Concepts and Things

Ah, an old-fashioned pitch-perfect movie parody.  Just what I turn to Community to see.  Todd, what do you make of it?

The episode quickly won it over—again, it said “butts” a lot—but I found myself kind of wanting more “normal Greendale” adventures going in, and that may have affected my opinion a bit in the early going.

A lot of sics here, but aside from that: you watch the show for normalcy?  Really?  Are you Warren G. Harding?  Community is the furthest from a normal show that network television can provide.  Normal is the enemy, Todd.

Also, were last week’s episodes really normal?  The last one ended with the Dean having a voiceover sung as a French pop song.   Not normal.  

Yet at the same time, this show can do the concept episode stuff so well when it wants to, and I appreciated that “Intergluteal” was less a specific parody than a freewheeling mélange of David Fincher films, CBS procedurals, and any movie where any detective has ever gotten in way too deep trying to solve a case. (Also, butts.) 

That would be true except that it totally isn’t.  Yeah, there are some references to other Fincher movies, and to CBS procedurals.  But it’s basically just a pretty faithful parody of Zodiac.  I figured that out two minutes in.  And I haven’t even fucking seen Zodiac.  You didn’t get this?

The show’s elasticity allows it to have a whacked-out rave scene set in the lunchroom and scored by Nine Inch Nails and Dave Matthews Band (true fans would call him “Dave”) right up against a genuinely touching scene where Shirley tells Jeff and Annie that Pierce has died.

I did not find that scene touching.  Chevy Chase was annoying and not all that funny.  I’m glad he’s gone from the show.  Also, my heart has been replaced by a ball of sheep intestines. 

And if I ever thought I would find a moment like that “genuinely touching” last season, I would have been very surprised. But here we are. Pierce has passed on, and Jeff has lost whatever he had that passed for a mentor.

Really?  When was “Jeff having a mentor” a fucking plot point?  Like for five minutes of two episodes sometime? 

It’s a great closing beat for the episode, letting us see just how quickly real life can intrude on even Greendale.

Except it’s not the closing “beat” of the episode. More like the ante-penultimate “beat” of the episode.

My biggest problem with the episode is that it dusts off the Jeff and Annie thing yet again, simply to have it there. The concept episodes work best when the concept isn’t just there to be a thing the show is doing but, rather, as a thing that props up a story about the characters, and I’m not sure “Jeff and Annie are still flirting a lot” works as well in that regard as some of the other character stories previous concept episodes have come up with, particularly when “Introduction To Teaching” offered up a really solid story about the two characters that didn’t rely on the potential romantic connection between them but, rather, a place where the two of them would naturally come into conflict, given their differing goals and drives.

I’m sorry, Todd, about the business model of the AV Club.  I didn’t know it was in so much trouble.  I guess they had to lay off all the editors.  That sucks.  Because if there had been an editor, they would have told you that THAT’S THE WORST FUCKING SENTENCE I’VE EVER READ. 

Yes, my faithful readers out here on the prairie, all that blabbering was one single sentence. Good God!  I could have re-read Finnegans Wake in that time!  (Yeah—I’ve read the Wake—got a problem with that?)

The length, however, is only one problem.  Let’s start over. Hold on, let me get my Tums.

The concept episodes work best when the concept isn’t just there to be a thing the show is doing but, rather, as a thing that props up a story about the characters,

“Thing” is, how do I put this, kind of a vague word.  So using it twice in a row kind of isn’t a good idea.  The thing is, when you use “thing” to talk about a lot of things, the thing that you’re saying is “the thing” gets confused with other things.

Also, the metaphor of a concept as a “thing” propping up a story about characters is particularly resonant.  I imagine the Fincher concept as a plank of wood wedged diagonally behind the plywood cut-outs of clowns you stick your head through at state fairs.  Was that the image you were going for?

Actually, fuck this, I can’t wade through the rest of that sentence.  My doctor says I have to be careful about my ulcers. Let me just say, for the millionth time—we do not have to learn something about the characters.  We know who they are.  They’re funny.  Let them be funny.  Can I just enjoy a funny, sharp parody of Zodiac?  Isn’t that enough? 

Here’s the thing: I’m a longtime Jeff and Annie skeptic, mostly because I think it tanks the Annie character too often, but I’d be willing to go along with it if the show would just commit in one direction or another for enough episodes to tell a proper storyline about it.

Fuck storylines.  Is it funny?  If it’s funny, and it doesn’t totally depart from the character, than use it.  If not, drop it.  And for God’s sake don’t develop it.  Sitcoms, again, aren’t about change.  You know when the American Office got bad: when they made Steve Carrell grow and change and try to become a better person.  Don’t change what works.  Stick with it. Stick with it until you stop laughing.

Instead, it pops up, seemingly at random, then recedes into the background for even longer periods of time. On the one hand, it’s probably more realistic than a lot of more conventional TV romances,

Realism—not how I evaluate a program that just did an episode on the “Ass Crack Bandit.”

but on the other hand, a little conventionality might let the story evolve past the endless circling the characters have been carrying out since early in season two.

Don’t evolve!  Don’t be conventional!  It’s working—don’t fuck it up for Todd “Normal” van der Werff. 

In general, Community isn’t great at the romance side of things,

Hallelujah!

but it is pretty good about using that as one spice that sometimes pops up

Mixed metaphor alert!

in a humorous fashion (witness Duncan’s interest in Britta). What’s more problematic is when Jeff and Annie keep repeating the same first beat of the same story time and again, only to have it later be resolved, seemingly for good, then pop up again a few episodes later.

It’s a sitcom—it’s about repetition.  As long as it keeps being funny, keep doing it. 

So much of storytelling is momentum, and this one has been stuck in the same gear for so long.

If we’re using a bad metaphor, let me mangle it.  That’s fine, if the gears are comedy, since the gear it’s suck in is fifth.

At the same time, isn’t that true to life?

Oh, God. I think I just stabbed myself. 

If you’ve got a crush on someone you keep getting thrown into close proximity with, that crush often never completely goes away.

Tell it, Todd.  (By the way, I really should be calling an ambulance.  This is a deep cut—shouldn’t have been near my shearing tools when I was reading the Werff)

Instead, it warps and twists itself into something different, something weirder or more muted. Community expresses this via Jeff and Annie’s little cutesy games, as the Dean would have it, rather than just going out and having sex, like many people really would.

Perhaps.  But, then again, these are not real people. 

I like that aspect of the story, but I also don’t buy that the two wouldn’t have just had sex by this point.

Get it on, fictional characters!  Todd is eager for some nasty pixel-on-pixel action. 

I get that Jeff is much older, and I get that they would probably be a disaster as a couple (just about every potential pairing on this show would),

That’s why it’s a good show!

but it’s been five years. That resistance would erode in time, or at least twist itself into something much weirder, which is what I think the series is going for, but it’s not transmitting as well as it might, because it inevitably devolves into puppy dog eyes. (Okay, and butts.)

Not real people.  Not real . . . people .. .. Not real. . . .  Losing blood.  One more thing to make fun of before I go . . .

Something really tickles me about the notion that the Dean would tell people “If you wanna make Trouble, go work for Parker Brothers!” It’s such a goofy reference.

That’s a great joke.  I really liked that.  Maybe, as a, I don’t know, ostensible TV CRITIC, you might say something more specific than “something really tickles me.”  What, pray tell, makes that joke so funny? 

Let me answer that.  That joke initially seems like a parody of a bad sitcom line—one of these overly elaborate put downs that are incredibly common on shitty shows.  Except: that reference is so arcane and bizarre—“goofy,” fine—but also so incredibly specific.  The phrasing has to be just right—“make Trouble,” “go work.”  That’s just really precise writing so that the joke totally works.  That’s why that’s funny.  Now let me go collapse in a heap. 

Terrible People

I’m catching up on all the terrible articles on Arrested Development that my sheep-shearing has gotten in the way of my mocking.  First up: Alyssa Rosenberg.  

“They sound like terrible people!” George Michael Bluth (Michael Cera) tells Rebel Alley (Isla Fisher), the actress that he has been dating towards the end of the fourth season of Arrested Development after she describes attending a dinner party with a conservative politician (Terry Crews) who brought a prostitute to dinner.

Uh, oh.  I have a feeling I know where this is going.

To reiterate: the characters on Arrested Development are terrible people.  Funny, terrible people.  To the extent to which this past season was slightly disappointing, it’s because they’re not quite as funny as before, partially because of the adverse circumstances of the season’s filming.  It’s not because they’re terrible people.

Fortunately, Alyssa Rosenberg, long overdue for criticism on this blog, doesn’t just go in that bad direction.  No, there are so many others . . .

But first, a digression on Alyssa Rosenberg, who is responsible for one of the worst articles I have ever read, in which she criticizes Romeo and Juliet.  Not because it’s weaker than Shakespeare’s later plays, no.  Because it’s “full of terrible, deeply childish ideas about love.”  It’s true—why should a 13 year old character have childish ideas about love?  How inappropriate!  She should already have grown and changed into a better person, on her journey of life.

Let me include one other line from this Romeo and Juliet article, because it cuts to the core of all that’s vapid and misguided about the kind of criticism I so dearly enjoy mocking when my goat-shearing schedule permits me.  Take it away, Alyssa:

Why are the families fighting? What was the inciting incident?

Cause everything needs a backstory!  Everything’s got to be given a facile, reductive explanation.  Everyone’s got to be treated like they’re not a fictional creation.  Let’s apply Rosenberg’s critical method to other works of literature:

Why is Iago such a dick to Othello?  What was the inciting incident?

Why do James and Mr. Ramsay want to go to the lighthouse?  What was the inciting incident?

Why was Josef K. arrested?  What was the inciting incident?

Or, to put it another way, How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?

Ok, back to Rosenberg on Arrested Development.

But the revived Arrested Development is an interesting experiment in what makes a comedy work, and how long privilege can be interesting to watch.

Uh oh.  Whenever I sense a TV writer trying to make a profound point, I grab my smelling salts. 

The classical definition of the forms means that in comedies, everyone will be all right—if by all right you mean hitched—by the end, while in dramas, things are destined to conclude poorly.

If you’re going to rehash sophomore year (not college, Alyssa—high school) definitions of comedy, you could at least get them right.  Let’s try this again: what’s the opposite of comedy?  That’s right.  Tragedy.  That’s where shit goes wrong.  Not drama.  It’s all drama. 

But the best sitcoms have a talent for tricking you into forgetting that their characters’ predestination [sic]. I have been utterly convinced by Cheers that Norm might permanently drop out of the workforce, by Community that Abed Nadir might not survive his encounters with the social rules of the wider world, by 30 Rock that Liz Lemon might be crushed by Jack Donaghy, and later that their friendship might not survive some of the obstacles flung in its path.

You are, therefore, a schmuck. A schmuck gobbling down the schmuck bait.   

But Arrested Development is a story about people who are privileged in the most basic sense: no matter what happens to them, and no matter the circumstances in which it happens, they’re always going to be all right.

So, in other words, they are characters in any sitcom ever. 

But marathoning the episodes on Tuesday and Wednesday, I felt a little overdosed on the Bluths’ blithe sociopathy, and the fact that they’re conning not just institutions, but each other.  Sometimes, that sociopathy works to good, pointed, ends.

Again, the “end” of comedy.  Remember that?  Comedy does not have ends.  Or, rather, one end.  Is it funny?  If their sociopathy is funny, then it’s good.  If not, not.  It doesn’t have to make the world a better place. Actually, laughing at a good joke does make the world a better place, at least out here with the livestock in the sub-zero plains states. Note the fucking name of this blog. 

When Buster finds out what he’s actually done, he suffers a breakdown and sabotages his own rehabilitation to avoid returning to combat, a conclusion far more poignant than the show has any time to linger on.

And why would it linger on that?  It’s not funny.  Also, at another point you criticize the show for not being political enough, but you’ve just described it launching a (funny) critique of drone warfare.  I should fucking hope it doesn’t undercut that with poignancy.

But wait, there’s still the dreaded specter of growth!

Tobias Fünke (David Cross), after mistaking a heroin addict for an actress, exacerbates her vulnerabilities, puts her in danger of legal prosecution, and ultimately puts her in a position to relapse.

Again, he’s not a good person.  There’s no doubt about that.  Your point?

“How could you do this to me?” he asks her as she’s overdosing in a trash heap. “Or did I do this to you?” But never fear, the moment of potential growth and responsibility passes instantaneously.

I should fucking hope so. We can thank our lucky stars for that. 

By the time the credits came up for the fifteenth time, I was thoroughly convinced that there was absolutely no situation the Bluths couldn’t scam, seduce, sell, or scheme their way out of. And I was all too ready for them to, in keeping with the advice of their lawyer, take to the sea, not so they could escape yet again, but in the sincere wish that at long last, the system would demonstrate a semblance of fairness, and that they’d sink.

I would prefer that my fictional characters stay alive, thank you very much. 

Failure to Grow

Community is back, and good again!  Not great, so far at least, but at least on a level with a slightly subpar episode of the first three seasons.  Compared with last season, those first two episodes were King Lear (a funny King Lear). 

Unfortunately, with Community comes the Werff.  You’d think a year of seeing Community at its worst would enable him to appreciate what makes Community good again—the vastly sharper writing, the infinitely smarter jokes.

Let’s see:

I do like some of the ideas the episode plays around with, though, particularly in the scene where Jeff tries to convince the study group to sue Greendale because of how their personalities were warped and destroyed by going to the school.

That was quite funny. Dark and funny, like the show at its best. 

Sitcoms generally turn their characters into cartoons because that’s what’s funniest, and this is a nice reminder of how far all of these characters—not just Jeff—have come from who they were in the pilot. Jeff paints it as a devolution, because he needs to, but it could just as easily be seen as growth and change.

Oh, God.  Here we go again.  There are so many problems with this. Again, sitcoms are not about growth and change.  They are about funny, usually warped and slightly unlikeable people doing funny things.  And just look at the contortions you have to go through to fit this scene into your atrocious comedy paradigm.  Really, what these characters describe is growth and change?  Sounds more like failure to me.  They’ve failed!  That’s the point.  That’s why they’re back in the same fucking place.  It’s Schmuck Bait:  if they’d succeeded, if they’d moved on, there wouldn’t be a show.  And I’m kind of glad there is a show. 

The show has always posited Greendale as a place where fucked-up people could come together and do great things.

Really, the characters do great things?  Have they cured cancer?  Written the Great American Novel?  Name me one. 

That’s always been its chief appeal to me, even beneath the meta-commentary and jokes about TV shows.

Of course it has.  The togetherness.  The hugging.  The learning (which, of course, doesn’t actually happen).  Not the things that make the show unique—the meta-commentary and the brilliant jokes. 

The best scenes on the show—and in this episode—are the ones where all of the characters are seated around that table, and that’s both because those scenes are often very funny and because they provide the most opportunity to examine those very questions of self-improvement and healing.

My wife just screamed when you said the word “healing.” Now she’s too hysterical to milk Bessie.

I’ve said it a million times, but I’ll say it again—you show me a sitcom about healed and improved people, I’ll show you an unfunny waste of my fucking time. 

Greendale is a place where people come together to heal themselves and get better, but everybody’s a fuck-up, and nobody stops being a fuck-up. That means Greendale isn’t a place that one emerges from fully formed. It means it’s a place that one stays at as long as one needs, until one feels well enough to face a crueler, less loving world.

This after an episode that underlines just how shitty Greendale is—it’s repeatedly called a “toilet,” for God’s sakes.  There’s a fucking riot in the episode! 

Your analysis, if I can deign to call it that, is just so damn weird.  The show is not about healing and self-improvement.  Again, sitcoms are about stasis.  It’s true, more than other shows, Community foregrounds the emotional struggles of the characters.  But just because the show is more emotional doesn’t mean it’s about personal growth.  Those two things are not the same.  The show is fucking dark.  The characters don’t improve.  They may try to, but they don’t.  They fail.  And, as a result, they remain funny.

Again, Mel Brooks: “Tragedy is I cut my finger.  Comedy is you fall into a manhole and die.”