"Talking To Griffin, But You Can All Listen In"

I got a comment recently from Griffin.  The name is unfamiliar to me amongst my commenters, so if you’re new, welcome, Griffin, nice to hear from you.  And also – because with me after a compliment there is the inevitable “pull-back” – where have you been?

Consider this a follow-up to a post published on 3/9 entitled, “The Word That Effectively Ended My Career”, wherein I thought I was writing about lacking “edge” but I discovered in the course of writing the post that my career may actually have been curtailed due to – as hard as it is to believe – excessive optimism.  I was generically not dark enough.  Or, contrarily, I was too dark but unwilling to go there for my creative inspiration.

Asking a writer who lacks “edge” to define “edge” is like asking a blind man to describe the Acropolis.  Or something.  I am not exactly certain what “edge” looks like.  I just knew – and more importantly, my potential employers knew – that I didn’t have any.  

Also, Griffin, when you survey – as you do in your comment – the network television schedule looking for “edge”, being that network television is a commercially fueled enterprise where they are reluctant to offend anyone, you will at best find only “edge-lite.”  You want “edge” – basic cable.  You want more “edge” – Premium cable.  (You want “gross-out” – Howard Stern.)

Network “edge”, such as it is, is primarily located in the sexual arena – “Warning:  Adult language and situations.”  Virtually nothing on network TV reflects political, religious, gender, racial, nationalist or cultural “edge” – all are identity protected.  “Adult language and situations” unquestionably still offends some viewers, but a lot less of them than if you went after a religion or or did (even pretend) injury to an animal.

In England, it’s different.  Monty Python attacked everyone.  Nor did it spare the non-human.  Some beast was always flying through the air, or getting detonated.  In America, we are scrupulously careful around the sensibilities of the viewership.  Here’s an example of a kerfuffle I was involved in.  Tell me what you think about it.

I came up with this joke once for now Senator Al Franken’s short-lived sitcom Lateline.  Al’s character, “Al Freundlich” was talking excitedly about his wife’s spearheading an upcoming fundraiser:

“It’s for a new ‘Burn Unit’ at the Pediatric Jewish Hospital.  It’s for kids.  And you don’t have to be Jewish.  Just burnt.”

That was, maybe, my best “edge” joke ever, and NBC refused to allow us to use it because it offended…actually, I’m not sure who it offended.

Concerning sexual “edge”, to some degree because they are trying to attract a younger audience, the networks are gradually moving the “acceptability line.”  In other arenas – you will have to look elsewhere for the pushing of the comedic envelope.  By which I mean, not the networks.  And by the way, the networks’ efforts at sexual “edge”? – They are primarily for twelve year-olds. 

Griffin goes on in his comment to ask,

“What would you do to make one of your shows edgy?  I enjoyed Major Dad, for the most part, so how could it have become edgy and remain a family comedy?”

I believe I already answered the first question.  My natural sensibilities did not run in that direction – my point being, you can’t write it if you can’t imagine it.  As I had mentioned in the earlier post, I watched a colleague who was not inherently “edgy” try to force-feed “edginess” into his latest sitcom project, and it was excruciatingly embarrassing. 

You gotta stick to your “thing”, even if it carries you into retirement.  Not because of integrity – or not just because of integrity – but because “faking it” does not work; you will inevitably be exposed as an imposter.  And also get shown up by writers for whom “edginess” is their natural patois. 

And by the way, like the gunfighters?  Today’s “Emperors of ‘Edge’” should not get too comfortable because there is always somebody out there who’s younger… I mean, “edgier”… I mean, “edgier” because they’re younger, being less inhibited, and more generically “ahead of the curve.”    

Second question:  Or at least its implication.

Can a “family show” be edgy?

The short answer:  No. 

(Unless it is an animated show, or a show like Married With Children, which was basically a cartoon show with actual actors.  Animated “edginess” appears to be more acceptable – at least at Fox (The Simpsons, Family Guy), which was a latecomer to the network sweepstakes and was scrambling for an identity.  The other thing is, you will never have an animated sitcom star barging into the show runner’s office complaining, “My animated bar buddies think I’m an idiot.  Could you cut back on the ‘edginess’?”, so there is no trouble from the “talent” either.)

Why can’t family shows be “edgy”?  Because, the way Americans revere parenting – which they voluntarily turned into a verb – and the way they protect their children from danger – physical, psychological and entirely imaginary – where would that potential “edge” possibly derive from?

I recall a recent short-lived series entitled Up All Night, starring Christina Applegate and Will Arnett produced by the company owned by Lorne “I Built My Reputation On ‘Edgy’” Michaels that could not find anything acceptable in a family show context to be “edgy” about.  I mean, you would never hear – even in dark and frustrated jest and in no way intended to be taken literally – “If that baby does not stop crying, I am going to put a pillow over its face!”

Although what parent… up all night, and exhausted beyond belief… has not experienced the flickering image…?

That would have been “edgy”, but you cannot say that.  I didn’t feel great using it as an example. 

Conceptually, an American family show can be nothing except “soft.”  Why so?  Because Americans are “soft on the family.”  I recall watching the Modern Family pilot, wondering whether the patriarch (the lead actor from Married With Children) would remain antagonistic to the gay couple.  By the final fadeout, the character had melted like a Hershey bar in the Kalahari Desert.

In family shows, the “money” is – and always has been – on minor difficulties that work out in the end.  We may not always get along, but we love our families and would not imagine tinkering with their brakes.

You know, I may have more “edginess” in me than I thought. 

Although it is possible it is the wrong kind.

Thanks, Griffin.

Drop by anytime.

"A Weighty Discovery"

One of the main reasons I visit this fitness that spa we go to in Mexico is to reboot my eating regimen.  (See how I used “reboot” there, like I actually know what I’m talking about?  I’m like the guy who hides his inability to speak French by speaking English with a French accent.  “Ah, yays, ze ‘reboot.’”)

Along with super-healthy food offerings, the fitness spa also enforces strict portion control, provides nutritional between-meal snacking (“zucchini smoothies”) and, as a personal, much appreciated bonus, it awards me with a “Frequent Visitor’s” upgrade to more sumptuous accommodations located further from the dining hall so I can burn extra calories hiking the considerably longer distance on my way to my meals.  The less luxurious rooms are, like, two minutes away!  Oh well.  They ought to visit more often.  

All this is enormously remedial.  Being home a lot, enjoying unfettered kitchen privileges, I must admit to numerous “snack intervals” in my regular routine.  I finish a draft of a blog post – I celebrate with a handful of crackers.  I take a break after my piano practice, I scarf down the leftovers from my lunchtime burrito.  Then I eat more crackers, because crackers are addictive; you cannot just eat twenty of them. And when I run out of crackers, I pour dry breakfast cereal into my hand and I…

Do you see how that goes?

At the fitness spa, Spartanizing their food regimen even further, for me, it is “three meals and out.”  That’s what I’m there for.  No bread, no snacks whatsoever, no extra portions – and I am soon back on my dietary track. 

It is the fitness spa’s discipline that makes that all possible.

Or so I believed.  (Students of writing, label this “the turn.”)

I have been back for about three-and-a-half weeks.  And with a minimum of exceptions, I have hewn assiduously to the fitness spa routine – regulated portion-size, “three meals and out.”

And then…

It began with – surrendering thirty-two years of resistance – our desire to install air conditioning in our upstairs bedroom, which in the past had heated up on those rare few days when the stultifying Santa Ana winds blew in off the desert.  Recently, however, the climatological conditions seem to have noticeably altered.  Now, though we are four blocks from the ocean and its cooling offshore breezes, the occasions when our bedroom becomes chokingly oppressive have gotten continually longer.  As a result…

We ordered air conditioning.   

The AC unit and ancillary tubing are installed.  The bedroom wall cries when they cut a substantial hole in it.  (Though that could have been me.)  The next day, the electrical guy arrives to hook up the machinery.

In the process, the electrician blows out our bedroom cable TV box, along with my bedside CD clock radio that I only recently learned to program.

Hearing his report, I nod with “stuff happens” understanding.

Then I head to the kitchen for a handful of cashews.

I call up the cable company to order a replacement for the now decimated cable box.  I am told that the “Service Visit” is free, but there will be an additional charge for the replacement cable box.  I say “Fine” and I finalize the appointment.

I then head down to the kitchen and I eat a muffin.  (I am purportedly “gluten free.”  The muffin is not.  Who cares?  It has vanished in four bites.)

Next, our building contractor/handy man shows up.

“Did you notice your garage door isn’t properly aligned?”

Two weeks ago, while my car was being serviced, I had hit our garage door with the “loaner car.”  I had immediately gotten the door repaired, but was too embarrassed to double-check on the work.

I call the garage door repair company, making an appointment for a “re-do.”

I return to the kitchen and eat an individual-sized pot pie. 

Cold.

Then the contractor tells me he has discovered some rotten wood in the outdoor siding.

I check it out, order it repaired, and race back to the kitchen for…

Anything!

That’s when I realize that my real problem, the one the fitness spa most importantly protects me from, is not my egregious eating habits…

It’s life.

For the week I stay there, the fitness spa totally insulates me from decision, difficulty, aggravation and strife.

And now…

I’m back.

Today, four repair people are arriving – the electrician, the garage door repairman, our building contractor and a guy from the cable company.

Excuse me.

(FOLLOWED BY FOOTSTEPS RACING DOWNSTAIRS TO THE KITCHEN.)

(REVERBERATING FROM THE DISTANCE)  “I wish I could live at the fitness spa!”

"What Matter Least When You Are Pitching A Series Idea To A Network (Though At The Time You Think It Matters The Most)"

I could begin this post two ways.  And, being lazy and indecisive, I think I will.

The first way to begin this post:

Once, (flying high on the ratings success of Major Dad which I had helped create), I had a meeting at CBS – Major Dad’s network and therefore appreciative of my efforts – where I pitched them four series ideas at the same time.  Not exactly at the same time – that would be noisy – but at the same meeting.

When I was finished, the president of CBS said he liked three of them. 

Side Note – one of my favorites:  After the president of CBS said he liked three of my series ideas, he proceeded with the traditional “Let us talk among ourselves and we’ll get back to you in a couple of days.”  To which I said to the president of CBS, “So you’ll call me?”  To which, he responded, gesturing to an underling, “She’ll call you.”  To which I spontaneously replied, “Oh yeah.  That way, everybody has a job.”  I get full of myself when they like three of my ideas.

What I gleaned from that arduous experience – I had to stop for a “water break” between the second and third idea – was that despite all the attention focused on the locales of series ideas, in the grand scheme of things, this highly scrutinized element of a series makes virtually no difference whatsoever.  (What was significantly more important was the track record of the writer.)

The second way to begin this post:  (Don’t be surprised if it ends up at the same place.):

My writer friends are always telling me about “civilians” coming up to them and saying, “The place where I work would make a hilarious setting for a situation comedy.”  (I rarely hear that directly because, overall, people are – correctly, I believe – so in awe of my reputation, they are afraid I would dismissively reply, “No, it wouldn’t.”  I would never actually do that, but, from an annoyance standpoint – I am better off with people believing that I would.  Uh-oh.  The cat is irretrievably out of the bag.)

The thing about people insisting that their workplace would make a hilarious setting for a situation comedy is that, with the exception of, say, a slaughterhouse where there are random entrails and body parts laying around and the employees’ aprons are spattered with blood…

They’re right.

You could probably create a successful situation comedy premised on their workplace.

The thing is, they are not right for the reason they believe they are – that their workplace is uniquely hilarious – but rather because

You can set a successful situation comedy anywhere. 

(Case In Point:  Hogan’s Heroes, a successful comedy situated in a Nazi prison camp.)

Wait!  I just thought of a third way of beginning this post.  Which I believe is a record:

Once, a veteran NBC executive named Paul Klein – who coined the phrase “least objectionable programming” to explain how the TV audience decides what to watch – they watch the programming that they object to the least – presented a seminar at the studio I was working at proclaiming that the most bulletproof subgenre of situation comedy – the one, Klein assured, guaranteed success – is the family situation comedy.

My professional response to that is that, in my view, every successful situation comedy is a family situation comedy.  And their becoming successful has nothing to do – once again – with where you locate them.  You can guarantee failure by locating them in a slaughterhouse, or something equally… “I do not want to go there.”  But, you know, you try to be so brilliant, coming up with a previously unexploited locale – forget about it.  Because it doesn’t matter.

In the end, wherever they’re working, though the participating characters are not blood relatives, they ultimately – sometimes rapidly – coalesce into some version of a family.  A dysfunctional family, perhaps, but how many actual families aren’t?

At that point, the show’s original construction – the “what” and the “who” and the “where” – like leaves in a Canadian autumn, it drops flutteringly by the wayside.

Forget Modern Family, because it is a family situation comedy, so “Duh!”  Also The Middle and Mom, because…okay, you get it.

Think instead of two other comedy successes: The Big Bang Theory and the recently ended Parks and Recreation.

The Big Bang Theory:  A family of four nerdy brothers, representing various gradations of nerdiness.  But they’re brothers!  You can detect the caring and commonality.  And the pettiness, but that’s brothers. 

It is, in my view, that non-sanguinary fraternality that holds The Big Bang Theory together and draws us to be concerned about them in the face of a bombardment of funny but emotionally unpenetrating punchlines.

You can detect the same “family spirit” in Parks and Recreation.  No parents as weekly regulars, the show predominates with a panoply of siblings – a plucky one, an intelligent one, a goofy one, a rebellious one, an entrepreneurial one, a emotionally manipulative one, plus, I don’t know, a cranky older brother or a contrarian uncle – your choice.   

Though they are different and invariably in conflict – it’s a family.  You could tell from the hugging and the commiserating in the final episode.  You may call this a “surrogate family” but why bother?  The participants’ actual families are of peripheral consequence.

It is not about “The Office” – whatever office that might be.  (I mean, what – they sold paper?)  If it feels like a family – that’s what grabs ‘em, and keeps ‘em comin’ back for more. 

And by the way, nothing guarantees success.  I did a series called Family Man­ – it had the word “family” right in it – and it lasted seven episodes.

Take that, Paul Klein!