-camera for the WB. (The show itself was of course meant to be aired on the WB for the 2005-2006 season, though even if it had gotten picked up, it might not have survived the TV show massacre that preceded the network’s merger with UPN to form the CW.) While developing the sitcom, Derrick and Will are followed around by video cameras, and the footage will be used to create a reality show that would air in the meantime, effectively doubling the network’s profits from the project. But network head Jeff Tucker (and obvious spoof of Jeff Zucker) has no plans to make Derrick and Will’s sitcom, preferring instead to keep them in developmental/reality show hell for as long as possible.
As solid as it may be, the plot fails, whether purposely or not, to take center stage, as the real focus of the pilot was placed on explaining and exploring the new, “experimental” format of the show. While a large portion Will and Derek’s actions would be captured by video camera, all of their work on the show development would be done on traditional sitcom sound stages, and recorded by film camera, complete with a live studio audience. Confused yet? Most test audiences were, and that’s ultimately what led the network to pass on picking up the show (though there has been some speculation that it was only when network screeners began asking the audience if they were confused that the audience really began to express confusion over the show’s premise). Yet when the pilot was leaked on Youtube in 2006, it quickly became a hit, and many of the internet viewers seemed completely capable of locking onto the show’s unique aesthetic.
Personally, I find the format to be brilliant, if a little cracked, and I think it’s a testament to the writing that all of this comes across with little confusion. The basic premise of the show is quickly dispensed in the first 4 ½ minutes, leading plenty of time for the pilot to exhibit just how this format would be used to tell stories. While this more than likely would have created problems down the road – the pilot runs about 28 minutes in length, so it’s hard to tell what could have gotten cut on its initial airing, as well as how the premise would have been quickly recapped in the subsequent episodes – the fact that the show could explain the premise so succinctly (mostly by way of visual cues, which seem indebted in part to The Larry Sanders Show) and manage to keep it from slowing down the plot is a testament to how well thought-out this pilot was, and how few problems it has in telling the audience what it needs to know.
Yet this is not to say that the format doesn’t create some problems, though I doubt they were the ones that would have turned away audiences in droves. While the network execs were worried that audiences wouldn’t understand the premise, there are a few plot holes that might make it difficult for some of the more logic-oriented members of the audience to buy the premise. The studio audience’s role is especially problematic, as they often seem to have knowledge of things that have happened outside of the studio without any explanation given of how they know such things (like the guys’ use of “Yes Dear” to mean “shit”).
Likewise, the studio audience laughs at both the jokes that character make as well as those jokes that clearly emitted from the show’s writer’s room (i.e. the laughter emitted when Derrick admitted to Jill that we went to “a very competitive community college”). Such laughter begins to call into question not the validity of audience’s actions – the lines are humorous, to be sure – but rather whose side the audience is on. If they are supposed to be on Will and Derrick’s side – and the ending scene suggests they are – then it doesn’t make sense for them to laugh at the characters. Instead, they – and by extension, the audience at home – should be laughing with the guys, such as when they make pointed jokes like Will climbing up the fake city background buildings like King Kong. Striking the laughing with/at balance as always been a difficult thing for comedies to master (the change in humor between the first and second seasons of The Big Bang Theory serves as just one recent example), but in this show, where the “studio audience” is intrinsically part of the show, it becomes more vital than ever that it be clear to that those watching at home that they should side with the main characters.
The other logistical problem concerns the actions of Will and Derrick, as the characters/actors give noticeably larger performances for the studio audience than they do for the “video guys”. Bill Lawrence has had success with both traditional, four camera sitcoms as well as singe camera sitcoms in the past (Scrubs and Spin City, respectively), and it seems as if Lawrence is trying to have it both ways while also creating a “new” comedy format. It’s understandably ambitious from a man who kept being told that whatever format he wanted to work in wasn’t en vogue, but it ends up creating a slight problem of tone deafness. Of course, it’s quite possible and understandable that as two sitcom junkies, Will and Derrick were playing up their actions for the sake of the audience, as evidenced by their name-checking of states for applause. Likewise, it’s quite possible that the question of the audience knowledge of these two could have been cleared up in the following episodes, and the lines that had the audience laughing at the characters could have been dropped. These are ultimately small problems, hurdles the show could have managed, but it’s still important to know that the show would have had to face these challenges going forward, at some of these logistical problems could have even been addressed in the pilot.
Yet despite how much fuss has been made over whether or not the premise and/or format kept the show from being picked up, I think that the larger obstacle that the show would have faced had it gone to air was the type of humor utilized. It’s not that the humor employed here is bad; in fact, it’s fairly top-notch. But it’s quite often the layered, intellectual humor that tends to be shunned by mainstreams audiences. (Other times it just consisted of well-told, traditional-sitcom kinds of jokes, which the public would embrace, were they not scared off by the non-traditional humor.)
As a love letter to television, the show includes jokes that play off of traditional sitcom traditions (no backs to the camera, actors drinking from empty cups) that tend to be acknowledged only by industry insiders and televisions critics. The jokes here still comes off as funny, mostly thanks to the actors delivery, but to those without that knowledge, the joke appears to lack depth, and thus is less funny. (For instance, upon re-watching the pilot for this post, now armed with the knowledge that actors not drinking from cups used to be standard practice, I found Will’s admittance that there was nothing in the coffee cups to be much funnier.) The pilot gets away with these jokes by making sure that there are multiple layers to them, but there could have come a day when a joke was told whose humor was based solely in the reference (most likely during one of the video segments) and it would fly over most people’s heads, and for a show that seems to be courting all swaths of the TV audience, that’s a dangerous precedent to set.
Also scary to most TV watchers is that fact that the show often deals in meta gags and breaking the fourth wall. Such gags tend only to work on the general public when they are obvious, but here more often than not such gags are done in a more or less subdued way. While something meta like Will’s made-up theme becoming the show’s actual theme is a fairly simple and quick joke, and thus within the grasp of most people, instances of the characters breaking the fourth wall – both on the set and through our screens – requires a bit more brain power to “get” than most people seem willing to exert while watching television. (Though considering early on the show disses “According to Jim” and “Yes Dear”, the show (perhaps intentionally) weeds out most of that kind of audience early on.)
The only true problem with the current setup of the show as seen in the pilot – one that would irritate all viewers, not just a selected group – is that it’s not explicitly clear how varied the stories could be week-to-week. Like many sitcoms of the 90s, the key to Nobody’s Watching is the premise, with all of the stories spinning off from that. As much as it works here in the pilot, and while it does seem as if the show had some ideas for future episodes as based on the closing teaser, it’s hard to believe that Lawrence & Co. had any sort of long term plans, or that the audience wouldn’t have quickly grown tired of watching these guys try to make a show week in and week out. (Admittedly Tucker’s stated quest to keep fucking with the guys in order to keep the reality show on the air does hold some mileage for the show, but not enough that it too wouldn’t grow tired sooner rather than later.) All of the previously stated problems with the show could be effectively ignored by turning off one’s brain, a request that‘s not too difficult with a show as effectively funny and unique as this one is. But the problem of coming up with original storylines isn’t something that’s so easy to ignore, and though I would like to believe that Lawrence could keep things relatively fresh (as he was mostly able to do for eight seasons on Scrubs), there’s no evidence in the pilot to support that this would necessarily be the case.
Yet none of these ifs, ands, or buts really matter seeing as how Nobody’s Watching wasn’t picked up, even if the show should have been given the chance to prove itself capable as fixing these problems. Instead the pilot was leaked onto Youtube sometime in June 2006, and within two weeks, the pilot had over 300,000 views. (Today, the first part of the pilot has over 1.5 million hits, but part three has a little over 570,000, so take that first figure with a grain of salt.) With numbers like that, the pilot once again started attracting attention from networks, especially NBC, who held first shot at the series. (The pilot wasn’t actually shot until the WB showed interest.) Plans evolved from a six episode order to a live special, before dissolving back into nothing in early 2007, just as the actor’s contracts were about to expire. During all of this, everyone involved with the pilot kept churning out webisodes in order to increase hype for the show’s possible return.
And while all of these efforts were for not, it’s interesting to note that the reason that it took off on the internet, and the reason that it was rejected by the WB in the first place were one in the same: the unique format of the show. There’s a certain irony to this fact to be sure, but I think it points to larger problem with the television industry. With network’s so desperate to keep away anything new, and certain sectors of the viewing audience clamoring for something that is new, the current conversation tends to gloss over things like logic, story, and characterization, something that is just as important, if not more so, than how “original” a show might be. It’s for this reason that a show like Glee can succeeded while a show like Terriers fails, and why so few people are willing to talk about the pilot for Nobody’s Watching in anything other than superficial terms. To be fair, the pilot is striking in its uniqueness, and that is what drew me to it. But what’s made me watch several times is that fact it’s so well made, that the jokes land, that the story mostly works, and that the characters feel fairly fleshed out. When we refuse to discuss these aspects of the pilot – including where it falls short – we miss what makes great television shows work, and we undercut the medium’s attempt to be seen as art.
In the final minutes of the pilot, the core four characters go on a discussion of how shows can go on for years if an audience embraces it, regardless of the actuality quality. (“Coach!” the guys reply.) There’s an obvious amount of irony in this moment that exist only retrospectively; much like the title, it only takes on this double meaning because the pilot was never picked up. Nobody was watching, indeed. Though we may bemoan the loss of a show-that-could-have-been, it’s important that we never forget the lessons it’s taught us. It may be a dismal time for network television, but the networks are only choosing what they think a large number of people will like. If we can change the conversation about what constitutes good TV, if we are willing to try out a new series regardless of (or perhaps in spite of) how experimental it is, then perhaps much like Derrick and Will, we too can change the television landscape.
Next Week: The internet phenoms continue with Heat Vision and Jack.
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