[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 the pleasures
and limits of parody, and a show that transcends both.
As someone whose
list of childhood pop culture favorites includes both Weird Al Yankovic and the Zucker
Brothers/Jim Abrahams films (especially Top Secret! [1984] and
Hot Shots! [1991])
in very prominent spots, I’ve always had a soft spot for the difficult comedic
art of parody. When they work, parodies certainly utilize the pleasure of familiarity,
of riffing off of stories and images that we already know and enjoy seeing
twisted into a comic new one; but they also and just as importantly have to offer
their own distinct humor and pleasures, laughs and stories that don’t simply
rely on the parodic elements to succeed but engage audiences in other ways as
well. To my mind, on the other hand, failed parodies like many Leslie Nielsen films
from late in his career—such as Dracula: Dead and Loving It [1995] and Mafia! (1998)—offer
only note-for-note parodies of their respective genres, with little if anything
that’s original or compelling about their own jokes and stories. Such limited
parodies might work for a Saturday Night
Live sketch or some other short-form humor, but stretched into a
full-length movie the thrill of parody loses its appeal relatively quickly and
in these failed parodies the audience is left with little else to keep them
engaged.
One of the most
successful parodies I’ve encountered in recent years is the FX animated TV show Archer (2010- ), the 8th
season of which premieres on the FXX network in less than a week (in the
interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I’ve been gradually catching up on
the show on Netflix and have only watched into the 3rd season at
this point, so as usual I welcome comments from folks with more Archer-watching under their belts [and
anyone else]). The show’s original premise seems to have been as a more or less
direct parody of the James
Bond films, only with our superspy protagonist being a much less classy,
much more proudly oafish American. Similarly, the main setting for the show’s
espionage world (at least in its original few seasons; I know the premise has
been “rebooted” a couple of times in recent years) was the same kind of Cold
War environment in which Bond originally and long operated, with the Soviet
Union and the KGB the most consistent adversaries for Archer and his (now
unfortunately named) ISIS colleagues; yet Archer
from the outset purposefully bent that setting and timing in a variety of ways,
from a character with World War I service to 21st century pop
culture references aplenty (among many other
anachronisms). Given the difficulty of sustaining a parody over seasons of
at least ten (and usually thirteen) episodes, this balance of on-point parodic
elements and twists on the genre and world makes sense and helps keep the show
feeling fresh.
Yet like all the
best parodies, as I argued above, Archer
works as well as it does because it features a number of features that are
entirely its own, and distinguish it from both the genre its parodying and the
parodic elements it includes. An excellent case in point are two of its central
female characters: Malory
Archer (voiced by Jessica Walter), superspy Sterling Archer’s Mom as well
as his boss at ISIS; and Lana
Kane (voiced by Aisha Tyler), a superspy in her own right and also Archer’s
on-again/off-again love interest and rival. Both have aspects of familiar James
Bond characters—his tough boss M, famously played by Judi
Dench in recent years; and his many fellow agent love interests—but within
the first few episodes (thanks to both great writing and wonderful performances)
each had already taken shape as a distinct and interesting character in her own
right, and by the end of Season 1 they were two of my favorite characters on
television. Similarly, the show has gradually developed a deep well of
recurring catch-phrases
and in-jokes,
pleasures that depend not on a genre or parody but precisely on rewarding those
viewers who have been coming back to the show for its own sake. Despite that
childhood of Weird Al songs and Zucker Brothers films, I don’t believe I’ve
ever watched multiple seasons of a parodic TV show—but Archer represents the best of that genre, and a wonderful comic
pleasure all its own.
Last TV fooling
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?
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