"Rebuttal To A Rebuttal Of A Rebuttal"

Ken Levine mentioned, on a post we both can’t find anymore, that he believed that single-camera comedies moved faster than multi-camera comedies, partly because multi-camera comedies took the time to more deeply explore the characters. I disagreed with him. Ken then wrote a subsequent post qualifying his position. Now, it’s my turn.

Isn’t this fun?

The summary version of my rebuttal to Ken’s rebuttal to my rebuttal is this. And please excuse the rhyming:

“If you like the show, it isn’t slow.”

That’s what network’s, when they gave us notes, used to call “The headline.”

“If you like the show, it isn’t slow” is what I should have said in the first place, and left it at that. But that would be an eight-word post. People execute several “clicks” to get to my blog. I can’t give them eight words. They won’t come back. And they’ll badmouth me to others:

“How’s Earl’s blog?”

“He wrote a eight-word post.”

“Man! That guy’s wasting the Internet!”

You never want to hear that. So I fill it up. Give people their money’s worth. Even though, you know…it’s free.

One of Ken’s many astute commenters wrote:

I was watching HAZEL the other day (off DVD) and the tempo felt right. Not too slow. Not too fast.

Why? Because the commenter liked HAZEL.

And if you like the show…everybody?

It isn’t slow.

Another commenter, so as not to complicate matters, compared two shows from the same era:

ANDY GRIFFITH was single camera, DICK VAN DYKE was three. Both had great writing, acting, etc, and are simply great. I don’t remember thinking one was faster paced than the other.

Why? Because the commenter liked them both.

The bottom line is “engagement.” If you’re engaged with the episode, the time passes very pleasantly. And rapidly as well.

I am never engaged watching Parks and Recreation or The Office. That’s why they feel slow to me. To clarify what another commenter wrote, I am not, when checking the clock

amazed at how much time is left

because of how much has already happened in such a short time, I am, rather, bored to tears, and fearful that my life will end before the episode does.

Also, while I’m speaking about those two shows, a primary reason they both drag for me is that both shows are about the excruciating drudgery of their characters’ soul destroying work lives.

With one exception, I have never seen a boring character played interestingly. The exception was in an English play called Man of the Moment, where a wonderful actor named Michael Gambon was able to make a dull character fascinating. For the vast majority of occasions, however, boring is boring.

Likewise, it is very hard to feel energized watching people watch their lives drip away while they’re punching the clock at a monumentally meaningless job. I just feel sad for those guys. They never smile, and they always look defeated.

In the shows I worked on, like THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, WJM was a barely successful news operation, but the employees did the best they could and were always hopeful. That’s not a one-camera, multi-camera distinction; it may be, now that I think about it, a generational distinction. Maximum effort and hope seem like old-fashioned concepts. But that could just be me, being curmudgeonly.

“Those kids today, no spirit, no fire!”

Back to “If you like the show, it’s not slow”, before I make myself throw up.

Rebutting my position, a commenter wrote

Malcolm In The Middle never feels slow or underwritten to me.

Why?

They like MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE.

Also, they’re right. I neglected to make the distinction. Just like THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW differed from ALL IN THE FAMILY, though they were both multi-camera comedies, single-camera comedies differ as well.

From its inception, MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE was stylistically constructed to move quickly, mimicking a live-action cartoon. Watch Brian Cranston. He’s a tightly coiled bundle of energy (not unlike Wile E. Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons.) A show can’t possibly be slow with that guy at its center.

A word about SEINFELD, before I wrap things up with M*A*S*H.

SEINFELD, though a multi-camera sitcom, may have told multiple stories through numerous short scenes, but no sitcom before SEINFELD ever stopped its story dead in its tracks to engage in some totally extraneous conversation. Last night, I was watching a SEINFELD rerun, where out of the blue, Jerry suddenly wondered:

“Why does anybody eat canned fruit?”

Which led to an extended examination of the phenomenon.

Did the interruption slow down the storytelling? Of course it did. Why did I revel in it? Because, first, the interruption was refreshingly unexpected. And second, I was amazed (and delighted) that any sitcom would take the time to do something like that.

As I mentioned elsewhere, when I wrote multi-camera sitcoms, any momentary digression was taken out and replaced by that the funniest joke the rewrite writers could think of that would simultaneously advance the story.

In the name of “moving things along”, not a moment’s time could ever be expended to ponder the question, why anyone would eat canned fruit? Which brings me to Point Number Three. I’ve actually wondered about that myself.

Okay, M*A”S*H. And then, goodbye.

M*A*S*H, the classic single-camera comedy from the seventies, was what they would call in Latin sitcom-writing class sui generis. Which, if you missed that class, means “one of a kind.”

Yes, M*A*S*H employed multiple scenes. Yes, it was peppered with Groucho-style, rat-a-tat dialogue. Yes, it told stories you would never see in any other comedy. That’s the beginning of sui generis right there. But the essential sui generis element that M*A*S*H had going for it was:

A war.

Wars are, by definition, not slow or boring. There are unquestionably stretches of tedium during wars. But underlying M*A*S*H’s tedium was the “any minute” possibility than thousands of North Koreans could overrun their position and everybody would be dead. A situation of this nature tends to capture the audience’s attention.

I imagine if thousands of any enemy overran THE OFFICE’S Scranton operation, they would greeted as liberators by the employees, and lavished with free paper goods, their arrival having provided the show’s characters a desperately needed break from their inexorable march towards oblivion

But that could be my preferences talking.

I like M*A*S*H.

I don’t care for THE OFFICE.

By the way, I misspoke, or miswrote, about MODERN FAMILY. I watch it and I like it. Though filmed single camera, it rarely feels slow to me. It also makes me laugh and makes me feel good.

Maybe that’s because it’s more upbeat than the shows about the slow death of the workplace. Or maybe MODERN FAMILY is more to my liking, because it was created and is overseen by two writers who learned their craft writing

Multi-camera comedies.

"Game One Thirty-Six" *

Dr. M has a gift for targeted splurging. And at the last minute, she contacted a ticket agent and got us really good seats to a Dodgers-Giants game. The tickets, which arrived in an envelope we picked up from the ticket agent’s office near the ballpark, were accompanied by a receipt, indicating what the tickets cost us. I made a point not to look at that receipt. I knew it would only spoil my evening.

“That’s too much!”

That’s what I didn’t want to hear myself say. So I judiciously refrained from looking.

I’m trying a new diet, which discourages eating wheat. So before we left for the ballpark, with the traditional hot dog (on a wheat bun) now off the menu, I prepared myself a turkey sandwich on spelt bread. I don’t know what spelt is. But it doesn’t have wheat in it, and, among other comestibles, they make it into bread.

It’s not terrible. And I had to bring it along, because, even with the newly expanded dining options at Dodger Stadium, there was a serious unlikelihood they would include spelt.

I could still have peanuts, which I did. And who knows? Maybe I’ll become a trendsetter and my diet’ll catch on. Maybe even change the song:

“Buy me some peanuts and turkey on spelt

That’s the strangest bread I ever smelt…”

So we’re watching the game, and things are looking good. Two dazzling catches by the Dodger right fielder, our pitcher holding the Giants to just one hit. By the end of the sixth inning, the Dodgers led four-to-nothing, mostly courtesy of a three-run homer by a player I had never heard of.

Not long before, the Dodgers had shipped the oft injured but formerly magnificent Manny Ramirez to the White Sox, and were running out the string with replacement nobodies, one of whom made a late-season bid to become a somebody by knocking the ball out of the park

Also in the sixth, James Loney, the Dodgers’ reliable first baseman, hit a laser shot into the right field corner, and started racing around the bases. When he passed second, he hesitated, then decided to try for third. At which point, he fell down.

With reaching third no longer an option, Loney, after getting up, turned to go back, but the relay throw from the outfield beat him to the bag. So instead of standing on second with a double, James Loney was out.

The next batter cracked a sharp single, which, if it were not for the mishap, would have scored Loney from second. But nobody cared. It was four-nothing Dodgers with only three innings to go, against the famously light-hitting Giants.

The comfortable lead left us buoyant enough to imagine the kind of razzing Loney must have received when he returned to the dugout.

“Mickey Mantle fell down too.”

“He did?”

“Never.”

Things were going beautifully. We had excellent seats, the weather was ideal, and the Dodgers were comfortably ahead. Even the spelt sandwich wasn’t too bad.

And then the winds significantly changed.

The Giants hit a home run in the top of the seventh.

Four-one, Dodgers.

They hit two home runs in the top of the eighth.

Four-three, Dodgers.

And they hit a two-run home run in the top of the ninth.

Five-four, Giants.

During these innings, the Dodgers used three different pitchers in an effort to quell the Giants’ rally. Two of them, not wanting to make their predecessors to feel bad, generously surrendered home runs of their own. The only exception to this futility was an Asian pitcher, who, not understanding our culture, pitched like he was actually trying to win.

Though the Dodgers mounted a comeback in the bottom of the ninth, they were frustratingly unable to score. And so the game ended.

Giants 5, Dodgers 4.

If only Loney hadn’t tripped…

More than any sport, baseball is like life. Football isn’t like life, or we’d all have arthritis by the time we’re thirty-five. Ping-pong isn’t like life, though I’m not sure that’s true universally. It could be like life in Korea. Though they play baseball in Korea too. So in Korea, baseball and ping-pong could both be like life.

Baseball feels like life. And I mean every game, including “Game One Thirty-Six.”

Consider the story arc. You’re rollin’ along, singin’ a song, and then you stumble, which, though you’re unaware of it at the time, totally turns the tide. You do your best to overcome this pivotal misstep, but you never quite make it.

That was “Game One Thirty-six.” And it’s also life.

Of course, that’s not all life. It’s only one kind of life. Sometimes, the breaks go your way. That’s a different kind of life. The kind where you win.

Then, there are games where you’re horribly overmatched. They’re called “blowouts.” That’s yet another kind of life. A really sad kind. On the other side of the coin are the games where you can’t seem to do anything wrong. “Cakewalks”, they call them. And, of course, there are the “squeakers”, where squeak by by the skin of your teeth.

They’re all baseball. And they’re all, in their own way, like life.

Of course, I could be analogizing here simply to inject some profundity. Maybe baseball isn’t like life. Maybe what we experienced was just an ultimately meaningless game where we didn’t quite make it.

Though, in a way, that’s a little like life as well.

I guess you can’t get away from it. Baseball really is like life.

* The regular baseball season runs a hundred and sixty-two games.

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A reader mentioned "The Puck Crisis", which is a short, mock documentary I wrote in Canada. I don't know where you can see it, except in my house. I wish it were available. It turned out pretty good.

"Why I Like 'The Office', But Never Watch It"

It’s torturously bleak!

I like opening with a thumbnail summary, so that my Titans of Industry followers will not have to waste their valuable time wading through the verbiage that will ultimately end me up at the same place.

Now, for those whose time is less valuable…

Despite having spent the majority of my career writing multi-camera comedies, I invariably felt frustrated by the format’s limitations:

The modular “set-up-joke” construction of the scripts.

The story turns that were never just different from what you expect, but the considerably less believable “one-eighty” opposite.

The inability to leave the soundstage, and the limitations concerning how many sets you could use.

And the constant recycling of a musty trunk load of sure-to-get-a-laugh sitcom characters.

Writing a multi-camera comedy script felt like writing a Kabuki play. (Not that I ever wrote a Kabuki play. I’m just analogizing generally.) Every move proceeded according to long-established rules, some of them bizarre, like the requirement of mentioning the character’s name when another character was speaking to them, which dates back to radio, where the audience couldn’t see who the character was speaking to, and they therefore had to be identified.

This was definitely a rule you didn’t need anymore. But they still kept doing it. Why? It was never clearly explained.

The audience inevitably tired of the multi-camera format’s predictability. This led to the emergence of the differently formatted single-camera comedies.

Such as The Office.

For me, the appeal of shows like The Office is their liberation from multi-camera mandatoriosity. See that? Just thinking about them liberated me to invent a new word.

From a writer’s standpoint, The Office is exhilaratingly “old rules”-free. The “set-up-joke” structure has been entirely abandoned. The characters just speak in, though I’m sure it’s been carefully worked out, natural, conversational rhythms.

The stories take us to as many locations as are needed, including, when required, outdoor locations.

The actors look like ordinary people – people of various races, sizes and degrees of attractiveness. Check out the sitcoms of the past. Everybody’s attractive. And likable. The networks at the time insisted on both.

Rather than a parade of stock sitcom characters – “The Dumb One”, “The Bombshell”, “The Wise-Cracking Sidekick”, “The Decent Guy Who Never Gets The Girl” “The Curmudgeon With The Heart Of Gold” – The Office’s characters personify the broken cookies of humanity, in their myriad variations. They are truly a mess. Like you and me. Okay, I shouldn’t speak for you. A mess like me.

I also like The Office’s opening theme music – upbeat and kind of chirpily cheerful. The problem for me is, when the opening theme music is over, virtually nothing “chirpily cheerful” ever happens on the show again.

It’s just all sad to me. Scranton looks sad. Selling paper in a downturning economy feels sad. Being aware that your life is dripping away before you eyes seems very sad. Look at the characters’ faces; they look like they just came from a funeral. When they don’t look furious, terminally bored, frustrated or defeated.

Front and center in the episodes I sampled the past few nights were a neverending series of “Michael Scott” humiliations, which ran the gamut from Michael’s failure to get a paper airplane to fly forward to a brutally rejected public proposal of marriage.

It’s appropriate that Michael is the main character in the series. Check out his eyes. The guy is leading the pack in pain.

Though I like and admire The Office – and I salivate at the writing range they’re permitted – the hammering message of futility and despair makes me not at all interested in watching the show on a regular basis.

As an upbeat finale, I will pass along one moment I saw on The Office, which I found unqualifiedly hilarious. Michael and Dwight were driving a rental car to an out-of-town business appointment, using the car’s GPS apparatus for directions. Dwight is certain they are lost. But Michael insists on putting his faith in the GPS.

At which point, with utter confidence, Michael drives his rental car directly into a lake.

That one really made me laugh.

"An Example of a Multi-Camera Episode That Moved"

A response to the claim that multi-camera comedy episodes were slowly paced.

This one wasn’t.

It was an episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show entitled “Ted’s Change of Heart.” It won the Humanitas Prize and was nominated for an Emmy.

Brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag, brag.

Synopsis: Ted Baxter, the obnoxiously self-absorbed anchorman suffers a heart attack, and returns to work, obnoxiously self-absorbed in an entirely different way.

As with almost all of the multi-camera episodes I wrote – “multi-camera” meaning a process in which scenes are shot with three, and later, four cameras running at the same time, making it possible for the episode to be filmed in front of a live studio audience –“Ted’s Change of Heart’s” structure broke down into six relatively equal-lengthed scenes.

Scene One: The Studio.

Ted Baxter is reporting the news, when he suffers a heart attack on the air.

Right off the top, the episode opens with a wallop. A series (in its seventh a final season), whose stock in trade centered on the lead character’s personal embarrassments and unfortunate dating experiences was taking on a serious problem.

That’s why I suggested the idea to the show runners. I was tired of episodes I ungenerously, though not incorrectly, bunched together as, “Mary Breaks a Nail.”

“Let’s give somebody a heart attack,” I enthusiastically proposed.

And the show runners, thankfully, agreed.

Was I worried about making a heart attack show funny? I was not. I was certain of the story’s sturdiness – that’s what matters most – a story you can your hat on. And when it was appropriate, I was confident that the “funny” would be there.

We move on to

Scene Two: A Hospital Room.

Ted’s co-workers (and the audience) are informed that Ted’s heart attack was a very mild one. All sitcom heart attacks are mild, so they don’t scare the audience.

Despite this good news, Ted continues to see the glass as half empty. When his doctor assures him that he knows people in Ted’s condition who have lived to be a hundred, Ted grumpily snaps back,

“Yeah? And then what?”

The episode’s tension is sustained by the fact that, though the prognosis is good, a heart attack is serious business, and there is no certainty about what happens next. It is noteworthy that the “Ted’s Change of Heart” episode did not include a secondary “B” story. The “A” story was deemed to be strong enough not to need one.

We continue to

Scene Three: The Newsroom

It’s Ted’s first day back at work. His co-workers are uneasy. Mary feels an urgency to get Ted’s “fill-in” anchor out the door before he arrives, explaining, though no explanation is needed,

“You know how he is.”

But when Ted comes in, after giving all his co-workers big bear hugs, he spots his “fill- in”, goes over…and he gives him a big bear hug too. He then goes on to propose that the “fill-in” remain on the show. They do the news together, as co-anchormen.

Ted’s quiet but observant wife, Georgette, “buttons” this turn of events by understatingly announcing,

“Ted’s changed.”

This is the pivotal comedic turn in the episode. As a result of a brush with death, a congenitally self-absorbed idiot has been transformed into an effusive appreciator of life.

We are now faced with a character who’s behaving differently than we have ever seen him behave before. The suspense is thus heightened. With our expectations crossed up, we are excited to see where this is going to lead.

A story can’t feel slow when you’re genuinely curious about what’s going to happen next.

Scene Four – Mary’s Apartment

Invited to dinner, Ted continues to demonstrate his “change”, insisting that Mary stop eating and take a moment to appreciate the miracle that is salt.

“Tiny, little grains. So white. So pure. And every single one of them….salty.”

You can tell that Georgette has had enough of this.

“Georgette…?”

“You showed me salt yesterday, Ted.”

The problem escalates in

Scene Five: The Newsroom

Where Ted, impeding their preparations to cover a liquor store hold-up, insists that everyone interrupt their frantic racing around, sit down at their desks…and breathe.

Ted’s behavior has now become disruptive. Somebody has to tell him to knock it off. The assignment inevitably falls to Ted’s no-nonsense, unsentimental boss, Lou Grant.

The problem is,

Scene Six: The Newsroom, the following day

Lou can’t pull the trigger. His explanation? After hours of serious soul-searching, he realizes that…

Ted’s right.

“What’s wrong with being a little more appreciative about things?”

Rather than insisting that Ted change, they determine, instead, to be more like him. After opening up and expressing their appreciation for each other (It’s the third last episode of the series; it’s time), they proceed to take a break in their work to go to a window, and enjoy the splendor of a beautiful, Minneapolis sunset.

When Ted arrives, and they excitedly invite him to join them, Ted yawningly dismisses their invitation, explaining,

“You’ve seen three sunsets, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

It appears that, over time, Ted’s appreciation of life has worn off. Lou remembers the same thing happening while serving in World War II:

“During combat, I never held life more dearly. But the feeling went away a little after the Germans surrendered. I never forgave them for that.”

In the final beat of the story, Ted’s co-workers decide that, despite its inevitable disappearance, they will enjoy the feeling to the fullest while it’s still there.

The last shot in the episode shows Mary, Lou and Murray, huddled together at the window, appreciating the sunset.

After two surprises earlier in the episode – Ted’s unexpected heart attack on the air, and his startling “change of heart” as a result of it – there are three more in this final scene. One, instead of requiring Ted to be more like them, they decide to be more like Ted. Two, Ted’s feelings of genuine appreciation eventually went away. And three, his co-workers determine to hold onto that feeling as long as they can.

With funny joke writing and a series of believable reversals, you can keep the story moving along briskly, and bouncing with energy.

Even if it’s filmed with multiple cameras.

"Blog Notice"

Notice to my readers:

I am unavailable to write my post today, as I am sitting in synagogue, praying for my life.

I will see you tomorrow.

Hopefully.

"A Difference of Opinion"

I was going to open with a quote from Ken Levine’s spectacular and very TV savvy blog, bykenlevine.com, and then disagree with it. But when I went back to look for it, I couldn’t find it anymore.

I have made this mistake before. I found my pair of “dream shoes” but I didn’t buy them. But I knew where they were. Unfortunately, when I went back to get them, I couldn’t find the store anymore, and now those shoes are gone forever. It’s the same thing that happened to Ken’s quote. I was sure I knew what post it was in, but now it’s disappeared. Either that, or it’s deliberately hiding, because it doesn’t want to be used for evil purposes.

(Clarification: I’m not a shoe freak. I have, maybe, four or five pair, the last of which I bought nearly three years ago in Rome, where they really make shoes I like. There was another pair I discovered in this shoe store window; butter soft black loafers, but when I went back later to get them, I couldn’t find….the…I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it. It’s just too painful.)

You’d think I’d learn my lesson, but I don’t.

Anyway, I have no choice now but to revert to “Plan B”, which is to paraphrase what Ken wrote in his post as accurately as I can remember. And then disagree with it. I’m a little uncomfortable about this. I prefer to use the exact words. I hope I misquote him correctly.

Meaning, I hope I retain the gist. It was a post, which he offers regularly, where Ken responds to readers’ questions. I don’t recall exactly what Ken was asked, but it led to an answer comparing single-camera comedies (e.g., 30 Rock, The Office, Modern Family) with multi-camera comedies (e.g. The Big Bang Theory, Two And A Half Men, Best of the West) on the issue of shows feeling slow and shows feeling fast. In other words, the comparative pace of the two formats.

Ken opined that the single-camera shows moved at a faster pace than the multi-camera ones. He believed that the multi-camera shows felt slower, because they took time to focus more fully on the characters. I think that was his point.

And I, respectfully, disagree.

When I watch The Office, or Community, or 30 Rock, or Modern Family, I find myself invariably glancing at the clock, amazed at how much time there is still left in the show. To me, these shows are excruciatingly slow.

On the other hand, a well-crafted multi-camera show, skillfully blending story and jokes, seemed to be over before I knew it. I’m speaking of the old multi-camera series, grounded in story and character, not today’s versions, which eschew story and rely almost entirely on jokes.

One “multi-camera”, a real old one, The Jack Benny Program, I dubbed, as a young viewer, the fastest show on television. I was just getting into it, and they were already saying good night.

To me, the culprit is the contrasting style in which the stories are being told, both in structural and joke-delivering terms.

Here’s what I mean by that. (Because that wasn’t even clear to me.)

Single-camera comedies, often involving larger casts than their multi-camera counterparts, generally tell three or more stories per episode. This requires setting up each story, servicing each story’s development, and then providing three different payoffs, as well as, in the case, of Modern Family, an overarching, umbrella payoff, where the three stories dovetail together.

First of all, that’s a lot of work, and I tip my hat to the writers. But second, it’s also a lot of work for the audience. You have to keep in your head who’s keeping a secret from who, and who forgot to do what and doesn’t want who to find out, and who has a life-long wish, and who found out about it and made it come true, but it’s not exactly what they had in mind. My head is spinning just making this up.

Maybe, if you’re an ADD person, the jumping around from story to story feels energizing, and maybe that’s what Ken had in mind – the momentum of constant movement. But these shows, at least to me, are also weighed down by the inertia of “Who cares?”, generated by not enough time being devoted to any of the stories.

The multi-camera shows I wrote on told, at the most, two stories, one of them being a “B” story, indicating that it was less important than the “A” story. The “B” story was included to gave the audience a break from the “A” story, and sometimes to offset the “A” story’s intensity, by being intentionally frivolous. With, in effect, only one story to focus on, there was more time to develop its elements. And also more time to explore the characters. Though, in my experience, you didn’t.

(Reader Alert: I am going to be contradicting myself a lot here. Be aware of that. And be aware that I’m aware of that. I’m a conflicted person, and contradictions come with the territory. Plus, I have a complicated mind.)

On the multi-camera shows I worked on, you were always being encouraged to push the story forward. (Whenever I didn’t, it was edited out.) This meant not stopping to the illuminate characters, but to do it, if you did it at all, on the fly. We called “moments”, where the story stopped to examine the characters’ inner feelings, “moments”, because they were special exceptions to the “keep it moving” rule – a full-sprint race to the finish line. And even those moments were paid off with a joke.

The multi-camera format is constructed in modular hunks. And every hunk has to be paid off with a joke. An essential element in energizing the episodes were the really “big jokes”, (in contrast to the “eaten to death by minnows” jabs delivered in single-camera comedies.)

There’s never, let’s say rarely, a time where a single-camera comedy convulses you with a laugh that is so funny, it “stops the show.” Instead, you get pot shots and glancing blows. You even, in the “mockumentary”-formatted single-camera comedies (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family) get moments where the story literally stops dead in its tracks, while a character “opens up” directly to the camera.

The “big joke” moments gave multi-camera episodes an enormous lift, propelling their momentum forward. And here’s my first contradiction. I hated those “big jokes.” Explanation? I could almost never come up with them. Plus, these “super-jokes” rarely measured up to my scrupulous standard of “reality.” However, I totally understood their value. When the show ended, people rarely remembered the story. They may not have even remembe4red the jokes. What they did remember was laughing really hard.

My second contradiction – which may not be a contradiction at all but it looks like a contradiction – is that with three or more stories filling a half hour time period, you would think that a show would move faster than if you only told one story (with a “B” story for more broad “comic relief”), but, to me at least, it doesn’t. The single-camera shows seem endless.

Why? At least according to me? One, because of the multi-camera comedy’s “Big Jokes”, which lift up the episode and, as they say in Mary Poppins, and “send it soaring.”

And two, when you’re following a single, compelling story, the viewer becomes invested in that story, and, like when they’re reading an engrossing short story, they are committed to seeing it through.

On Friday, I will go into this more fully, by breaking down one of my favorite multi-camera episodes (that I wrote), so you can see what went into putting it together, and how the story’s constructed to hold the audience’s attention.

On the following Monday, I will talk about The Office, explaining why I like the show, and why I almost never watch it.

I told you I was full of contradictions.


You know, I like writing about writing. Sometimes, I just forget to do it.

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Happy Jewish New Years. Last year, this time, I was facing heart surgery. I'm here, so I guess I guess I got inscribed in the right book. Here's hoping I am again. Here's hoping we all are.

"What I Do"

I realize it’s pathetically “back door”, but I fantasize that if I write about what I do, somebody who sees what I do, and needs what I do, and likes the way I talk about what I do, who knows…they might want me to do it.

Let’s put aside writing a script. I’m not sure I have the energy or enough paper in my house to pull that off. Let’s focus specifically on what I do as a consultant.

What I do as a consultant is two things, and this would apply to movies as well as television. One, I study the story, looking for inconsistencies and ways to bolster the storytelling, and, if it’s a comedy, I make sure its comedic possibilities have been fully realized; and two, when needed, I create dialogue to crystallize the pivotal moments in the story or clarify a character’s personality, and, again, if it’s a comedy, I do it funny.

Of course, if you went by the foregoing paragraph, you wouldn’t hire me for anything. And you’d be right. What I said is barely coherent to me. And I know what I’m trying to say.

Let me, more helpfully, explain what I do with an example:

I was consulting on According To Jim. It was my last paying job. The show runners and I had the same agent, and he screamed at them until they hired me. As a consultant. One day a week.

This is my process. When I’d receive the script the weekend before my day of service, I would read it, read it again, then read it a third time, searching for ways to contribute, which meant searching for elements that, in the hectic schedule of producing a weekly series, the show runners had overlooked.

The objective is to look for what should be there but isn’t, though “look for” is not really accurate, because you’re not exactly looking, like a detective looking for clues. What you’re doing is “feeling” your way through the script, trying to sense, through instinct and experience, what your gut tells you might be missing.

“This moment is important, and it’s not fully realized; some clarifying dialogue, maybe just a single line, or a revealing gesture of look, will considerably enhance what follows.”

Something like that.

So I’m reading this According to Jim script. The story concerns the “Jim” character’s having taped a football game over his wedding video, and in retaliation, his wife has thrown “Jim’s” video camera away.

The problem was, we had never during this series seen “Jim’s wife” behave in such an irrational and vindictive manner before.

“Jim’s wife’s” behavior is thus jarringly out of character. Why is this a problem? Because in order for the story to work, you have to believe that, in her anger at “Jim’s” thoughtlessness, she had actually thrown away his video camera. The problem was, nothing in “Jim’s wife’s” previous behavior indicated that this was something she would ever do.

My suggestion was this: Have “Jim’s wife’s sister”, who’s in the scene when “Jim’s wife” reveals she threw away “Jim’s” video camera, relate a story from their childhood in which, in a similar situation, “Jim’s wife” had behaved in precisely the same way. Then, to “button” the moment, have “Jim’s wife” assert, with a slightly maniacal gleam in her eye,

“That’s what I do.”

You probably don't need clarification for why this was a helpful suggestion, but I’ll put it in anyway. So I can brag. The According To Jim story had a weakness. It required the audience to believe that a character would behave in a manner they had never seen her behave before. If they didn’t believe that, there was no story.

“I threw away your video camera.”

“I know you. You didn’t.”

“You’re right. I didn’t.”

That’s not a story. Well, it is, but it’s a bad one.

Inserting the childhood “backstory” related by “Jim’s wife’s sister” provided the current story with a corroborating credibility. And the payoff, the semi-maniacal, “That’s what I do”, makes it funny.

My suggestion was accepted, and included in the script. When I showed up for work the following week, I was informed that, on show night, the suggested line had gotten one of the biggest laughs of the evening.

So that’s an example.

That’s what I do.