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Okay, I just checked out “My Super Sweet 16,” the show about real teens and their ornate parent-funded coronations. My God! The waste of money! The waste of energies! Imagine if those kids put that kind of effort into their college applications, into their creative pursuits, into reading and learning! And the whole enterprise is counterproductive. They think they’re making their peers like them, but instead they’re clearly fostering resentment.

It’s one of those counterintuitive things. What you think makes you likable makes you unlikable. What you think makes you funny makes you unfunny. Which brings us looping around to an important principle relating to the nature of comedy. I was prompted to notice this principle, which I will unveil in a moment, by a question that came in the mail from Jerome in Chicago. He’s looking for techniques like the one I discussed on April 29, (about writing past the punchline,) techniques that work well for using humor in otherwise dramatic spec episodes. I hope you read the previous post, Jerome, about settling for the soft joke, it’s another good trick to creating humor without creating “jokiness.”

Well, Jerome’s note got me thinking. What is the ESSENTIAL difference between comedy-comedy and dramatic-comedy? And what I came up with startled me! It’s crazy, but here it is:

DRAMATIC CHARACTERS ARE INTENTIONALLY FUNNY. COMEDIC CHARACTERS ARE UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY.

Isn’t that interesting? And counterintuitive? I never noticed it before, but it’s really true. Did everyone else already notice this? The more comedic the character, the less they (successfully) crack (funny) jokes.

Michael on The Office, is a comedic character. He is not usually trying to be funny. And when he does try, he isn’t. Which is an unintended result, and thus… funny. House, on the other hand, is a dramatic character. When he is funny, it’s because he is making a dry observation about something, and he intends it to be funny. The more a character cracks intentional jokes, the less “jokey” a show feels. Wild!

Now, this isn’t a strict half-hour vs. hour distinction. M*A*S*H is one of the most dramatic comedies ever made. Full of intentional humor — Hawkeye cracks jokes constantly, and comes across as war-bruised as a result. While an hour like Boston Legal can be packed with sincere nutjobs — packed with them! As a result, BL ends up feeling, at times, more broadly comedic than the comedy.

Even within the same show, you can see the difference clearly. Some half-hour shows, like Taxi, Bob Newhart or Seinfeld, have a character at the center who is more serious, sane and grounded than the characters around them. They don’t tend to get themselves stuck in bathtubs as often as the whack-a-doodles surrounding them. So how are these characters made funny? By giving them joking comments about the hijinks around them. Jerry comments to George about how crazy Kramer is – that’s intentional humor, making Jerry a more serious character. For me, Phoebe on Friends was at her best when she would suddenly manifest an unexpected awareness of the world that would allow her to make a joke about someone else’s behavior before she would slip back into her own bubble. Joey, the other oblivious, broadly comedic character on that show, rarely made the same jump… UNTIL HE HAD HIS OWN SHOW. Then, suddenly, when required to have depth, to be more serious, he was making jokes like the great one from the pilot where he poked fun at his sister, pointing out that you don’t often hear “the argument *for* teen pregnancy.” With that line he became a different, more serious guy. (Show didn’t work, but in that moment, I had hope.)

Conversely, sometimes hour dramas have one comedic character, or a series of comedic subplots. Again, these are things that happen, funny circumstances unintended by the characters, or ludicrous sincere behavior by those characters, while the supposedly more serious parts of the show are the parts with characters making witty observations. Baltar is unintentionally funny. Adama, making a wry comment about Baltar, is intentionally funny. A combo that works together to bring the house down. (Have I mentioned I love this show?)

Have I over-explained it enough? Sorry. I’m actually just working this through in my head. So how can you use this surprising fact? Use it to modulate the tone of your spec.

Want a character to seem smart… even serious? Make his first line intentionally funny. When Parker was introduced in a Buffy episode, we had to make it instantly clear that she could consider this guy worthy of her. So the first thing he did was ask Buffy if she had any hobbies….

PARKER
…You know, like solving crosswords or spitting off the world’s tallest buildings.

He’s making a joke. So we accept him as intelligent, grounded, not ridiculous and jokey. A serious candidate for Buffy’s affection.

But a character like Principal Snyder says:

SNYDER
Call me Snyder. Just a last name. Like Barbarino.

It is a similarly ludicrous thing to say. But he is sincere, not joking. And therefore the line is jokier. Perfect for a thoroughly comedic character.

Want a really complex character? Mix the two. Jason Bateman’s character on Arrested Development had both kinds of jokes. He was simultaneously appalled by his own family, and just as appalling himself. He could function as a serious character, making aware asides in one scene, and then be the oblivious boob in another. Frasier was a similarly complex character who used both types of funny. Complex and wonderful. High degree of difficulty, that one.

So, to sum it up for Jerome. Give jokes to your dramatic characters, and sincerity to your comedic ones, and you won’t go far wrong tonally. That’s it!

Lunch: Green Corn Tamales at El Cholo on Wilshire with my parents. Sweet and terrific!

Even after I got work on sitcoms, and got too busy to pitch at Star Trek:TNG and its other incarnations, I used to go haunt the halls of the Hart building every time I happened to be on the Paramount lot, just to get that great I’m-almost-on-the-Enterprise feeling. Oh! I was so envious — still am, a bit. One of the offices had a name on it in those years: Lisa Klink. I never got to meet her, but there weren’t many girls on the spaceship in those days, and I remembered the name.

Well, guess what came in the mail? Yessir, that’s right, a note from Lisa Klink! She reads this humble blog. I’m absolutely tickled!

And she brought treats for the class. She submits for discussion another example of funny from the world of hour drama. This is her reconstruction, from memory, of an exchange on Bones:

BOOTH
We don’t believe in things like witch doctors and zombies.

BONES
Didn’t Jesus rise from the dead?

BOOTH
(appalled)
Jesus was not a zombie!

I love this! Although I have to say I disapprove of having two major characters whose names look so similar on the page. Doesn’t that look confusing to you?

Lisa points out that it’s the mixture of the silly and the sacred that gives it its comedic power. Absolutely. And it’s also a great example of using humor to expose character. You can tell a lot about these characters just from this exchange.

This is what we call a “soft joke,” as opposed to the “hard” jokes of sitcoms. A funny exchange without a bing-bang punchline. It’s also very restrained. Personally I would’ve been tempted to extend the exchange. Continuing from where we left off:

BONES
He rose from the dead and walked around. How isn’t that a zombie?

BOOTH
That’s sacrilegious! That’s horrible!

Booth gives Bones a swat.

BONES
Ow! Heal me, Zombie Jesus!

Yep. That’s what I would’ve written. And then I would’ve cut it back again. The shorter version has all the comedy value without getting too broad. It’s more disciplined, it’s more real and it takes up less space. Also, I was working very hard to justify the phrase “zombie jesus,” but a quick Google search reveals a lot of instances of that phrase, so it’s probably not worth doing. This is a classic case of a light touch yielding the better result. It was worth trying the longer version, but then it’s important to know when less is more.

Not every joke worth doing is worth driving into the ground. This is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn.

Thanks again to our guest star, Lisa Klink, for providing today’s show-and-tell!

Lunch: chicken with barbeque sauce made according to the South Beach Cookbook recipe. It was only okay.

Once, when I was very young (27-ish), I was in the Star Trek: TNG offices shortly after a spec script had arrived. The episode was titled “Tangerine,” and it had been accompanied by, get this, a crate of tangerines. Some people in the office were scared of the tangerines, but I ate one. It was lovely.

Now, here I am, years later, and I remember the name of that spec script. Does that mean this was a good technique? I gotta say, I don’t think so. Especially in these security-paranoid days when unsolicited citrus fruits can get you detained without access to counsel. You want your script to be remembered as professional and well-crafted. Not sticky and freedom-endangering.

Sometimes the tangerines aren’t literal. If you break the fourth wall in your spec script, it’s almost certainly going to feel just as gimmicky as if it had arrived with a Harry and David gift box.

You know what it is, I’m sure, to break the fourth wall. That’s any reference that calls attention to the fictional nature of our enterprise. (Or the fictional nature of *The Enterprise* if we’re still in Star Trek land.)

Even if the show you’re specing routinely flirts with the fourth wall (as Boston Legal has done throughout this season), I would warn you against it.

(By the way, what Boston Legal has been doing has been a sort of pseudo-fourth-wall construction, having their characters speak of their lives “as if” they were television characters. The same conceit was used in a joke on the Will and Grace series finale, in which Jack complains about how he and Karen are treated as if they’re “supporting characters on the ‘Will and Grace’ show.”)

A tempting example of breaking a fourth wall in a spec would be to have Lily on How I Met Your Mother make some joke about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, relying on the reader to know that Alyson Hannigan was one of our stars on Buffy. Tempting, but not worth it.

The problem with doing this in a spec, is that you’re working as hard as you can to convince people that they’re reading “the real show, ” or, even better, that the Lily whom you are writing is a real person. You can’t afford to raise the issue of artificiality. I don’t even like it when actual shows break the fourth wall, actually. We’re all trying to seem “real,” so let’s not mess with it.

Fan Mail Update: A big helloooo to Jessica in Lexington, MA! Glad you’re enjoying the blog! And keep your eyes peeled for more Espisodes of television… update coming soon.

Lunch: flatbreads and artichoke spread

You know how stuff gets put in piles around the house? Well, it does in my house. Oh, you know what they should make? Pile-cozies. Brightly-colored plastic or fabric-covered cubes, about nine-by-eleven and maybe a foot tall, that you could just slip down over piles of papers when company’s coming over. Genius! I swear, that’s a brilliant idea. You could make them look like art. Anyway, I just found two stray pieces of blog-related mail that got lost in a pile.

Karen in San Diego sends a great postcard, on which she expresses the wish that I be the one to take over Gilmore Girls. Well, what I can do is assure you that the amazing Rebecca Kirshner will be continuing there, and I’m all agog to see what happens next. Rebecca is remarkably smart and funny and I expect great things.

The other letter is from Brendan, writing from near-at-hand in Studio City. There’s the general praise, (thank you, blush), and a good question. He’s asking about how often it’s all right to call an agent who is reading your material, in hopes of spurring them to read faster. The answer, of course, is a fulsome shrug. You don’t want to let an opportunity dry up due to inattention, but you don’t want to give an agent the impression that you’d be a pest, should he or she decide to take you on as a client. I have no idea what the right answer is. But I know who might. Befriend the assistant. This is always good anyway, because assistants become agents. Also, they are good and overworked people and they could stand to hear a friendly voice. Once the assistant is charmed, they can help you find the perfect moment to give that agent a little nudge. So make a joke, ask about their day, compliment their pleasant phone manner… if nothing else, you’ll make their day easier and an angel will get its wings.

Okay, now to the jokes. I’ve been going around the house chuckling for a while because of a joke I heard weeks ago on House. I’ll just be making lunch or something and I’ll think of it and chuckle. The team has been trying to make a diagnosis, right? And there’s an important new development. They all rush in together to tell House about it:

CAMERON
We’ve got anal bleeding.

HOUSE
What, all of you?

Oh my god. That slays me. It’s fast and short and snappy. It reveals character. And it’s got “anal” in it. It might be the perfect joke.

I think part of why this one tickles me so much is that it’s a joke type I rarely use myself. Let’s call it the Disingenuous Type. I found another example, from an episode of Friends. Joey and Chandler have just listed an advantage of being female. Rachel counters with:

RACHEL
Come on! You guys can pee standing up.

CHANDLER
We can? All right, I’m tryin’ that.

This is of course, a joke for a smart-ass. Got a smart-ass in your spec? Well, this is the joke for them.

Lunch: I finally figured out what made my soymilk-yogurt-tofu shakes so awful. The yogurt and the tofu. Soymilk + banana + natural peanut butter = great!

Gosh, is it time to get out the mailbag again? Here’s another pile of letters! A lovely card from Leona in Alabama, congratulating me on the new NBC/Uni deal. Thank you, Leona! Another pretty postcard from Ingrid in Germany, who wants more entries of the “Field Guide to Jokes” variety. Great! Because we’ve only just gotten started on that!

Oh, here’s a good question from Lilia in Houston. She notes that I said not to refer to previous episodes within your spec, and wants to know if she can do it if it’s important to her story. Oh! Absolutely! You can certainly refer to previous episodes all you want. My warning was about a self-conscious referencing of previous episodes done expressly to show off your knowledge of the show. I did not mean to suggest it as a general prohibition. Go crazy!

Tom in Brooklyn has some good basic questions about getting into tv writing. I refer you to the blog archives for a lot of your answers – look at the early entries. But the short-handed answer — which I give here because I’m sure it applies to a lot of other readers — is that you can get your first agent long-distance, but these don’t tend to be the very best agents. If you’re serious about the career, it does still seem that a move to LA is necessary. Check out the ABC Writers’ Fellowship for a good way in – it’s easier to move here if there’s a reason to be here. Your feature scripts will be helpful in terms of getting an agent, and also in getting hired, but a tv spec of a show that is currently on the air will be a tremendous help to you. Even if you only use it to apply to the fellowship!

And finally, I have here the most wonderful letter (sent to the whole Buffy staff) from Sara in Jerusalem, who talks about Buffy and about Sara’s own life as a medical student. I’m going to assume it’s all right with Sara for me to quote this section about the parallels:

“… we are old way before our time, spend a lot of time around dead bodies and gore, and give up our youth dealing with things in the middle of the night most people will never have to see. Buffy captures the aftermath of that — the effect on the person, the loneliness, the ‘superiority complex with the inferiority complex about it,’ the fear of how cold and hard you become…”

She goes on to talk about the comfort of having (even a fictional) hero… wow. A wonderful letter. Writing for TV is a pretty darn fun job. And the notion that it might sometimes be a useful one as well… I’m the luckiest person in the world. Thank you, Sara. And I know Joss would thank you too… what you’re talking about really belongs to him.

Lunch: A store-bought Indian bean dish that came sealed in a neat little silver pouch. Just heat-and-eat. Tremendous.

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