C.B. Murphy  .:. Writer

I’m sitting down to work on my novel and my mind is buzzing from an exposure to the degree of “smart” in contemporary television. My sixteen year old son was my guide. I’m not a big TV watcher (don’t start with categorizing me, not yet) but I do watch “my shows” which tend to be the high end dramas like MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD and THE KILLING. It seemed everything I peeked in at TV comedies I found sitcoms like TWO AND A HALF MEN with laugh tracks that seemed like the shows I watched as a kid only much much raunchier. THE OFFICE changed that for me. I did become a fan but found that I wasn’t compelled to “keep up” lest I miss some nuance of culture. The writers, though very saavy, still seemed to look down on these poor saps stuck in a non-sexy jobs at a paper company in Scranton, PA. There was no getting around the sense that some smart ass twenty something in Hollywood (granted some also act on the show) wrote the material wondering what poor saps in Scranton ate for lunch and how they could make that funny. Still, what was different was a depth of character and a willingness for the show to be not only funny (laughing at weird people) but also get inside of them in ways more traditionally done in “drama.” There were poignant moments and no laugh track. But THE OFFICE avoided many controversial topics (religion and politics) though they were fearless in jumping into diversity training, sexism, and class.

PARKS AND RECREATION is something else again. Amy Poehler’s character of Leslie Knope dives into a territory that I’m not sure actually exists in real life, but is oddly fearless. For example, clearly Leslie sees herself as a feminist (she hopes to be president of the US one day) but when she lists her heroes, they are women in politics from “both” camps, including Sarah Palin. Now we know (wink-wink) that no one on the writing staff respects Ms. Palin. We know this. So making Leslie respect her is not unlike THE OFFICE writers (this is the same team, after all) trying to imagine what poor saps in Scranton like to do after work. PARKS AND REC people are poor saps that live in Indiana, though we begin to see some postmodern types (for lack of a better word) that seem to at least try to live in contemporary America. At two extremes are April, an attractive but angry and dour twentysometing and Rob Lowe’s character Chris Treager who could actually live in Hollywood with his 2.8 percent body fat and obsession with forced cheerfulness. Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman) is a bold step into controversy, though I find at times he’s too cartoonish. He’s a self-defined libertarian which apparently in Hollywood means you eat only meat, like guns, try to avoid all human emotion. Not the subtlest sketch.

Moving on to COMMUNITY. My son said I should start with Season Two as it took the show the whole first season to realize that Joe McHale’s character Jeff Winger was too negative and crabby to be the center. Instead they’ve made him a part of an ensemble cast that includes the character Abed Nadir a Polis/Palestinian-American obsessed with pop culture. There’s an African-American Christian, an atheist socialist, a Jewish goody-goody, a near daft oldster (Chevy Chase). But it’s the content of the humor that’s out there. For example, the show I saw (Season Two, Episode Five) called “Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples” had the Christian character trying to “hire” the Palestinian character (because of his web saavy) to make her a youtube video to spread the good news of Jesus. Abed sees it as an opportunity to do a “meta” project in the style of Charlie Kaufmann (ADAPTATION). OK. So few people my age (close to Chevy’s) could give you a good definition of meta. In fact, unless you follow film and pop culture many people of any age (or for example the characters in THE OFFICE or PARKS AND REC) could give you a quick definition of meta. OK, maybe Aziz Ansari’s character could, but still. So COMMUNITY not only dares to use Jesus in a sketch, but has a Palestinian character making a meta film about Jesus. I was a bit shocked at their boldness, something you do see in Charlie Kaufman films (e.g. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH where a woman enters the body of a man showering and squeals with delight at the parts that feel fun to wash.)

So my question (stay tuned) for “serious” fiction writers, is what is our mission vis-à-vis edginess when TV is smarter than we are?