"Two & A Half Men" and the State of Sitcoms - Herbie J Pilato

In talking with a friend about the state of TV sitcoms he said something brilliant quotSitcoms are not variety show skitsquotOr as Buster Keaton once relayed to Lucille Ball quotYou have to play comedy dead straight You have to believe that your 39nose is on fire39quot which was a reference to the classic I Love Lucy episode titled LA At Last in which Ball39s Lucy Ricardo accidentally set her snout a flameIn other words for a sitcom to be funny it has to be based in realityWith regard to the contemporary situation comedy there39s not an ounce of reality in any of them with the few exceptions maybe possibly being ABC39s doublethreat on Wednesday nights The Middle and Emmy champ Modern FamilyYet even those shows have their comedic flawsDoes EVERY character on EVERY sitcom have to be snarky cartoonish or say things that nobody would say in real life every five seconds just to get a laughUltimately I blame Gilmore Girls which aired a few years back on the WB In my book these Girls ignited the manic unrealistic dialogue that is infesting today39s sitcoms All that chipperdense chatter then let loose by the likes onscreen mother and daughter team Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel was just plain exhaustingNotably Bridesmaid actress Melissa McCarthy was a featured supporting regular on Girls and she partook in the manic play as well Today she39s the newlycrowned Emmywinning star of her own hit sitcom Mike and Molly airing on CBS Monday nights and produced by Chuck Lorre amp8211 all of which brings us to a more recent example of such comedic assaultNo one talks to each other like the characters did during the most anticipated premiere of the new seasonMonday night39s telecast of one of Lorre39s other sitcom hits the veteran Two and A Half Men which had Ashton Kutcher replacing Charlie Sheen on the unstoppable series that is now in its ninth yearAs was explained in what essentially became a quotpilotquot episode for a new edition of the show Sheen39s character Charlie Harper has died Kutcher39s Walden Schmidt described in an early press release as quotan internet billionaire with a broken heartquot becomes the second quotmanquot of the household joining Charlie39s brother Alan Harper played by Jon Cryer and nephew Jake Harper son to Alan played by Angus T JonesThat39s all fine and good and by the time this blog is posted the legal entanglements surrounding Sheen39s departure from the show may have been happily resolved allegedly to the tune of millionsSo Sheen39s happy Show proprietors Warner Bros which also gave us Gilmore Girls by the way and CBS are happy Kutcher is happy The entire cast and crew of Two are happy Producer Chuck Lorre is happy And clearly the audience is happy as an astounding 28 million viewers tuned in for Monday39s debut episodeYet with regard to that premiere which opened with Harper39s bizarre funeral I39m still kind of scratching my head As it was relayed many of his exgirlfriends including Courtney Jenny McCarthy showed up at the service toamp8230uhmamp8230pay their respects In doing so they spewed some of the most meanspirited vulgar verbal attacks ever heard on and possibly off the airI realize the behindthescenes controversy surrounding the reworking of the show became larger than life I also realize it would be hard not to address the issues at hand at least in some way edgy or otherwiseBut THAT edgy and THAT quototherwisequotForget that in general many reallife people would never show up at the same time and say such horrible things about someone who was deceased no matter how evil that person may or may not have been Or that a mother no matter how distant from or cold toward her son she was as with the relationship between Holland Taylor39s Evelyn Harper and Charlie she would never stand up at her offspring39s funeral in tears and promote her businessForget all thatThe real issue is the dialogue wasn39t funny mostly because again it wasn39t based or presented in realityWhich brings us back to the whole quotnose on firequot thingIf it ever is written in some future Men script that says Walden Schmidt39s nose is set on fire hopefully he will display a sincere and demonstrative fear about such a development Within the context of sitcomland it would hopefully be a funny scene as it was on I Love Lucy when her schnozblazing actually had the potential to be painfulUnfortunately if such a scene were ever composed for Men it39s more likely that Kutcher would either choose or be directed to say the line in some acerbic manner like quotOh yeah look man My nose is on firequot From there he may then just potentially go knock boots with some hot babe or somethingThe point is Sitcoms are not variety show skits just like my friend said They are not mere singular scenes They are an extended arc of scenes that are intended to tell a story with consistent and distinguishing character development along the way whether in the premise of one episode or over time throughout the seasonAlso too sitcoms should not be tailored more in production than in performance That is to say rapid camera movements and manic flashbacks to backup speedy present dialogue are all aspects of today39s TV sitcoms that are manufactured in postproduction as with shows like NBC39s 30 Rock or Fox39s new New Girl starring Zooey DeschanelConversely a few classic sitcoms are not without their flaws either In the latter years of Happy Days and Laverne ampamp Shirley the actors more times than not starting playing to the studio audience instead of against one anotherToday39s sitcom actors in general not all but in general no longer tape in front of a live audience and mostly now play to only the camerasHow about if sitcom actors in singlecamera shows or even those taped before a live audience actually just stay in character and play to and relate with the other actors portraying the other characters in their given showsHow about the writers creating words and scenarios based on reality settings that develop and have to do with the actual characters that they have createdHow about just making sitcoms based on reallife situations and allow the comedy to come from those situationsLike they did on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or The Dick Van Dyke ShowThat isn39t to say that many of the episodes of either Moore or Van Dyke were not sometimes silly or sometimes not based totally in reality But how the characters RESPONDED to those situations were always real and believable Each of the characters like Rose Marie39s Sally Rogers on Van Dyke or Ed Asner39s Lou Grant on Moore had their own definitions One never sounded like the other None of the characters chirped out words that any other character would say Each character39s words were their ownEven as when Mary Tyler Moore played Laura Petrie on Van Dyke and later Mary Richards on her Moore show She played two different characters in two different ways and neither sounded like any other character that she may have or may not have been playing against in either series Mary Richards never sounded like Valerie Harper39s Rhoda who could easily be defined as snarky indeed or Betty White39s Sue Ann Nivens who was snippy and horny Laura Petrie never sounded like Marie39s Sally Rogers or Laura39s needy next door neighbor Millie Helper played by Ann Morgan GuilbertIn today39s sitcom world the dialogue between characters is interchangeable It39s all the same Again snarky snippy and meanspiritedAnd the biggest sin of allNone of it is based in or on truth or is really that funnyThat saidamp8230I have to goMy nose is on fireAnd it HURTSHerbie J Pilato is a WriterProducer who has worked for Syfy AampampE TLC Bravo The Discovery Channel Universal Warner Bros and Sony Herbie J is the author of a number of acclaimed TV tiein books The Bionic Book Life Story The Book of Life Goes On The Bewitched Book Bewitched Forever The Kung Fu Book of Caine The Kung Fu Book of Wisdom and NBC ampamp ME My Life As A Page In A Book In 2010 Herbie J founded The Classic TV Preservation Society a nonprofit organization dedicated to closing the gap between positive TV shows and education and presently serves as Creative Director for Erie Street Entertainment a TV production company that is geared toward scififantasy andamp160familyoriented materialamp160 For more information please log on to wwwClassicTVPSblogspotcom or wwwErieStreetEntertainmentblogspotcom or contact Herbie J directly via hjpilatoyahoocomRead all Herbie J39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Herbie J39s Classic TV CornerCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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