THE INNER GAME OF SITUATION COMEDY notes from the AFTRS Sitcom 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 jokes 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 comedies 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 sitcoms, 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 straight man 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 humour 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 Cheers. 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 slapstick comedies is that there is no inner conflict within the characters. All stories, all conflicts, are situational rather than emotional. Gilligans Island. PARODY / FARC / SATIRE 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 Saturday Night Live 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 comic novel, 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 joke 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. Diane Chambers 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. Sam Malone 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.