The first few paragraphs of this are personal ramblings. If you want to get to the meat of my valueless essay, just skip ahead.
It's a 22-minute sitcom that centers around a group of misfits who use friendship and love as a means to overcome their day-to-day struggles - groundbreaking, I know.
I don't have high hopes for the pilot. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm submitting it to Slamdance and the Austin Film Fest. I know in my head that I probably won't be any kind of finalist, but in my heart I'm still the same 16 year old who believes that he can have everything if he just puts himself out there.
(Getting turned down for 3+ jobs in the past four months have somehow not subdued those feelings).
Writing the pilot itself was really easy. I was helping my girlfriend prepare for work one evening when I made a joke. It wasn't just any joke, it was one of those perfect jokes that comes out of nowhere and contains the perfect blend of cleverness, conciseness and immaturity. It was a mind-clearing moment.
I made that joke and then I just couldn't stop. I whipped out my screenwriting shareware and set out to create a universe for those jokes to live in. I wrote five pages the first night and spent hours in bed just typing out more jokes, character beats and plot points on my phone.
In a shocking display of follow through, I actually wrote more the next day. (Normally my creative ambitions shine bright like a diamond only to quickly opaque like some lesser gem).
Within a week, I'd spit out 23 pages.
With the submission deadlines for the competitions weeks away, I figured I'd have plenty of time to polish the script and make it tighter and funnier.
The bullshitting begins here.
Unfortunately, my thunderstorm of creativity subsided and I was left bereft of creative ideas. Rather than sit in front of the computer and try to power through with great material, I did what every lazy creative does and sought out inspiration.
Two of my favorite shows that are on right now are Fox's The Mindy Project and ABC's Happy Endings. They're both funny, they both have a little heart and I think that they both are a precursor for what's to come in the world of the sitcom.
Happy Endings is basically a 21st century version of Friends (a comparison the show lampshades) - a bunch of near thirty-somethings hanging out for unreasonable amounts of time and cracking jokes at each other's expense.
The show hits a lot of the same beats that my writing does, lots of pop culture reference, wordplay and the aforementioned lamp shading. It's also got everything I need in a show to make me feel like the enlightened modern American that I am. An interracial couple! A non-threatening gay guy! A vaguely sexual title with no connection to the content of the show! Foodtrucks!
It's also my favorite Wayans' vehicle since Major Payne.
(This trailer is spectacularly well edited. You know going in exactly what to expect. Also, I laughed out loud when the commander informed Payne that there was no one left to kill because he'd already killed them all - I've seen this movie 20+ times)
Add what is possibly the cheeriest opening score for any sitcom on right now and you've got one Happy Kyle. (Alternate title if the show's protagonist had the same name that I do).
The Mindy Project is similarly delightful. It follows a rom-com obsessed OBGYN's quest to find love in The Big Apple (New York City, New York).
The Mindy Project may be the most tightly written sitcom on TV right now. Every episode is perfectly paced and each character gets enough screen time to remind you that they're all great. Every time I watch an episode, I email my friend Jordan and tell him to watch it. He lives in Korea where I'm certain there isn't huge demand for sitcoms about cute Indian doctors, but I demand it of him nonetheless.
As much as I love genre breaking shows like Arrested Development and Community, I have a ton of respect for the people behind TMP (Mindy Kaling) and Happy Endings (David Caspe).
I think it almost takes more skill to work within an established genre and still produce a smart, funny show.
I was listening to a podcast recently with Chuck Klosterman and Alex Pappademas where Chuck mentioned that there has been a reaction against the Auteur Theory. People are losing trust in the idea of the godlike creator.
You can see this in the direction that programming as a whole is headed. As Mad Men and Breaking Bad are coming to a close, there haven't been many successful recent programs put out that exist as conduits for the voice of the creator.
(I'd even argue that Breaking Bad isn't as auteurish as say The Sopranos or Mad Men. Alan Sepinwall's book goes into the BB creative process in depth, and it seems that Gilligan isn't as heavily involved as some other prestigious showrunners).
Even previous giants of the industry (Davids Simon and Milch) haven't found much success with recent projects. (Treme and Luck, if you're wondering).
AMC, who made a name on two of the best shows of the past decade, is floundering to come up with anything of value in the original programming department. Rubicon and The Killing failed, Hell on Wheels was nothing special and The Walking Dead, while hugely successful, is pure garbage from a narrative standpoint.
(I just watched the Major Payne trailer again. Still great).
On the other side of the coin (comedy, as opposed to drama) the only network that dared take any risks, NBC, is a laughingstock. The Dan Harmon experiment clearly failed and even though Mike Schur is brilliant and Parks and Rec is spectacular, the show doesn't pull terribly great ratings. (Any show that airs an episode featuring 20+ references to Infinite Jest probably isn't going to take America by storm).
(Learning from P&R, I deleted a David Foster Wallace reference earlier in this entry so as not to alienate my audience).
The only network that is still chugging along by allowing its creative voices to have total control is FX. FX was one of the first networks to start producing really good, creative television, both comedy and drama (The Shield/It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia), and they've continued that legacy with Archer, Justified and The League.
Even then, FX is still potentially screwing the pooch by splitting up the network and diluting their brand.
HBO is a bit of an outlier in all of this, because they're not beholden to advertisers and can basically do whatever they want.
However, I feel that Girls is both the apex and the nadir of the auteur movement in television. It's the best and worst of what that type of vision engenders. It's a sign of the end of an era.
I think we're about to hit a new phase in the Television Renaissance. Auteur productions are no longer tenable for networks and studios. The good thing is that the new crop of TV writers have been so influenced by the genre breaking shows that the quality of more traditional work is leaps and bounds better than Friends, Two and a Half Men, etc.
(In addition to being more in tune with the times, Happy Endings differs from Friends in that it is actually funny - as opposed to fun and familiar).
What we're going to find in the future are more traditional shows with amazingly talented writing staffs serving as incubators for new, better content.
You can already see this with The Mindy Project. Kaling spent years with Greg Daniels, Mike Schur and BJ Novak on The Office (which, while stale now, was at one point the best comedy on television. Y'all remember when it was hip to like The Office?) and is using that kind of emotional, intelligent writing in a more traditional sitcom format.
The preponderance of online content is helping as well - Mail Order Comedy, Human Giant, Derrick Comedy, etc., have all gone on to do excellent work for networks and on cable.
The future of television comedy is very bright. (Especially once my script gets fast-tracked!)
Drama is a different story.
I think, to make a drama of value, you need that strong, singular creative voice. You also need networks willing to take risks on these voices.
As it stands, there appears to be a dearth of both of those things.
The same thing that's working in comedy's favor (lots of talented people being influenced by older innovators) is actually working against drama.
It's easy to be funny in your early twenties. It's much harder to produce something with depth. The fundamental lack of life experience is a legitimate handicap.
It's doable to watch Community and say, "I'm going to be Dan Harmon!" and go out and write a subversive comedy. It's a lot more difficult to watch The Wire and say, "I'm going to be David Simon!" and go out and write one of the best pieces of American fiction ever created.
I think drama writing takes time and practice. You have to develop your chops.
Just look at the people who are best at it.
David Chase wrote for TV for twenty years before he created The Sopranos. Milch wrote for NYPD Blue. Simon was a reporter for decades. Matthew Weiner worked on The Sopranos and learned from Chase. Kurt Sutter worked on The Shield. Vince Gilligan worked on X-Files.
Drama is a much more slowly ripening fruit than comedy.
The other thing hindering drama is that it's difficult for a serialized, hour-long show to find an audience. As such, networks and studios don't want to invest in something that will probably fail. Instead, they gravitate toward easily digestible pablum. Hyper-violent, hyper-stylized and hyper-shallow spooky schlock seems to be particularly en vogue.
I don't know what started it. Probably the success of True Blood and Dexter (Dexter, while sometimes repetitive and featuring some of the worst acting from secondary characters that I've ever seen, is clever enough to escape my avenging bludgeon of criticism), but it seems that every network is coming out with a high-concept horror vehicle. The Following. American Horror Story. Hannibal. Even lowly A&E is getting in on the action with Bates Motel.
These things are cyclical, of course. A few years back, every network was trying to create their own Lost (a show that's a good example of what happens when showrunners with lots of freedom aren't meticulous and domineering enough). This too, shall pass.
In short, I don't have high hopes for drama in the coming years. Hopefully young writers are able to cut their teeth on the some of the solid content still being produced while the networks soak in their creative fart hot tub for a while. In five years or so, maybe drama will be as exciting and unpredictable as comedy is setting up to be.
(I'm particularly interested in what happens post-Mad Men. Most of the show's writers are women, and outside of aforementioned Girls, female showrunners are fairly rare. There should be an influx of previously unheard voices).
Anyway, I think a lot about TV. Keep an eye out for my pilot when it hits the trades. There's going to be a hell of a bidding war!
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