Amber Night

This pilot, produced in 2000 for Comedy Central, shows what happens when writers who know nothing about the subject matter decide to write about it anyway.  And yes I know I'm about 6 years late on this, but unfortunately we continue to see this kind of crap show up on television over and over and over. (Eureka anyone?)

It's 20 minutes long, but you really only have to see a couple minutes before you get the gist.

The difference between this show and, say, The Office, is that it's very clear that The Office writers have worked in an office at some time in their lives.  They've been there, done that, got the shot glass.  You watch the characters, and you immediately recognize people you've worked with or for.  They are real people, and they have real hopes, desires, dreams, and goals.  Michael Scott, for example, isn't just the stereotypical boss from hell.  Watch a few episodes and you find yourself occasionally empathizing with him.

If you are an aspiring writer, I'm going to let you in on what shouldn't be a secret, but apparantly is.  Keep in mind that I don't write professionally, so I might very well be full of shit.  But I don't think I am.  Here it is:

The humor in parody doesn't come from ridiculing your subject.  It comes from putting your subject in funny or extraordinary situations, pushing those situations to extremes, and then turning them loose.  And even on the occasion that you do ridicule your subject, it's almost never mean spirited.  We laugh at Michael Scott because he's so clueless, but at the same time we feel a twinge of sadness for him when, for example, he finds out that Jim has invited everyone to a house party except Michael.  Because we've all been there.  Some of us more than others.  Comedians have a saying that humor is pain plus time, and if you've ever laughed at a space shuttle joke then you know it to be true.

In Super Nerds, it's all about making fun of stereotypes.  We have the nerdy, reclusive, socially awkward comic book guy.  Oh, and then we have the other nerdy, reclusive, socially awkward but slightly cooler comic book guy.  Ah yes, and then we have the sexy geeky chick (played by the moi excellent Sarah Silverman, but not excellent in this role) who represents the epitome of all stereotypical comic book guy fantasies.  You know, sexy in kind of a less obvious way, not all big bewbies and flash.

There is nothing remotely interesting about these characters.  They are flat, lifeless archetypes.  If I were writing this show, I'd cut my wrists I might start with these archetypes, but I'd want more.  I'd want to know what motivates them, and why they are the way they are.  Looking back to The Office again, Jim is an archetypal slacker, but he's so much more.  He has dreams.  He wants more out of life.  By all rights he should be off to college, but 2 things hold him back.  His secret love for Pam, and his own insecurities.  And yet, even though we know Jim is an archetypal slacker, we didn't arrive at that conclusion by watching the writers ridicule him.  They took the archetype, and they wrote their story around it.

In Super Nerds, the writers took the archetype and pounded their story into it like one of those meat tenderizers.  Every line, every interaction is a ham-handed force-feeding of "hey these guys are nerds, aren't nerds funny?  Watch them try to have sex with the pretty comic book girl because that's what comic book guys do."

Sad really.  Hey Hollywood, give me a call.  There's plenty more where this came from. 

EDIT: I am such an ass for not properly crediting Critical Hits, where I originally found this video.  Mea culpa, Bartoneus.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 7:09 am and is filed under Television, Wordcraft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.