Closing Down the Joke Factory

“A wacky pure joke machine.”  “A mechanical joke-delivery machine.”

Wow—what is this show? Something that churns out funny lines like that’s its job?  Sounds great—exactly what I’m looking for.  And the critics seem to love it!  Like this guy Nathan Rabin at the AV Club—check this out:

this season feels like a send-off worthy to one of the best, most original comedies of the past twenty years. 

One of the best comedies of the last twenty years!  High praise indeed.  What show is this?

Wait, what?  It’s not the same show that Nathan Rabin said this about last year?:

The titles of the episodes and guest stars and plots might change, but otherwise, the show tends to do the same goddamned thing week in and week out. It’s stuck in a perpetual loop, doomed to repeat the same gags in episode after episode.

I’m confused.  And this is the same guy who said this about the same show, not even a year ago?

The show has been on the air forever. Exhaustion set in a while ago, yet the series carries on all the same. “Nothing To Lose” consequently possesses the strange quality of being at once tired and full of strained, artificial energy.

And this, again from last year:

I would like to start off this review with some very good news. God willing, this will be the very last 30 Rock review I will ever write.

Wait, I’m even more confused.  But you just wrote another 30 Rock review!  Nathan, you disingenuous bastard! 

So in the course of one year you’ve gone from being disgusted by the show to thinking it’s a “wacky pure joke machine” and one of the best comedies of the last twenty years?

What’s that you said?  That the “wacky pure joke machine” line was actually a criticism?  Oh, right.  I forgot.  This is the AV Club.  Where the reviewers ceaselessly contradict themselves and where a comedy having “jokes” and a thing called humor is a mortal sin. 

Let’s see what Nathan had to see, a mere eight months before anointing 30 Rock one of the greatest shows of the last twenty years. 

It is an episode almost entirely devoid of plausible human behavior or genuine emotion, a wacky pure joke machine that, like too much of this season, misfires the vast majority of the time.

The greatest distillation of the AV Club comedy philosophy.  What’s in?  “Genuine emotion”!  What’s out?  Comedy!  Jokes! 

The AV Club—where being a “pure joke machine” is a bad thing.

Let’s go on:

On a different show, this revelation might spur moments of genuine self-reflection or pathos. It might be cause for Jenna to grow as a character or as a human being.

That’s not the kind of show 30 Rock is at this point.

And for that, I’m eternally grateful.  Let me repeat: genuine self-reflection, pathos, growth.  Not what made 30 Rock one of the best comedies of the last twenty years.  Nathan, bubbalah, have you even seen 30 Rock?  This isn’t the self-help section here.  30 Rock has never been remotely interested in any un-funny “self-reflection or pathos”—it has been interested, from season one to season seven, in being really fucking funny.  That’s why it’s one of the best comedies of the last twenty years.

At this juncture, 30 Rock is the kind of show that's less interested in exploring Jenna’s self-loathing depths in even the most perfunctory manner than it is in putting her in blue make-up for the sake of a Smurfs joke

Halle-fucking-lujah!

So what, according to Nathan, would be better than jokes?

I know I have whined repeatedly about 30 Rock turning into a mechanical joke-delivery machine over the past few years

I know—enough with the jokes!  I just did a full Pilates workout, and it really hurts to laugh.  Also, I’m a little worried about the mechanization of humorous labor that 30 Rock has been pioneering.  I don’t want to live in some Terminator-like dystopic future in which even our sitcoms are written by machines. 

but “Meet The Woggels!” is thankfully an episode with a soft, squishy heart beating underneath some very sharp jokes about racist Australian children’s entertainers, sexual walkabouts, and inter-generational warfare.

Soft, squishy hearts—these AV Club guys are really fond of their vaguely revolting metaphors.  Remember Todd’s “larger, warmer whole.”  We now have a new contender! The soft, squishy heart.  Maybe that’s what’s inside the “larger, warmer whole.”

Like most episodes of 30 Rock, it was ultimately all about the jokes, but it was also on a fundamental about relationships:

That’s the actual sentence.  So not only is it making a totally asinine point, it’s making it with typos. 
In conclusion, I’d like humbly to suggest two new slogans for the AV Club—the smart folks there can decide between them.

1) The AV Club—where the comedies don’t have jokes
Or,
2) The AV Club—where idiocy and incompetence meet.

And thanks to 30 Rock for seven great seasons. 

Oh, the Banality!

Are you ready to be bored?  Feast your eyes on this:

When Leslie was first introduced to April, their relationship was clear.

When Harry met Sally, their relationship was clear: they were just friends.  When Lewis met Clark, their relationship was clear: Lewis was the gentle, studious cartographer, and Clark the badass cartographer who wouldn’t take shit from anyone.  When I first met Steve Heisler, our relationship was clear: he would write extremely banal reviews, and I would make fun of them.

Leslie was the kind of person who believed she was only as successful as her ability to entice someone to take her on as a role model.

A model of grace and clarity, that sentence.  Positively Jamesian!

April was apathetic about all things political and was simply filling in a desk to waste some time.

I imagine the fictional creation April Ludwick slowly filling in the holes in her desk with wood glue.

Leslie saw something in April, though.

She knew that little girl was going to be a star someday!  All they needed to do was raise money from all the kids in the neighborhood, resurrect the desiccated corpses of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, and put on a goshdarn show.

She saw the spark of something she recognized in herself, the thing that would ignite and burn sadistic April, allowing Leslie Jr. to rise from the ashes like a slow-moving molasses-covered phoenix.

Not as slow moving as this glacial recap!  (I’ll be here all week)

But really, Leslie was fooling herself. April wanted nothing to do with any of this. Leslie just had issues, and wasn’t able to read people.

“Had issues”—a phrase filled with explanatory power.  Ah, the banality!

Well, jokes on April,

[sic]

because despite Leslie’s best efforts, she started taking an interest in Pawnee, working in the office, rising up until she was in a position to pitch projects of her own. She fell in love with a fellow worker, and the two got married in a beautiful ceremony surrounded by coworkers they loved (and Jerry). She came into her own,

Should we just keep a running counter of clichés used in this piece?  What are we up to so far?  “blank saw something in blank”?  Check.  “the spark of something”?  Check.  Phoenix metaphor?  Check.  “Had issues”?  Check.  “wasn’t able to read people”?  Check.  “Came into her own”?  Check.  Up to six!

dropping the sarcastic hipster facade just long enough to genuinely enjoy life, and maybe even take a good photo for the cover of Pawnee’s parks magazine.

News Bulletin!  This just in.  We interrupt our regularly scheduled enumeration of Steve Heisler’s clichés to remind you, THIS IS A COMEDY WE’RE TALKING ABOUT.  Wow, it’s fabulous that the fictional character April Ludgate is a better, more self-actualized person who can “genuinely enjoy life” and had a “beautiful” wedding.  Should I get her something from her registry?  Bed, Bath, and Beyond?  Oh, Crate and Barrel!  Classy.

Is April’s new happy life in any way funny?  No.  Right.  So I don’t give a shit. 

Meanwhile, Leslie was watching from the wings, beaming with pride. I’m not entirely sure how much of Leslie’s influence rubbed off on April, or whether April’s transformation happened to be merely correlated with Leslie’s nagging. But Leslie took credit. And I can’t blame her for it.

Who knows?  Who cares?  Maybe if April were my sister, I might care.  But again, these are not actual people.  They are characters on a TV show. 

This speaks to the way a lot of us live our lives.

Oh, shit!  The patented AV Club turn!  Things are going to get real banal in here!  Public point ahead.  Knock back an energy drink to ward off lethargy!  It’s coming—hold on, hold on . . . .

I don’t mean to go off on too far a tangent,

By that, you mean you do in fact intend on going off on a tangent.  Oh, and yeah, they’re coming fast and furious.  “Way a lot of us live our lives”?  “Off on a tangent.”  We’re at eight!

but I occasionally get asked about my path as a journalist—what I did when, and why—by people who wish to recreate the steps.

Apparently, kids, using a lot of clichés will help you out.

I’m able to spin them a yarn

Nine! (I imagine that Steve Heisler is an old grizzled sailor sitting out on the end of a dock).

that is, I presume, helpful in some way. Or so I hope. By the end, it sounds like I took a very deliberate approach with my career, that every step was meticulously laid out, and the whole time, I was very aware of where I was about to go.

We interrupt the general mockery for more specific nitpicking: two “very”s in that last sentence?  Not great, Steve.  Not great.

That’s horseshit, though.

Steve, Steve.  Think of the kids

Anyone who tells you they had a plan their entire life and managed to stick relentlessly to it like a vat of slow-moving molasses

I appreciate that you’re doing a call back to the episode, but that’s a terrible metaphor.  You don’t “stick relentlessly” to a vat of molasses.  You are engulfed in it.  Slowly.

(I very much liked that Sweetums disaster) is either a) lying, or b) boring.

So, if b, then they’re just like you!

In my experience, it’s the people who are able to roll with the punches,

Ten!

taking advantage of whatever computer disappearances life throws at them,

Wow, that was an awkward stab at originality, wasn’t it?

that find themselves the most successful. Sure, if you ask them later, they’ll be able to say that yes, thing one led to thing two, and so on. But I guarantee that when thing one ended and thing two had yet to begin, they were fucking terrified.

Wow, it’s almost like life takes on narrative coherence only retrospectively.  Like chance and luck play important roles, as well as design. You are thinking big, Steve.  You are really leading me to a higher state of enlightenment.  I really thought that my childhood dreams and plans were going to come true.  I mean, I look around this great nation of ours, and all I see are firemen, astronauts, and princesses.

So yes, April is interested in politics now. Was that her plan? Probably not. Is she embracing it as much as she can? Yes. Does it take Leslie far too long to recognize this? Absolutely.

Do I keep answering my own rhetorical questions?  Yes.  Am I starting to sound like Donald Rumsfeld?  I am.  Does any of this have to do with what’s funny about a comedy?  Not at all. 

Skipping boring recap . . . except for, “going to bring them together.”  Eleven!

Leslie plans meticulously, but we’ve watched her over the last four seasons-and-some-change realize the important lesson that all the planning in the world cannot prepare you for what lies ahead.

I’m just going to go ahead and say that that whole last sentence counts as number twelve.  Planning isn’t enough!  But, but . . . You’d think I’d have learned that lesson from a) being a sentient human being or b) watching any heist movie, but it wasn’t till Steve Heisler offered this ground-breaking analysis of an NBC sitcom that it truly sunk in.  That’s it—I’m quitting my therapist.  I’m whole again!

. . . She’s open and honest with herself and others,

I think that warrants a thirteen.

and it’s a testament to this show that her friendship with April—something nobody could have predicted—

Except the people who realized that this show was all about hugs and would follow The Office's death spiral of having all rivalries underwritten by love.

has very naturally progressed to the point where I forgot they were once vehemently antagonistic toward one another.

Steve has a short memory. 

The more Ben and Leslie hang around each other, the more I’m starting to see how similar they are.

Ain’t that sweet!

Ben, like Leslie, came from the mindset that there is a plan you must follow that leads to a good life, and veering away from that plan ruins everything. Leslie hangs photos of Joe Biden on her wall and deconstructs how he got where he got,

This sounds like the most boring comedy ever.

Also, Steve, Paul de Man is on line one, and he’d like a word with you about your use of the word “deconstruct.”

and wants to emulate that. Ben doesn’t have as tangible a role model, only the idea of one, but it’s the same difference.

“Same difference.”  Fourteen!

He takes the job at the accounting firm because he believes certain things are meant to be easy.

Fifteen!

It’s only after his parade around Pawnee, on the arm of Tom and his Rent-A-Swag business, that he realizes there’s no point in coloring inside the lines.

Now you’re just making it too easy for me.  Sixteen!

His foray into political campaign-running was a wild success. His attempt to breach the walls of his ironclad Pawnee job responsibilities to date Leslie was a wild success.

That, my friends, is a mixed metaphor to end all mixed metaphors.  Breach the walls?  I give up.

Why shouldn’t the rest of his life be as carefree and fanciful? Because it’s terrifying? Welcome to real life, Ben Wyatt. Things are terrifying because they are important.

Steve Heisler, advice columnist for fictional sitcom characters.

And again, who could have predicted that Ben would throw caution to the wind

Seventeen!

to help Tom Haverford, of Entertainment 720 notoriety?

Um, I could, because, again, the hugs.

Meanwhile, Andy never has a plan. Well, he concocts schemes, which are different from plans in their longevity.

Deep thought, Jack Handey.

Andy is the person who leads the noble life.

I have no idea what that means.  Really.  What, pray tell, is “the noble life”?  Do you have serfs?  Do you run a fiefdom?  Is chain mail involved?  Please say yes.

All the characters on the show could do themselves a solid

Eighteen!

and take a cue from Andy. When he fails at anything, he dusts himself off

Nineteen!

and thinks about the next way he’s going to scrape his knees. What a show, this Parks And Recreation, where Andy Dwyer is the voice of reason.

What a writer, this Steve Heisler, where banalities are mistaken for insight.

You might be meeting Joe Biden one moment, but then you have to attend Orin’s terrifying “Human Farm” art installation the next. Whatever the case, there is no plan, only a great story of those two things happening within a few days of each other, and in hindsight finding the sense of it all. 

Thanks for reducing any wit, originality, or, dare I say, comedy in this show to a series of take-home clichés.  Only in hindsight, by painstakingly piecing together the overarching structures and connections, have I realized, to the core of my being, how stupid this article is.