Widow’s Bay. Orange Is The New Black. The Bear. Are these all comedies? I think they are on a spectrum from “mostly,” through “sometimes,” to “almost never.” Some folks obviously disagree. What the heck then is a TV comedy these days, and what does it mean to be a comedy?

It’s worth mentioning that just because something is a drama, it doesn’t mean it can’t have levity. Life is often dramatic, often comedic. But do one to three moments in a film make it a comedy? Over the years, I’ve heard debates about whether or not, for instance, Ghostbusters* is a comedy. It has comedy performers, and was written by a comedy writer. Directed by a comedian. I would argue it is a comedy, and while it does have jokes, it isn’t a *joke* comedy. That is, unlike say Airplane!, every scene doesn’t have a joke. It has witty or silly banter. The action and any drama is light. The situations are ridiculous, even when there are serious stakes.

*(The 1984 version. I hear that the 2016 version is all about jokes and bits, I haven’t seen it. And the more recent ones? Even less comedy compared to the 1984 movie from my viewing.)

What about Die Hard, though? There is great debate about whether or not it’s a Christmas movie (it is), but is it a comedy? Bruce Willis makes silly quips. There are funny moments that were clearly intended to be comedic. Is it a comedy? A light hearted action movie? Is it more or less of a comedy than Ghostbusters?

 

 

 

For the record, on the spectrum of drama to comedy,

 

 

 

 

 

Airplane! is more of a comedy than Ghostbusters,

which is more of a comedy than Die Hard,

which is more of a comedy than The Rock,

which is more of a comedy than any James Bond film,

and they are all more of a comedy than Full Metal Jacket

or The Hurt Locker.

Why does it matter?

Maybe on some level it doesn’t. After all, a movie is a movie, a TV show is a TV show, you watch it or you don’t. The only time it really makes any difference is when you’re vying for awards, or marketing to an audience. Awards can be said to ultimately not matter, but they do to some. They can make a difference in getting future work. It’s worth remembering that at one point, there weren’t awards for comedies. Why, then, did they add them? Because good movies and TV shows that were comedic never got any accolades because they simply couldn’t compete with true dramas. A special section was made so that lighthearted fare might have a chance at some of the goodies that the dramas were getting. Same with musicals; although is it really fair that most of the time, comedy and musical get lumped together? That puts comedy in a similar situation, because who is going to pick a comedy over a really well done musical?

As for marketing to an audience, this is arguably more important. Today, word of mouth certainly does a lot of heavy lifting. But if you sell a show to the audience as a comedy and don’t deliver, you automatically fail. Arguably, this happened with The Orville, a love letter to Star Trek: The Next Generation and its siblings. Common reporting suggests that Seth MacFarlane could only get the show picked up if he promised comedy. The first season had some, but it was obvious it was tacked on. Subsequent seasons did a better job of that, but had less and less comedic moments. Arguably, any series that gets more than one season could be considered successful; heck, finishing even one whole season is an accomplishment. But The Orville might have done a lot better had there not been the confusing pitch at the beginning.

What is a comedy?

It seems like we need to define the elements of a comedy in order to talk about it. Usually, people need to know that a work is intended to be comedic. Not always, but usually. Here are the elements I see.

Jokes

By my definition, a joke is something written or said that makes you laugh. Could be a sign; could be a response by a character to a situation. The character can be aware they are making a joke, or unaware and just speaking off the cuff. WKRP in Cincinnati had plenty of jokes that were just dialog that made sense to the character, but were clearly intended to be funny.

All in the Family had both kinds of jokes, which was its genius. Most of the jokes the characters told were insults to other characters.

 

 

 

Moonlighting also had plenty of jokes, but most were told by the characters who knew they were making them. They were being witty, but the jokes were jokes in the world they inhabited. It’s kind of like the difference between music playing for the characters in a scene, and music that is part of the soundtrack. We hear both, but the characters don’t hear the soundtrack.

Bits

A fundamental aspect of a comedy are the bits. These are moments that set up a premise, then deliver on the “what happens next” of it. Think Lucy in I Love Lucy on her first day at the chocolate factory. The situation is set up: a conveyor belt with chocolate that needs to be packaged. Lucy and Ethel begin the work, and then the belt speeds up. We then marvel and laugh as she gets more ridiculous with how she solves the problem of too many chocolates going down the line. The setup is clear, the progression is clear, and while the audience helps us know it’s funny, even without sound, you know that this is silly and stupid and ridiculous, and even a child can see the comedy.

 

Wittiness

Characters who are witty have charm. They usually are aware of how they are talking, and are using their charm to disarm other characters. Moonlighting also does this, and a lot of what happens in Ghostbusters fits this category. You feel good; you’re happy as this dialog plays out, and maybe you even laugh out loud sometimes. But mostly, you just know you’re having fun even though there are no jokes or bits.

Juxtaposition, Satire, and Absurdity

Sometimes, comedy is a lot more intellectual. An otherwise dramatic story can become a comedy if it’s interspersed with scenes that are incongruous. Jumping between horrific violence and pastoral imagery can create a kind of comedy that undermines the dramatic aspects. With satire, you walk a line of portraying something most people would find impossible to believe, like the famous piece A Modest Proposal, which Johnathan Swift wrote as satire, suggesting that poor parents could sell their children as food to the rich to climb out of poverty. To most, this is biting (sic) satire where nobody would believe the author was serious. Only the humorless or the cannibal would think it were serious. However, it is also said that Machiavelli’s The Prince was satire, but many leaders missed the satire and took it as a manual instead. I might argue (but would welcome dissent) that the films of Yorgos Lanthimos are a form of absurdist humor. The absurdity and juxtaposition are so striking, it’s hard to take them seriously. It seems like there is also satire in the films, which is more pronounced in a film like Bugonia which deals with issues of conspiracy theory in modern life.

Sour Ball Humor

This is my own definition, but it encompasses shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm or I Think You Should Leave. It most often involves situations where the main characters do or say the worst possible things. It’s a matter of taste, of course, but these kinds of productions include some of the other kinds of humor mentioned above. The difference is that instead of wordplay or letting situations play out, characters actively do the least constructive thing in a situation that otherwise would pass along unnoticed because everyone would do the common thing.

One major feature of these kinds of comedies is awkwardness. The jokes usually center around this, and the ways in which people deal with it. One might argue that The Bear features this kind of humor because almost all of it is awkwardness. I don’t agree, because in the awkward comedies, there is the release of a punchline. The Bear almost never has this release.

Parody

Take a familiar property, then change some part of it, and the combination creates humor. Obviously, Weird Al Yankovic comes to mind. His song parodies are obviously comedy, whether they are your taste or not. SNL is also a good example. From movies to ads to politics, their sketches and videos feature a lot of parody along with jokes, wittiness, satire, absurdity, and more. It’s a matter of taste whether or not a viewer thinks the comedy is successful, but even when it fails, their sketches have the trappings and structure of comedy.

References

This kind of humor stands just above puns and dad jokes (which are another category that I’ll lump in here, without any analysis). The humor seems to come from the surprise we get when something comes up that could also be a reference. The character, host, or production uses a reference to tie two things together. It’s kind of like juxtaposition, but it aims at something specific, like an historical figure, song lyrics, a character’s costume or pose, or a progression of moments that seem to quote another property. The episode of The Venture Bros (or maybe it’s every episode of The Venture Bros?) where we have a gang that’s very similar to Scooby Doo, but seems to ask the question “What if these characters were really that way and did those things? What would that mean?” I suppose that’s closer to parody, but they are definitely related. At its height, reference humor makes a comment both about the reference, and the situation that is being shown, creating a new connection. Rick and Morty does this a lot, to greater or lesser success. You see, even the premise of Rick and Morty is a reference/parody, based on the relationship between Doc Brown and Marty McFly from Back to the Future. It plays on how weird it is for an older… hey! Are you falling asleep?! I’m sorry, I know that having someone explain Rick and Morty is akin to hearing about cryptocurrency or someone telling you the dream they had last night.

Again, apologies.

What about The Bear?

The Bear sparked the most recent serious questions about what should be considered a comedy, mostly by not being one, but also by being submitted for, and winning, comedy awards. Let’s be clear: The Bear is a genius show. People who work in restaurants relate how often the show accurately depicts their lives; some even seem to be getting PTSD watching it. If it were a comedy, it would likely be a sour ball comedy. Almost all of the things that happen are awkward, difficult to handle situations. The show is often painful to watch, not just because of the dramatic issues, but because of how the characters make the least constructive choices.

To be fair to The Bear, there are, in fact, some actual comedic moments. Moments that read like a comedy writers’ room wrote them, or the characters improvised things they thought were funny. The main one that comes to mind is the episode where they are catering and accidentally dose a children’s party. That is a classic form of situation comedy, and there are a couple of actual bits within the structure.

I think you can also make the argument that many of the characters are witty. The artistry of cursing, for example, is masterful, and it’s clear that characters are “busting each others’ balls” at various points in the story. However, these moments are not the bulk of the story. I would argue they are certainly not more than half of the series, and may not be even more than 1/4 of the series. To me, then it seems like for a show to be a comedy, more than half of it has to be intended as comedy.

I think that’s why I don’t consider Widow’s Bay a full comedy. Again, this is a good show. I watched it through, and thoroughly enjoyed it. My position is: it starts out as a comedy. The first episode is the most comedic of the series. As each episode proceeds, the amount of comedy reduces. By the halfway point, less than half of an episode is comedy, and in the last episode, there are maybe 2-3 comedic moments? As a result, less than half of the series is a comedy. Now, compared to The Bear, Widow’s Bay is definitely more of a comedy, and that fits with who created and wrote it. But compared to say the Larry David/Obamas collaboration Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness (whether you like the comedy or not), it’s not even close. Larry David’s show is clearly intended as comedy. Widow’s Bay, it’s debatable, at least part of the time. The Bear just isn’t.

I don’t want to suggest that you need a laugh track, or slapstick, or even bits to be a comedy. Hacks is a comedy in my mind, but you could argue that it’s half drama. It’s even possible that it feels more like a comedy because the main characters are in the comedy business. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has this effect. Maybe then 50% is what’s needed. But I would also suggest that at least every other scene in both series has something funny happening. That is not true of The Bear. You don’t need broad or obvious comedy to have a comedy show. But you do have to at least be funny. And being funny (or not funny) matters.

 

Epilogue

As I was proofing this, it occurred to me: for a drama to succeed, it has to be good. In other words, the story has to hold together, the acting has to make sense for the story and be a good performance, the other elements of visual and/or audio entertainment have to meet at least the minimum demands of the medium. Comedy doesn’t have to be good. It just has to be funny. You could say similar things about genre films like sci-fi and horror. Arguably, a lot of our favorite genre films aren’t good the way the best dramas are. But they fulfill other artistic requirements. I think this is why folks in comedy bristle when a drama tries to elbow in on comedy turf.

Imagine a movie that was all drama except that at one point, a character demonstrated a futuristic invention they made. Now imagine that film won a Saturn award because it was such a good drama, and it had one sci-fi scene. Can you see how that would cause an uproar? Like, what if Tucker won Best Sci-Fi Film at the Saturn Awards? This is the argument, boiled down.