[For this year’s
April
Fool’s series, I wanted to AmericanStudy a handful of recent comic TV
shows. Share your thoughts on these or other televised
foolishness, present or past, in comments!]
On three ways to
contextualize Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s funny, raunchy Amazon original series about
sex, relationships, and parenting.
1)
Narratives of Parenthood: A number of prominent
recent film comedies, from Knocked Up (2007) to Juno (2007) to
Baby Mama (2008),
have used nonconventional pregnancies and unexpected possible parenthoods to
challenge our collective narratives of those eternal human experiences. In some
ways, the 2015
first season of Catastrophe—which
begins when Delaney’s American businessman gets Horgan’s Irish schoolteacher
pregnant during a brief fling while on a London trip, and chronicles the pair’s
next steps after receiving that shocking news—echoes those edgy films. But
because it allows the story to unfold over a half-dozen episodes, and because its second season
was set some years later with the couple now parents to two children, Catastrophe is able to explore both
pregnancy and parenting in far more graphic and realistic (extreme, perhaps,
but realistic) detail than do those movies. As a result, I’d argue that the
show offers narratives of those universal experiences that, in their combination
of humor and realism, are pretty distinctive on the pop culture landscape.
2)
The Special Relationship: Catastrophe is certainly first and foremost focused on those themes
of sex and family—but because Delaney’s character moves to England to live with
Horgan’s at the start of the first season and they have remained there
throughout the series to date, it also consistently features stories of the
culture clash between this American expat, his Irish fiancée (and then wife),
and their English friends and community. I’m far from an expert on British television
(and as usual, additions and corrections very welcome in comments!), but I don’t
know of too many shows that explore the
special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K. through the lens of a
romantic relationship in this way. As the characters are originally drawn,
Delaney and Horgan are in many ways stereotypical representatives of their
respective nations—and while Delaney has changed most obviously through his
expatriation, I believe Horgan has likewise evolved through her relationship
with and marriage to this very American man. Just another level of social
realism subtly explored by this funny show.
3)
Streaming Series: Catastrophe is far from unique in being a show that is released all
at once on a subscription
site for instant streaming—each of my next two shows are produced in
precisely the same way (Netflix in their cases, but the principle is of course
the same). I’m sure there are Cultural and Media Studies dissertations being
written on whether and how that form of production changes either the shows
themselves or the audience experience of them, but without quite that much research
I would say two things. First, it allows for a sitcom to function much more
like a serialized drama—plotlines on Catrastrophe
carry over across multiple episodes in a narrative form that feels quite
distinct from the classic TV sitcom (which of course has itself
evolved over the years). Second, it can sometimes be a problem when it
comes to humor—at least for this viewer, binge-watching more than a few
episodes of a comedy at a time can produce a feeling of repetition that dulls
the edge of the humor somewhat. And no matter what your particular viewing
experiences, Catastrophe proves on
all these levels that television comedy is certainly distinct in 2017.
Next TV fooling
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?
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