{"id":128,"date":"2012-11-28T12:43:56","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T18:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/?p=128"},"modified":"2012-12-08T15:26:42","modified_gmt":"2012-12-08T21:26:42","slug":"sounds-like-i-hate-this-show-but-i-love-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/?p=128","title":{"rendered":"Sounds like I Hate This Show, but I Love It."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the movie Barfly<\/em>, Henry Chinaski (the barfly of the title) is asked \u201cWhy don\u2019t you quit drinking? Anyone can be a drunk.\u201d Henry replies, \u201cAnybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am reminded of this scene every time I find myself watching 2 Broke Girls<\/em>, a sitcom on Monday nights on CBS. You see, I am a Sitcom Drunk. Each season brings its new crop of shows, many of which won\u2019t last but a handful of episodes, and by now I need only flip through the season TV Guide preview to know what will most likely be what come season\u2019s start. With way more shows going on than back in the regular cable and pre-cable days, one can\u2019t throw in with just any new-hatched unfledged sitcom comrades. So why this seemingly steamy pile of a show?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like his alcoholic brother, the Sitcom Drunk can\u2019t always say why he sticks with a certain show week after week, he just watches. Maybe it was the Whitney Cummings show at Zanies I had recently been to.\u00a0 Maybe it was because Kat Dennings had recently been in the tabloids or some such. Maybe it was as simple as that ol\u2019 sitcom television evergreen, the buddy-com. Like Felix and Oscar, like Laverne and Shirley, like Larry and Balki, Max and Caroline (the Girls<\/em>) are just a couple of pals trying to make it in this crazy world. And when you combine the Opposites trope of Perfect Strangers <\/em>with the Plucky-Gals-Making-It of Laverne & Shirley<\/em>, then this Drunk is getting three sheets to the wind on shenanigans and hijinx.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So now think of the aforementioned series. Now think of them where one girl is a tall thin blonde whose father was a Madoff-type criminal and is now broke, and the other is the shorter wise-cracking buxom brunette who takes her in. They work together in a Williamsburg, Brooklyn diner because of course they do. Oh, and Caroline wears 5-inch Louboutin heels and Max rocks knee-high boots that look like they were just made for waiting tables in a diner. Throw in a Mel Sharples manqu\u00e9 named Oleg who pops out periodically through the kitchen pass window to talk (in an absurd Eastern European accent) about his penis and what he\u2019d like to do with it, Garrett Morris doing a Garrett Morris impression, a diner owner who makes Ching Chong Ding Dong from The Colbert Report<\/em> seem tame, and then Bob\u2019s your uncle (Actually Jesse\u2019s your uncle. Or Leo. Or Fester.). This is the show, every episode, every week. Until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is what has led me to this Chauncey Gardiner-like state of perpetual watching; all this talk of Sitcom Drunks and TV tropes is heading toward the realization of all that viewing labor, the fruits of Endurance. It is the episode where Something Different Happened. This is the episode that embodies the dragon the watcher keeps chasing series after series, waiting for that moment where the event occurs and the immediate resulting shock of TV junkie joy lasts even into the show\u2019s descent back into its reconfigured sameness. But it isn\u2019t the writing or the acting that\u2019s different; it\u2019s how the show itself is presented. In the case of 2 Broke Girls<\/em>, it has to do with the laugh track. Now the pro\/con argument re:laugh tracks is best left for another time, but the kind of show that can bring the chronically habitual viewer the satisfaction he craves requires it. What makes this moment the red-crested warbler of TV is its rarity. During the run of any sitcom this type of episode can only happen once, and you better have it on when it does (This is an important fact. DVR, DVD, VOD \u2013 this will not get you where you want to be. The anticipation and its release after waiting all week for the live airing is the third heat that allows one to wring as much pleasure as possible from an intrinsically dull form. Watching it all in one go is a rushing stream that washes the gold away before you can notice it\u2019s there.).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

At this point one may ask (with good reason) \u201cSo what is it? What happened that was so fucking great? WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! GET TO THE DAMN POINT!\u201d All right, endurance does have \u00a0its limits.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The 30th<\/sup> episode of the series was titled \u201cAnd the Candy Manwich,\u201d which in itself is a hint at the carpetbombing of innuendo to come (Haha, I said \u2018come\u2019). A quick bit of the comedy-porn stylings on offer in this episode goes like this:<\/p>\n

Caroline<\/strong>:\u00a0[after throwing up at Andy’s candy store]<\/em>\u00a0I finally meet an adorable, sweet guy. A guy so sweet, the word “sweet” is next to his name on actual real estate, and I completely destroy any chance I have with him.<\/p>\n

Max<\/strong>: You didn’t destroy anything. And it’s good to let him know right off the bat that you have a gag reflex.<\/p>\n

(cue laugh track that is sweetened more than a bowl of Fruity Pebbles in a bowl of condensed milk with Care Bear sprinkles)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So this is how this show has gone every week for 30 weeks, Caroline sets it up and Max takes a giant dildo and knocks it down. Fine. As I\u2019ve said, the difference in this episode is not the Mad-Libs inspired dialogue or the traditional sitcom-style acting \u2013 that never changes. What happens here is courtesy of sound engineers and that other favorite TV trope, the Breakout Side Character. Jennifer Coolidge plays Sophie, the girls\u2019 upstairs neighbor with big hair and a bigger personality. She (naturally) hooks up semi-regularly with Oleg, which gives us no end of bon mots such as how crotchless panties are a great low-carb snack or what implements Sophie likes to put up Oleg\u2019s butt. Sophie often shows up at the diner, claiming \u201cher booth\u201d whether it is empty or not. And this is where it happens. In the preceding 29 episodes, Sophie\u2019s entrance is just that, an entrance. She comes in, throws down some catty shit on Max and Caroline, laughs uproariously at herself and leaves. No extra laughs, everything status-quo. But this night, when Sophie walks in the diner\u2026.TREMENDOUS APPLAUSE! Catcalls, laughs, whoops and hollers greet her as she walks in. And from that point on, every scrap of laugh track is sweetened and brightened beyond the rainbow in a box of Lucky Charms. It\u2019s at once jarring and satisfying, thrilling almost. One starts to anticipate the punchlines (which is absurdly easy to do) even more than usual, waiting for that laughter-turned-up-to-11 track to kick in. Whether an audience was even there nearly gets lost and becomes merely the\u00a0 paper-thin crust this heap of recorded laughter sits upon. Wonderfully, this continues through to the end of the episode, ushering in the next phase of this show.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cReally?\u201d you may ask. \u201cThat\u2019s it? More laugh track? You prattle on and on and that\u2019s the payoff?\u201d Well, yes. But consider it \u2013 every time Kramer busts into Jerry\u2019s apartment, when Fonzie strolls into Arnold\u2019s, when Erkel comes into the Winslow house \u2013 there is a demarcation episode where, for the first time, the audience cheers wildly when that character appears. This usually coincides with a solidification of the show\u2019s ratings, which is the point. After this episode, the show is on its way to syndication heaven and riches for its creators (no more Zanies, eh Whitney?)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The joy that this brings may have been a little bit overstated. Well, not overstated, but not precisely stated. It wasn\u2019t as though when this happened I started fist-pumping around the room like Kirk Gibson and cheering myself. It\u2019s more of an inner feeling where there was a click (like Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof<\/em>) where it is as if a capsule had been broken open and the satisfaction of television viewing at its zenith courses through the veins and renders one completely pop-culturally sated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The best way to describe this condition of sitcom drunkenness is in terms of a certain YouTube video. In this video a young man beats Super Mario Bros. on the original NES with his feet. Not only beat the game, but doing it for time (he finishes the game in just over 9 minutes) as well. He has played this same game, where the characters and worlds and warp levels are the same every time, so often that he has had to continually look for new ways to continue to enjoy it. He even casually drinks a soda as he does this, perhaps trying subconsciously to add an extra level of complexity to his task. That is the source of the Sitcom Drunks madness, the idea that he has watched so many episodes of so many sitcoms that each cameo is cross-indexed instantly A Brilliant Mind<\/em> style, ticking off other shows the actor may have been in, or looking to see if the interiors have changed at all from season to season, and of course waiting for that rare bird which is the shift in laugh track (all of this is predicated on the multi-cam, laugh track having sitcom, which is the real bread and butter of the Sitcom Drunk).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yep, watching 2 Broke Girls is the Playing-Super-Mario-With-Your-Feet of watching TV shows. And I dig it. So I won\u2019t be available on Monday at 8, so don\u2019t call.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the movie Barfly, Henry Chinaski (the barfly of the title) is asked \u201cWhy don\u2019t you quit drinking? Anyone can be a drunk.\u201d Henry replies, \u201cAnybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":161,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[31,54,30,32],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marcum-my-words","tag-2-broke-girls","tag-marcum-my-words","tag-sitcoms","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":163,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.the-belt.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}