The End of Comedy

It might be a while till I get to the three-part VanDerWerff opus on the season finale, so here's something in the mean time. This one’s old, but it’s worth wasting your time on.  An AV Club debate about the quality of Community.  On one side, Steven Hyden.  On the other, our old friend Todd VanDerWerff.  A veritable Lincoln and Douglas.   You’re up, Steve.

“Remedial Chaos Theory” is a unique, undeniably well-conceived 22-or-so minutes of television. But to what end?

The End of Comedy: A Novel, by Steven Hyden.  “The End of Comedy”: also a terrible article, as noted above, by Neil Genzlinger.  It’s all related, man!

I’m really glad that I’ve been exposed to the Hyden school of criticism.  It’s really opened my mind, forced me to think in new ways.  I’m almost ready to try my hand at it.  Let’s see how this goes:  Citizen Kane is a unique, groundbreaking 119 minutes of film.  But to what end?  Does it cure cancer? No.  Did it help me get dates in college? No—girls seemed less than impressed by my knowledge of classic film.  Will it bring about a new era of world peace and prosperity, when Christians, Jews, and Muslims will work together for the common good?   

Probably not.  Well fuck it, then.

Good God, won’t Dan Harmon think of the future?  Why isn’t he out there trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with his episodes of Community? 

So we could see, once again, that Jeff Winger is a jerk whose toxic presence is poisoning his supposed friends? Or that Harmon and his writing staff, once again, have proved themselves to be very clever?

God, Harmon.  Won’t you just stop proving yourself so clever with your funny jokes and “unique, undeniably well-conceived” episodes of television.   Your show is so hilarious it just makes all the rest of us feel bad. 

This gets to the heart of what bugs about this show:

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Is Community about its characters, or its brilliant (yet empty) self-reflexive mastery of whatever storytelling form it touches? If it’s the latter, and I suspect it is, am I really getting anything meaningful out of watching Community? Or is it just patting me on the back for recognizing the stealthily employed references and skewered conventions?

Again, EVERY show I see on TV is about the “brilliant . . . self-reflexive mastery of whatever storytelling form it touches.”  I am SO sick of that.  But characters?  That I never get.  I mean, when was the last time you watched a show that had characters?  What TV channel was it—TNT?—whose slogan was “Character wanted”?  That’s what we’re missing in America today.  Forget the underfunding of our schools, this is the real problem: too few shows with characters on network television. 

But in the realm of Community, this is part of the safe, predictable, and hermetically sealed world that the show has created. Clearly this is what people love about the show—that it has created its own universe—but for me, Community is an airless terrain where nothing is allowed to grow, deepen, or evolve. Even really good episodes have the emotional payoff of a Funny Or Die sketch.

Yeah, it is disturbing how Community has created its own universe.  That’s something no other comedies ever do.  There actually is a Pawnee, Indiana.  If I wanted, I could get a New York apartment as big as the one on Friends for just as little money.  And I’m sure if I ever get stranded on an island with someone named Gilligan, I’ll be able to build myself a car, entertain visitors from the mainland, but somehow not manage to build a raft to escape. 

And I don’t know about you, but I am sobbing at each and every Funny or Die sketch.  It’s like Beaches in here. 

Oh, phheff.  VanDerWerff is done.  Now we can see what Steven Hyden has to say.  Wait, what?  You’re telling me that that wasn’t VanDerWerff?  But it sounds just like him!  Didn’t he recently just ask, “It’s funny, but for what?”  Didn’t he not like the Law and Order episode because it cared more about form than characters?  Doesn’t he want characters to “grow, deepen, or evolve”? Doesn’t he just love those “emotional payoffs,” more even than, you know, comedy?  You sure this isn’t you, Todd?  Is this really a debate, or a Vanderwerffian psychodrama?

Let’s see what the real Todd has to say in defending the show.

And maybe that’s true for some portion of the fandom, but the portion I’m aware of (the sizable portion that hangs out here) posts lengthy essays every week about how the characters are growing and evolving, dissects the interplay between them, and adds to the sizable amount of information we already know about each of the seven study-group members with the new little bits dropped in each episode.

Now I get the VanDerWerffian ideal: it’s not just a “formula” for comedy.  It’s fan fiction!  A show is just an excuse for us to write about the lives these people—oh, I mean characters—live outside of the “hermetic” world of the show.   You know what, forget about the show.  I’m sure Todd would be happier just making up stories about his “friends,” without having to deal with anything as thorny as laughter. 

The central problem with Community for a lot of people is always going to be that it’s a lot of work for the show to be both intellectually and emotionally satisfying. You have to travel a lot further to find these characters at all loveable (or, better, empathetic) than you do with a show like Parks And Rec.

Loveable characters.  Those I’d want to have a beer with, to bro out with.  Characters I can call to help me move. That’s what I’m craving out of television.  Not funny characters. 

You know what character I like on a sitcom: George Costanza.  He is a miserable sack of shit.  Do I love him?  No.  Do I identify with him?  Yes.  Is it because I too am a miserable sack of shit?  Perhaps.  Or maybe it’s because we don’t have to like a character to be able to identify with aspects of him/her.  You don’t have to love a character to find him/her interesting.  You don’t even have to empathize.  Have you never read or watched anything?

I also like the comparison to Parks and Rec. I don’t want to say anything bad about Parks and Rec, which is smart and well-written, and obviously Ken Tremendous is a big influence on this blog.  But let’s just say that it fits the ideal of AV Club criticism perfectly.  Compared to Community, it is more interested in loveable characters and their growth and a little less interested in laughs.  That’s fine.  Not all shows need to be the same.  But don’t judge Community by the same criteria as you would Parks and Rec.

Let’s see what Steven Hyden has to say about this comparison.  

I’m not just talking about its low ratings; Parks And Recreation doesn’t have lots of viewers, but that seems flukier than it is for Community, which is clearly geared to a very particular sensibility.

Ah, the illogic gymnastics.  Community is too niche and too funny, so it doesn’t have the broad-based appeal of Parks and Rec.  Only problem: THEY GET THE SAME FUCKING RATINGS.  Oh, but apparently that’s just a “fluke.”  Perhaps.  But if so, IT”S A THREE-YEAR FLUKE.  The other day I forgot to pay my rent for three years, but IT’S JUST A FLUKE! The landlord was so understanding. Also, I haven’t showered in three years, but I wouldn’t call myself dirty, exactly, it was just that things got in the way, and then my water was out, and I started to find the smell kinda comforting, and anyway, it was JUST A FLUKE.  How ‘bout this, Steve?  How about maybe there’s not some normative standard of what an appealing comedy is?  How about both shows are just different?

But wait, I’m still confused.  Where’s the debate?  Todd likes it, Steve doesn’t, but they agree perfectly on using the same bullshit criteria of whether people are loveable or grow or blah blah blah when is Community on so that I can get back to laughing?  Todd, if you’re using this criteria to judge Community you’re just going to realize that you don’t like it and then you’re going to lose this debate you’re having with yourself. 

You’re also engaging in a little takedown of your own—see, we have a lot in common!  You say you don’t like this critique of Community, by Larry Fitzmaurice, which basically makes the same argument as “Steven Hyden” in a slightly more incoherent and over-the-top way.  Well, let’s take a look at what’s so irritating to Todd. 

Fitzmaurice basically outlines all the ways in which the characters on Community are terrible people—no arguments here!  Then:

In real life, the desire to have friends doesn't excuse decaying, bigoted excuses for human beings. Yes, this is television. It's unreasonable to expect a portrayal of real life from a show that considers zombie outbreaks and runaway monkeys a part of its balanced breakfast.

And yet you continue. 

Still, for a show as episodically self-contained as Community, watching these characters step on the same rake over and again has devolved into pure frustration. In "Comparative Ecology" the beloved study group were branded the "Mean Clique." But, more accurately, it exposed their toxic, mob-mentality inertia.

They’re bad people.  Funny funny bad people.

Community's writers are unconcerned with their characters attaining some sort of personal growth . . .Also, remember that Community is not the first critically adored sitcom with arguably unlikable characters at its center—Seinfeld, Titus, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Arrested Development come to mind.

Yes, terrible shows all.  Clearly unlikeable characters don’t correlate with great comedy. 

But it's safe to say that Community's most mouth-foaming, sweater-fondling disciples aren't looking for much character growth beyond, "Hey, did that 'Pop! Pop!' guy show up?"

Hey, bud.  You’re right!  I don’t fucking care about “character growth.”  Guilty as charged.  And I do like to fondle my own sweater sometimes—it’s cold out here in Dubuque!  As for that mouth-foaming, the doctor says that the rabies shots should help, at least in a few weeks.

But back to Todd.  Ok, Todd, you don’t like this argument.  It drives you crazy.  But basically, this hack has more substance and consistency than you, even if he is a known idiot.  Although he doesn’t state this, basically he doesn’t like the show because he doesn’t like shows with unlikeable characters.  Fine—I can respect that opinion.  It means he probably also doesn’t like funny shows, but ok, maybe funny’s not for him.  Just remind me to avoid him at a cocktail party.   But Todd?  You, my friend, are disingenuous.  Cause aren’t you really saying the same thing as this guy you pretend to hate when you criticize the show?  You pretend that Community’s writers are concerned “with their characters attaining some sort of personal growth,” when really, as this douche recognizes, they’re fundamentally not (or at least shouldn’t be, since that’s when the show is at its best).  Your “criticism” starts from exactly the same premise as his—that what we need from a sitcom is “personal growth.”  But if so, then Community is not the show for you.  In fact, comedies are not really for you.  You know, I’ve come to realize why you liked last week’s clip show episode so much.  It started out as your ideal for a comedy—a group therapy session!  All the characters can come together and they can learn something!  Only, something funny happened in the midst of that group therapy session—aside from the intrusion of something called comedy, which I know you’re against.  The writers sent out a big fuck you to Herr VanDerWerff and all those others who want these characters to mature.  Cause guess what?  They didn’t grow or change.  They wanted to be crazy; they wanted to stay as fucked up as they always were.  Because, again, that’s what makes for comedy.