Komedy is another one of Anhara’s made up, word a day rants so be patient with me on this one. The word is spelt with a ‘K’ is to denote the fact that it’s bottom self, imitation product. You know when your favourite television series does an episode that’s played for laughs and not much else, doesn’t move the season arc forward or have any real point other than to make the writers feel that they might be funny. I thought this was just in sci-fi/fantasy shows but when I was informed by my Dad that CSI: Motherwell (jk) did one recently I just had to do a blog about it.
Okay, I’ll admit that Stargate SG-1 Seasons 4-10 put me off a lot of things that wouldn’t have bothered me before, ’ship being the major one. However there are several Komedy episodes in the 10 season run, the major ones being the three part ‘Marty’ arc. Now as much as I love Sex and the City I cannot stand the character of Stanford and by association, Willie Garson and mostly based on his involvement in the Komedy arch of Stargate that spanned six seasons. I would argue that anything past season three SG-1 was a joke anyway but these ones really got under my skin. The reason?
The writers are simply not that funny. The tragedy is that they are convinced that they are. Peter DeLuise is funny so he’s exempt from this as one of the Bridge Boys I don’t want to shake hard. The others are immature, geeky little boys who think it’s fun to mock the fans and the lesser members of the cast at every opportunity. They seem to care more about pushing their agenda than telling a story. The actors on the other hand are funny, Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge are a scream in the same room just reacting to each other and an audience. Richard Dean Anderson is hilarious and Amanda Tapping’s…well…isn’t she pretty? David Hewlett, although an Atlantis character was always great in SG-1 where his character was used primarily to demonstrate how brilliant, brave and smart Spam (like e-mail messages you get lots of) Carter is.
I actually had the chance to air these thoughts to Rob Cooper when I saw him in the Mirage in Las Vegas a couple of years ago. I was tempted to boot him in the shin but didn’t want to give him the pleasure of having someone recognise him. Also, he was wearing and SG-1 crew T-shirt…someone wanted to be noticed.
Comedy is a very hard thing to write, comedy series have double the writers of a drama series and they are constantly in rotation. It’s a different skillset to Drama which is why it’s horribly arrogant of a drama writer to decide he can write comedy and use an inappropriate format, a drama series, to do so. Now, that said, a few shows have managed to get over this. Supernatural’s comedy episodes are actually bloody hilarious, slow-dancing with aliens, that still makes me laugh loud. Also the episode where Dean keeps dying in more and more creative ways doesn’t sound like a basis for a good chuckle but it was funny and the shift to pathos where he seemed to die for good was a great twist from funny to really tragic.
The X-Files are also a good example. Never really watched many but there was this one I saw some of while I was waiting to be picked up for lunch. The one with vampires and Mulder and Scully telling their side of the story and how they both viewed the same events. That was very well done and I’m still looking for that episode to see all of it. According to my friend Kev there’s some kind of writer link between the X-Files and Supernatural that I don’t know but it might explain the chemistry and how well the characters mesh together in both series.
Anything by Joss Whedon always has an element of humour but it never takes centre stage, except maybe the episode Angel was turned into a muppet. Now THAT was genius. Joss is untouchable anyway, he can break the rules and rebuild them as often as he wants because he is the mighty Whedon.
So, the lesson for today? Don’t try for comedy if all you can manage is Komedy!