"Team Work"

Mentioning my “burnt children” joke recently, reminds me of how a group-written joke comes into existence. And then gets “red-flagged” by network “Standards and Practices”, becoming a momentary cause celebre, and then, like the majority of momentary cause celebres, fades into such meaningless obscurity I can no longer recall if they finally allowed us to use it.  

But boy, did things get heated at the time.  (Once Senator, now former Senator, but, hopefully, someday Senator again) Al Franken, the show I was working on’s creator, took our case all the way to the President of NBC, ultimately screaming at him to allow us to use that joke, while the NBC president patiently waited him out, and then respectfully said, “Replace the joke.”)

But this isn’t about any of that.

What I was reminded of was the way many of the best sitcom jokes come into existence.  And I thought maybe you’d be interested in – second-handedly – witnessing the process.

Before unveiling that offending joke, allow me an explanantory disclaimer, conveyed by the word,

“Guileless.”

The joke I wound up providing the punchline for involved no malicious intent.  It was just me, “connecting the dots”, in a way comedy minds do, sans aggressive premeditation or underlying agenda. 

We just “go for the funny.”

As may be evident in my writing, I am, in real life, congenitally – to a fault, some might say – guileless.  Congruently, if you will, the character who delivered the joke, though brilliant and hardworking, was himself demonstrably “guileless.” 

Call it the guileless leading the “guileless”… into a “Standards and Practices” conflagration. (Because they did not factor in “guileless.”)

But as I said, this isn’t about that.

The show was called Lateline, a sitcomical rendering of the political interview show Nightline.  Al Franken played Al Freundlich, a tenacious puppy dog of an “In-Depth” reporter, not a subversive bone in his fabricated body.

We are pitching a moment in which Al (Freundlich, not Franken) is explaining his (off-screen) wife’s involvement in a charitable undertaking.

“She’s raising money for a new ‘Burn Unit’ at the Jewish Children’s Hospital.  It’s for kids!”

That’s what Al pitched. And at that moment, we had no idea where it was going.

Now here’s where “Team Writing” comes in.  

Normally, I do not love “Team Writing”, as it invariably means splitting the money.  More importantly, however – if you can believe that – “Team Writing” involves, from its inception, surrendering your personal perspective in favor of a homogenizing “Team Perspective.”  Which may not actually exist, beyond “Let’s be TV writers, and get the job successfully done.” 

How practical that is.  And emotionally uninspiring.  Though not entirely consciously, I went into writing to communicate my heartfelt opinions. Nobody told me television doesn’t care about my heartfelt opinions.  (Suggesting I may have been in the wrong business my entire career.  Oh well.) 

Having asserted my preference for writing alone, there are times when “Team Writing” can be gloriously rewarding.

As with the notorious “Burnt Children” joke.

Here’s how that worked.

Al does the aforementioned set-up:

“… a new ‘Burn Unit’ for the Jewish Pediatric Hospital.  It’s for kids!”

The question then is, what do you do with that?

There are three writers in the room, thinking about the same setup, which, at that point, we do not recognize as a setup.  It doesn’t look like a setup; it’s simply a declarative statement of fact.  (Which, it turns out, frequently make the best setups.)  (Because they are natural and unforced.) 

I ponder the established particulars.  Al has specifically mentioned, “It’s for kids.”  I then consider the other supplied facts… and what pops into my mind?

Not surprising, perhaps, the word “Jewish.”

So I say, with no idea where I’m going…

“And you don’t have to be Jewish.”

And then, because it’s a specific kind of a hospital, add, 

“Just burnt.”

The room explodes in loud and prolonged laughter.  I have apparently hit pay dirt.  I am not being humble.  I have no idea the combination of words I’d assembled is actually funny; I am too into the “mechanics.”  

I did not laugh when I thought of it.  It’s like my mind knew it was funny, and my mind told my mouth, and my mouth told the other writers in the room.  All I know is it was spontaneous.

And, of course, “guileless.”

The expressed idea was actually a nicething – the hospital was open to everyone in need of those services.  Still, “Standards and Practices” got stuck on the idea of “burnt children” and their reaction, putting it mildly, was substantially different that the reaction in the room.

Anyway, I just wanted to show you the process.  It’s kind of magical, in its way.

One writer suggests something, which triggers a reaction in another writer’s mind, and the collaboration yields a joke, that required both of them to produce.  I would never in my life have imagined that setup.  But it took another writer – though it’s not always me – to make that innocuous setup pay off.

There are numerous other ways writers of comedy symbiotically behave to elicit the “Yellow Gold” of induced laughter. 

This example is one of them.

(Hazy Recollection: I think they let us film the joke two ways.  And then they cancelled the series.)