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THE INNER GAME OF SITUATION notes from the AFTRS Forum by John Vorhaus

Every television situation comedy has its own inner reality, which governs everything from the way the stories are told to the kind of they use. Parts of this inner game are apparent: on a show like Murphy Brown we can expect the title character to receive the most attention, carry the most emotional weight, and get the most jokes. Other parents are not so obvious. In Married With Children, for example, while everyone hopes that Al Bundy will win, there’s an underlying expectation that he’ll lose. The savvy writer is aware of this underlying expectation and writes to meet it.

Understanding the inner game of situation comedy starts with knowing the types of stories that situation typically tell.

TYPES OF COMIC STORIES

The first thing we need to know about a situation comedy is what kind of comic story it happens to be. I have compiled the following list of categories. The list is not complete, nor is it meant to be more than a guideline; the best situation comedies overlap these categories with reckless abandon. Be that as it may, it’s useful to know what most situation comedies fall into one or another of the following types.

(Note: the examples I give below are from American situation comedies. In this, I betray my cultural ignorance of Australian , and ask your indulgence. I also hope that most, or at least some of these examples are known to you as well.)

CENTER AND ECCENTRICS

“Everyman” finds himself surrounded by strong comic characters. The function of “everyman” is to stand in for the viewer, to be the bemused observer of comic antics. Examples include Taxi, Dear John, Barney Miller, The Bob Newhart Show. In a center and eccentrics configuration, the “center” character gets most of the emotional weight, but fewer jokes; he functions as to the eccentrics.

FISHOUT OF WATER / CLASH OF CONTEXT

Here we find a normal character in a comic work Northern Exposure, Green Acres or a comic character in a normal world Beverly Hillbillies, Mork & Mindy. The comedy flows from the conflict between characters’ strong comic perspectives and the world in which they now live. A show like The Wonder Years derives much of its from the interesting clash of perspectives offered by young Kevin Arnold, living in the moment, and his older, adult self, looking back.

1 ENSEMBLE COMEDY

A group of people are in conflict with the world at large. Although certain characters may “break out”, all the characters receive generally equivalent emotional weight. Examples include M*A*S*H and .

CHARACTER CONFLICT

Direct emotional war between characters. This can either be conflict between a normal character and a comic character, as in the case of I Love Lucy, or between two comic characters who are comic opposites, as in The Odd Couple. Often we find character conflict within another genre, as in the conflict between Sam and Diane on Cheers or Joel and Maggie on Northern Exposure. Married With Children also falls into the category of character conflict, among others.

POWERS

Magic, or supernatural conceits, drive the humour of this genre. I Dream of Jeanie and Bewitched are classics of the form.

SLAPSTICK

The chief characteristics of comedies is that there is no inner conflict within the characters. All stories, all conflicts, are situational rather than emotional. Gilligans Island.

PARODY / FARC /

Here the humour relies on an audience’s awareness of the world at large, and jokes are built as commentaries on that world. Dinosaurs, the Simpsons, and most sketch comedy shows, such as rely on this form.

STAR VEHICLE

The humour is driven by a stand-up comic who crosses over to television with his or her strong comic persona. Examples include The Cosby Show, Roseanne and Seinfeld.

THE COMIC PREMISE

The Comic premise is defined as the gap between comic reality and “real” reality. Every comic story – in fact, every comic film, or , or simple comic notion – has at its heart a strong, clearly definable comic premise. The comic premise in Married With Children, for example, is that a loser like Al Bundy would stay with his horrible family no matter what the cost. In “real” reality, either he or they would be long gone. Thus we have a gap between the way things are in the real world and the way they are in our comic world. The comic premise lives within this gap.

2 To take other examples: the comic premise of Murphy Brown is that one woman can triumph no matter how stubborn and irascible she might be; the comic premise of I Love Lucy is that one woman can triumph no matter how headstrong and irresponsible she might be. Neither of these women would last a split minute in the real world, but they prosper in their comic worlds, and that’s what makes them funny.

It’s easiest to see the comic premise at work in magic-driven stories, for the magical power is itself the comic premise. In Mork and Mindy, Alf and a host of other situation comedies, the comic premise is that aliens exist and they come to Earth and they behave in humorous ways. Reality, so far as we can tell, is quite different.

LEARNING THE RULES

Whether you’re writing a spec (speculative) script for an existing show, or writing on freelance assignment, or writing on staff for a show, it’s necessary to know the rules of that show before ever a story is written or a is told.

There are two main ways to acquire the rules of a show. One is to watch the darn thing; video tape it, and watch the episodes over and over again. Following this strategy, we learn two rules of Murphy Brown for example: that virtually every episode starts with a 1960s hit sour record, and that virtually every episode features a running gag built around an impossible new secretary.

3 INTRODUCTION, COMPLICATION, CONSEQUENCE AND RELEVANCE

Another useful way to break down sitcom story structure is into these four parts. Introduction is equivalent to inciting incident, it’s what sets the story in motion. Complication is a raising of the stakes, the action a character takes to solve his problem, which inevitable makes his problem worse. Consequence is equal to the implied fireworks scene: this is where all the pies get thrown. Relevance is another word for theme.

To test a story’s workability, I like to reduce it to these four points. If the story “tracks” at this level, I can be confident that it will support further development without collapsing under its own weight. For example:

Introduction: a character lies to another character about her popularity in school.

Complication: the second character, believing herself popular, runs for class office, setting herself up for major disappointment.

Consequence: the first character must tell the second character the truth, even at the risk of hurting them both.

Relevance: tell the truth, the theme of the episode, simply stated.

As you can see, this is the barest outline of the episode. Much work still needs to be done to make it fun, inventive, worth watching. But at this level, the structure level, I now have a very simple way to test my idea and see if it’s working out.

4 COMIC CHARACTERS

Eastern philosophy describes creativity as “carrying buckets to the river”. Too often in our creative problem solving, we lose track of the river or lose faith in our buckets. In the creation of comic characters, however, there are some remarkably reliable tools we can use to assure that these constructions are solid, sound and logical.

Every comic character is the product of the following four attributes: strong comic perspective, flaws, humanity and exaggeration.

COMIC PERSPECTIVE

At the heart of any comic character is his strong comic perspective – that unique way he has of looking at the world at variance with how the world views itself. Once again we see the comic premise at work; just as the gap between real reality and comic reality informs a comic world, it also informs the world within a comic character.

A character’s strong comic perspective is the motor that drives his comic engine. When we say that comedy flows from character, what we really mean is that comedy flows from that character’s unusual, quirky, offbeat way of looking at the world. The clearer and bolder the comic perspective, the better.

Grouch Marx’s strong comic perspective was leering cynicism. Gracie Allen’s was innocence. on Cheers was hyper-intellectual. Al Bundy feels trapped. Find a character’s strong comic perspective and you have found the key to his humour. Every joke, every action, every choice, every gesture comes from a strong comic perspective.

FLAWS

All comic characters have flaws. Flaws are what set comic characters apart from the rest of us, and establish them as people worth laughing at. The best flaws have synergy with comic perspective. That is, there’s a conflict between how a character views himself and how he rally is. Lucille Ball has the strong comic perspective of confidence, but has the flaw of incompetence. on Cheers sees himself as God’s gift to women, yet his own flawed narcissism makes him that much less appealing to women. Seek to put your character’s flaws and perspective in conflict with one another.

Seek to give your characters many flaws. Here the power of the list will help you. Interesting, multi-faceted characters have a number of interesting clear, and definable flaws, just as really people do. To make your characters well rounded, heap on the flaws.

5 HUMANITY

Though a comic character’s flaws set him apart from us, it is necessary for a comic character to be connected to us as well. That’s why all comic characters have humanity, recognisable positive traits that make us feel good about them. This feeling of connectedness is achieved either through sympathy (“I like him”) or empathy (“He’s like me”). Al Bundy may be a world-class loser, but at bottom he is loyal to his family. This is his humanity. It’s what makes us root for him, want him to win, and feel badly for him when he fails.

Without humanity, there is no bridge between audience and character. A character’s humanity can be as innocuous as “kind to animals” or as bold as “wants to save the world”. As with flaws, it’s useful to have a number of traits that create humanity within a character. Also, humanity counterbalances flaws, so if your comic character is truly venal and corrupt, it’s necessary to give him a great deal of humanity to offset his negative side.

EXAGGERATION

Exaggeration acts on comic perspective, flaws, and humanity to make them all more than they are. Whatever attributes you give to your characters, exaggerate them as far as you can. The further you remove a character from “real” reality, the funnier he will be. Jerry Lewis is not just a bumbler, he’s the supreme bumbler of all time. Likewise, Groucho Marx is the most leeringly cynical person in the world. Jack Benny is the ultimate cheapskate. Sam Malone is the ultimate womanizer. Al Bundy is the ultimate loser.

The common denominator here is the word, “ultimate”. Push your characters to the limit, and then push them a little further still. Exaggeration is what makes truly memorable comic characters come to life. And you truly cannot exaggerate too much.

COMIC OPPOSITES

Once you’ve created a comic character, you have a rich opportunity in the creation of that character’s comic opposite. Simply identify your character’s comic perspective, find the diametric opposite of that perspective, and chain those two characters together. Comic possibilities explode.

In The Odd Couple, Neil Simon created the neatest person in the world, Felix Unger, and the messiest person in the world, Oscar Madison, and made them roommates. All the humour in that piece flows from the dynamics of comic characters in opposition. On All In the Family, Archie Bunker and his son-in-law, Michael Stivic, were likewise configures as comic opposites. It’s a simple and reliable tool for the creation of comic situations.

COMEDY THROUGH CHARACTER

The best situation comedies rely less on jokes than on comic moments. The difference is that any character in any situation can tell a joke, but comic sitcoms and sitcom scripts is in recognising

6 the characters’ strong comic perspectives, their flaws and humanity, and in making their actions and attitudes reflect who they truly are.

If the character is properly drawn, then literally any situation you put him in will be funny as a function of his strong comic perspective. All he has to do is observe and comment on the situation, as filtered through his unique worldview, and humour will emerge. As an added benefit, the strongest comic characters are also the most memorable: “franchise” characters who become part of the popular culture. When you can create people like that, you’re golden.

7 MORE ON STORY STRUCTURE

There’s another approach I use to make sure that my sitcom stories are tracking correctly. I call it the Comic Throughline.

WHAT THE CHARACTER WANTS

What is the character’s strong dramatic need? Let’s say for example, that there’s a sitcom character, a high school student named Billy, and Billy wants the respect of his peers.

THE DOOR OPENS

The character gets a chance to got o a place where his goal can be won. In our example, Billy is chosen to compete in a public speaking contest. If he wins the contest, he’ll win the respect of his peers.

THE HERO TAKES CONTROL

The character takes steps towards his goal. Billy practices hard and feels confident that he’ll win the contest. Others root him on, and Billy seems to have achieved his goal. This is an illusion. He may have the trappings of success, but only on the surface.

A NEW CONFLICT APPEARS

This is usually a love conflict or a loyalty conflict. That is, the character falls in love, or displaces his loyalty to another person, resulting in conflict between his original goal and his newly discovered goal. In our example, Billy may fall for Delphene, another public speaker, and decide that he wants to let her win the contest.

THINGS FALL APART

The conflict between old and new loyalties brings the character to a crisis of choices. On the one hand, Billy thinks he has to win the contest to gain his peer’s respect. On the other hand, he thinks he has to lose in order to win the girl.

THE CHARACTER HITS BOTTOM

Trying to reconcile his conflicting goals, the character finds himself impossibly far from both. Delphene has found out that Billy’s letting her win the contest, and refuses to accept victory on those terms. Meanwhile, his peers want Billy to throw the match for reasons of their own. Billy feels trapped.

8 THE CHARACTER RISKS EVERYTHING

With no hope of achieving either goal, the character chooses to sacrifice his original loyalty for his new or displaced loyalty. Billy decides to give the contest his best shot, even if it means losing all his new , and even if he doesn’t know for sure that he’ll win Delphene’s respect.

WHAT THE CHARACTER GETS

As a result of his willingness to risk everything, to “come clean” or tell the truth, the character ends up winning both his original goal and his secondary goal. Delphene respects him for doing the right thing, and the peers respect him for following his own path. The character has undergone authentic change and, as a result, has become worthy of having the thing he wanted in the first place.

As with other structural tools, the comic throughline is more useful as a guidelines than as a hard- and-fast set of rules. Use it to make sure that your story is behaving, but don’t force your story into this mould. A story is a dynamic, organic thing: it hates to be bossed around.

Here are some further notes on story structure:

RAISING THE STAKES

Raising the stakes means increasing the price for victory. If you have a character who’s trying to impress his boss, you can raise the stakes by making it clear that impressing the boss will lead to a better job, more pay, a date with boss’s daughter etc. To make your story strong and vigorous, seek to raise the stakes at every possible turn.

ESCALATING JEOPARDY

Escalating jeopardy means the price of failure. If your character is determined to impress his boss, you can escalate the jeopardy by making it clear that failure to impress will result in demotion, loss of pay, loss of job, loss of boss’s daughter etc.

Note the correlation between raising the stakes and escalating the jeopardy. Both elements are present in the best stories. Seek to make a bad situation worse at every opportunity.

COMEDY AND RISK

It happens that there’s a strong link between comedy and risk. The more dire the circumstances are, the runnier the comic moment will be. This is due to the fact that dire circumstances create tension, and humour is created by the release of tension. The greater the tension, the bigger and more explosive (and funnier) the release will be. The funniest comedy is literally a matter of life and death. Seek to make it so.

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