After a few seasons, comedy shows that last tend to undergo a sudden metamorphosis. They start to go crazy. While they generally start quite normal, following most standard sitcom of comedy show trends and storylines, an enduring series will begin to evolve and transform into something else. When the ideas start to run out, many comedy shows resort to becoming ridiculous. Storylines get sillier, hijinks are more wacky and everything escalates all the time.
Sometimes this works. Case in point, 30 Rock. Tina Fey's runaway success began as quite witty, but the characters and events (while still fun) were relatively normal. After season 3, characters and their quirks had well and truly been established. So what was the next step? Take them to the extreme. Jenna went from being selfish to downright sociopathic, Tracey went from stupid and ridiculous to full on insane while Liz constantly found new ways to bring herself down. The show remained funny.
Other times, this starts to kill the charm a show had. I'm talking about Community. When it started it had a variety of characters who interacted in witty storylines, with clever writing that poked fun at cinema conventions and television storylines. The characters were mostly broad stroke caricatures (crotchety old man, hippy, smart girl, religious black lady) but they all had their own personality and characterisation and went through instances of character development. And then, by season three, all the characters - who were relatively normal people until that point - turned into total freaks. In particular season 3 became all about Abed's mental breaks from reality, turning a character who was, at worst, simply socially awkward into having fucking full blown Asperger's. Season 4 devolved completely into a series of 'wacky' storylines, pushing things further and further to the clever wit of the original episodes into a mishmash of hit and miss antics.
How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and Big Bang Theory also followed this escalation. Their first seasons of each show are quite mild compared to the bizarre lengths they started to go to. HIMYM in particular just took character's mild quirks and blew them up completely (Robin being Canadian became a huge thing, and Barney's entire persona). Two and a Half Men's first few episodes are as formulaic as can be, and astoundingly tame and inoffensive (it was literally two guys hanging out with a kid). When the Charlie Sheen love grew, the show got infinitely more racy and ridiculous, with the Charlie persona consuming the entire program. Big Bang Theory (I show I don't like simply because I don't find it funny) was about a bunch of nerds who had a normal girl move in to the next door apartment, then hijinks ensued. The first season was a stock standard sitcom, complete with limited sets, obnoxious laugh tracks and stilted delivery. The formula has pretty much stayed the same since then, only now all the characters are spastics, their quirks turned into full blown psychoses and aspects of nerd culture featuring heavily.
Some shows manage to avoid this, while for others this is just natural progression. Modern Family has avoided it completely so far. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia has too, mostly because the characters were a bunch of horrible, stupid, selfish people to begin with, so everything escalation makes sense, following an insane trend that, remarkably, makes sense. It also helps that there's a bizarre sort of internal logic in the show, so when they go from pretending to be disabled to get free stuff to downright kidnapping somebody.
For me, it's often a sad sight to see comedy series resort to this. It begins to kill the quality. And while a few series manage to work this change to their advantage, most suffer for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment