“Believing The Joke:” The Importance of Baseline Comedic Reality (Patreon)

A few months ago I was listening to an old episode of Radiolab and they were talking about how almost everyone, when directly tested on it, had the ability to immediately detect a fake laugh. It’s one of those things “we can just tell.” Now, in most situations we don’t call it out because most fake laughter is a social nicety. Meaning it’s not insincere in it’s intention. It’s there to make people feel responded to. It might even a way of simply showing “I’m listening and you are a part of this conversation.” Plus, even if the statement might not elicit some huge laugh, it still might elicit positive feelings, which ties into one of my favorite things Wes Anderson ever said and that’s “sometimes a smile is just as good as a laugh.”

But when it comes to the genuine article? There is something undeniably real about a laugh. It is literally an involuntary reaction. And a fucking weird one at that. Think about it. We hear something we think is funny and then we loose control of our diaphragms and stat cackling and spasming like the weird little sentient flesh boxes that we are. But that’s also the reason laughter is so tangible to others. We can see the involuntary movement. We can see the reality of its effect. And what I want to stress to you is how important “reality” is to very concept of “comedy” on the whole.

Especially in narratives.

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This is a really small thing, but if you watch old episodes of The Office (US) you might notice that there were some directors who would always ignore the “documentary” conceit behind it. Granted, it was always a huge leap in logic, right? That all these people were actually being filmed by people and it was just going on forever? For whatever it’s worth, the UK version always stuck to the conceit brilliantly and better captured what people wanted to project to camera and when they wanted to hide. But some directors of the American version would ignore all that and even push the aesthetic. I remember one episode where Michael and Jan were sitting on an empty train car or something. We see them in a wide shot and then all of a sudden it cuts close up of their feet dangling and in my head I’m like, “who the hell got that shot?” No matter how much we roll with the logical leap, if this was a real documentary, we literally would have seen the cameraperson in the shot prior. But they weren’t there. It was an impossible shot for the aesthetic reality of that show.

Now I know what you may be thinking: Hey! All other shows don’t play by those rules!

And you’re right!  Of course they don’t play by those rules! But all other shows aren’t also pretending to be a documentary and using up the benefits of that format either (like talking heads, interacting with cameras, etc). Again, it seems a small thing. And truthfully, most won’t notice it. Or care. Hell, even I don’t care that much (especially given how much it became faux doc an entire comedic genre for the aughts and it was impossible to avoid). But once again, what it does do is speak to the underlying notion of “reality” within comedic storytelling - and how some of us gravitate toward needing that core believability. And we must go past mere aesthetics, because there’s much bigger arenas of offense.

Forgive the vague allusions to follow, but I was once talking to someone about a show that they were helping to make. Please note that the people who were making this show were incredibly funny people. But the person I was talking to was trying to understand why legitimately good jokes weren’t landing and the tone felt uneven. The truth was pretty simple: even though the show was one of those scripted / bits of improv mix things, there would be constantly reality breaking. Like, a totally crazy thing would happen for a joke and then the characters just moved on like it never happened. And I don’t mean in the ignoring it way. I mean everything it was like it just didn’t happen. It was just a loose collection of jokes that stretched everything in a million directions. But when bringing up the issue as a concern, it was met with a common argument of “no, it’s like sketch!” But that’s whole thing, this wasn’t a sketch show.

Because sketch starts and stops and builds its own little realities within every vignette. Once the sketch is over, it’s OVER and there’s nowhere else to go (which is why so many sketches end with the characters / world blowing up or something). But if you are going to construct virtually anything that’s built on a larger narrative or uses “you are a characters / real person interacting with real people,” then you need to ALSO hold true to the tenets of real deal storytelling. Things like character consistency, arcs, and especially hold true to the consistency of their “reality.” And in the show I was talking about? A main character’s behavior would change literally scene from scene just to make different jokes work. Absolutely insane things would happen and the problem wasn’t that it wasn’t funny in and of itself. The problem is it wasn’t real. And that genuinely makes it less funny.

Now, hopefully the lesson that comes from this discussion is not that you have to stick to being “realistic.” In fact, you can do anything you want! As long as it’s still real to its own participants.Take thee monster joke of the brawl in Anchorman. It is one of the most insane things ever. But the real joke of the scene is perfect aftermath of “that escalated quickly!” and the ensuing conversation. Most probably didn’t even think about it beyond the laugh, but this scene is actually emblematic of the entire approach of that movie. Do an insane thing! But the insane thing actually happened! It’s action / consequence. Kick doggie Baxter of a bridge? Have Ron instantly scream in agony and genuine mourning. Sure, the reactions are just as comically exaggerated, but again, they are still real too the characters. Everyone’s playing the truth. So it’s not that events in Anchorman are believable, it’s that the characters belief in the absurdity happening around them - and it is what makes us believe, too.

I know everything I’m talking about here is far more obvious in narratives like traditional sitcoms. I mean, I love Parks and Rec and we can probably all agree that the backbone of the show is how much we love the relationships. Whether it’s Leslie and Ben’s intimacy, or Ron and Leslie’s begrudging respect, or Ron and April’s delight in mutual contempt of others, or even April’s stealthy appreciation of Andy’s puppy dog-like enthusiasm. Viewers have to believe in these emotions and, more importantly, believe that these characters’ behavior actually effects one another. It’s not just about creating running jokes, but running realities.

Talk to any pro sitcom writers and they’ll talk about how they tend to argue the “believability” of jokes more than anything else. Would this character do that? Yeah, we need conflicts, but is that particular conflict pushing it too far? If it goes that far, would the character be “funny” angry or actually pissed off? Where’s the line? What would actually hurt each person? What’s a way they can make up in a way that is believable? To stretch any of these questions for “a good joke” can hurt all those precious realities that are built between them. And where it’s obvious for things like Parks & Rec, which have important emotional relationships, it’s also critical in less obvious scenarios.

For instance, you ever think about how much believability matters to the work of Nathan Fielder and John Wilson? But the reality of those shows has to be engineered precisely. With Nathan, he has to go into an absurd scenario of his own creation and be so straight-faced that he gets people to really go along with the absurdity. As an audience, we react with laughter and ask ourselves “is this really happening?” But the answer absolutely HAS TO BE yes. If we don’t believe it’s real, the entire premise of the show utterly collapses. And note that even the few moments rare moments where Nathan breaks character and can’t help but laugh are only when the people do something so absurd he can’t help it (like when the old guy saying he drinks young boys pee). Nathan’s break is actually confirming the very thing we need: YES, THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING. The same is true with John Wilson. Sure, he’s less a character and provocateur, but it’s all about being a good documentarian. We have to believe that he filmed as incessantly as he does to capture all those moments. It has to show that he’s weirdly good creating space for letting people open up, which is exactly what allows us to believe it when he just stays present in those insane moments. It’s the documentary part of both of their comedic documentary styles (and the way Nathan directly plays into the intricacies of that line with his sections of “Finding Frances,” is one of the most interesting things I’ve ever seen ).

But as always, the big question is “why?” If a laugh is a laugh, why does the distinction of an impossible lark versus aching reality matter so damn much?

As I said in the intro, it’s because, even when being generous, a laugh is something you really can’t fake. And real laughs 100% depend on the creation of tension, followed by the unexpected and relief (Hannah Gadsby breaks it down in Nannette quite aptly). But that means you really have to create the tension first. In a sitcom it’s usually two characters arguing or having their personalities rub against each other in a way that makes one feel awkward or embarrassed or simply witness to the other. Think back to Parks and Rec where all those characters are incredibly different from each other and want different things, thus we see the way the characters rub against one another and create comedic conflict. Then you relieve that tension by having a character do something unexpected, or lose the thing they want, or show the alleviation of love underneath. In short, you make it “okay” and through resetting and returning to comfort or the status quo. But to actually laugh at that process?

You have to know where tension is.

Which means you have to have a firm grasp of the baseline reality of what you are watching. You have to believe the characters care about their reality - so that you believe in turn. Just like good drama, it requires a consistent world. It requires people you believe are real (even if it’s just believing THEY believe it in a gonzo Anchorman world). Because without it? Well, even if they like the vibe what you’re doing, you’re just setting yourself up for generous laughs.

The truth is that I’ve been thinking a lot about this subject because I’ve been writing about Wandavision and the lines of moment-to-moment “reality” are so all over the place. Granted, that’s the point of the larger mystery plot, but that’s pretty much solely built for curiosity head-scratching. And it makes it so hard to watch the engineering of so many good sitcom-y jokes and go-for-broke performances just crash against this constant issue of baseline believability. None of this his happening, none of this is consistent, so where’s the tension? Granted, there’s so many possibly meta ways to look at it, plus is characters already established in another series, so it can likely be unpacked in more productive ways. But you can also tell the show seems to have no understanding of the baseline reality / tension thing and it’s utter necessity for getting the genuine laugh. It just constantly sails and coasts right by it in the pursuit of pastiche.

At the same time, I understand that this is all just one big conversation. It’s so hard to point to open and shut cases of reality breaking because everything I’m talking about is elastic. Every time you are putting narrative jokes into the real world, it’s a dialogue with the audience: who is included in the laugh? Who is not? Who is on the onside of the joke? Is this approach getting who we need to laugh to laugh? In the end, I’m not really here to argue about whether or not you find Wandavision or any other show with reality-breaking habits to still be funny.

The point is always mindfulness. To think about the hows and whys of what we’re engaging in with narrative and comedy. For creators, it’s about fostering the understanding that it’s so easy to stretch for a good joke over a real one. Just as it’s important to stress the ways we look at the comedy we craft and why it might not be landing right. And for an audience, it’s critical to understand how we and why are consume things, especially the ones we rarely think about. Because in the end, it helps us understand when we are simply being generous with a laugh and when we lose control of our spasming diaphragms.

Because there’s no denying the genuine article.

<3HULK