March 28, 2017: Televised Fools: Master of None

[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 what’s groundbreaking about Aziz Ansari’s Netflix series, what’s not, and what to do with that gap.

Master of None isn’t the first, nor the only current, sitcom to focus on an Asian American protagonist: there are historical examples such as Pat Morita’s very short-lived Mr. T and Tina (1976) and Margaret Cho’s one-season All-American Girl (1994); and ongoing contemporary shows like Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Project and Eddie Huang’s Fresh off the Boat. But at its best, as in the two early Season 1 episodes “Parents” (episode 2) and “Indians on TV” (episode 4), Ansari’s show explores elements of the multi-generational, immigrant, multi-cultural, professional, familial, and everyday Asian American experience with a combination of humor and nuance that I’d never before encountered on American TV (much less in a sitcom). Foregrounded as they are toward the start of the show’s first season, those two groundbreaking episodes make clear that Master of None isn’t just a show featuring an Asian American lead (and his Asian American best friend Brian [Kelvin Yu])—they announce a sitcom unafraid to examine issues of race, ethnicity, culture, and identity with realism and intelligence.

Unfortunately, with the exception of an episode (“Ladies and Gentlemen”) focused on the issue of misogyny in American society and popular culture, the first season’s remaining six episodes didn’t live up to the promise of those edgy early eps. Instead, the bulk of the season’s second half was dedicated to the romantic trials and tribulations of Ansari’s Dev and his girlfriend Rachel (Noël Wells), which while both entertaining and realistic didn’t feel particularly distinct from (to name one particularly famous example) those experienced by a different Rachel with her very on-again/off-again boyfriend Ross. Or indeed any number of other sitcom romances—the fact that I could have used literally countless analogies to conclude that last sentence make clear just how central romantic trials and tribulations have been to the genre. Even a rule-breaking sitcom like Seinfeld consistently featured relationship struggles for all of its main characters (other than perhaps Kramer, whose most confusing relationship was of course with himself). In its reliance on the Dev-Rachel dynamic to propel its season-long plot, then, Master of None was as typical of TV sitcoms as those early episodes were unique.

So what do we do with that frustrating duality? (Or, if not frustrating, at least striking, especially if you binge-watch the show’s episodes in the manner I highlighted in yesterday’s post, and see this shift in plot and theme happen so quickly.) One way to interpret Ansari’s decision to take the season in this direction would be audience: that while those groundbreaking early episodes would certainly have spoken to many American viewers, they would also have felt unfamiliar to many others; while relationship drama is of course a kind of story with which virtually all adult audience members can connect. Another interpretation could focus on storytelling itself—the themes of the early episodes made for interesting individual stories, but didn’t necessarily lend themselves to serialized storytelling of the sorts now possible (as I argued yesterday) in streaming sitcoms; while the question of whether a promising romance will survive or not is tailor-made to be serialized across a handful of episodes (leading to an end-of-season cliffhanger of sorts that I won’t spoil here). Or perhaps Ansari just wanted to make clear that while Dev is partly defined by his Asian American heritage and identity, he’s also just that much clichéd but realistic sitcom type: a single person looking for love.

Next TV fooling tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other TV comedies you’d highlight?

March 27, 2017: Televised Fools: Catastrophe

[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?

March 25-26, 2017: Crowd-sourced Spring

[As spring gets ready to spring, this week’s series has focused on the season in American culture. This crowd-sourced post is drawn from the responses and spring connections of fellow AmericanStudiers. Add your bloomin’ thoughts, please!]

Following up Monday’s post on Williams and Eliot, Wade Linebaugh writes, "I've been fascinated by the contrast between these two poems for a while and I LOVE reading them together. For me--and especially because The Waste Land hits first and makes such a significant splash--I often read the two as warring over language and culture itself and especially the American idiom. For Eliot, so much of him doing the writer's work of 'shoring the fragments against his ruins' always reads to me as a heroic stance he considers himself uniquely set for. His deep and allusive writing is a way of mobilizing the history of language and writing as a way to /craft/ something to stand in opposition to bankrupt or entropic modern culture. I read Williams, by contrast, as willing to see something that opposes entropy springing up. For the browns and lifelessness in "Spring and All" there's also the wildcarrot leaf and that fantastic awakening of the roots in the final line. And knowing Williams's imagery and taste for 'the american grain,' I always see a kind of faith in his version of Spring.

Anyway, that's just me. I always see a conflict about the culture they see around them, partly because Eliot is so situated in Europe and matches that with such densely allusive verse, and Williams is so powerfully American and relies on a set of poetic imagery to match. Neither sees anything entirely bankrupt, I agree, but Eliot sees a world he has to fight to make meaning in. Williams sees the perennial return of organic life, which always just manages to do its thing on its own...even when it's March and the snow feels endless and you can't even imagine how the trees around going to manage to push out buds. At any rate I feel myself pulled powerfully by both of them at different times."

Andrew McGregor Tweets, “It’s not Spring without a reading of Casey at the Bat!”

Melanie Newport Tweets, “I keep coming back to this very enjoyable cartoon.”

Olivia Lucier writes, “When I was a kid my mom read me Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney. I always liked the illustrations. Very spring like! Although not a classic novel. Still a spring story!”

Floyd Cheung shares “Toshio Mori’s story ‘Lil’ Yokohama.”

Rob LeBlanc writes, “I would share the unabashed mid-1960s pop-rock enthusiasm of Gary Lewis and the Playboys' ‘Green Grass.’”

Natalie Chase notes, “With Easter right around the corner I can't help but think of the very opening chapter of Love Medicine...‘The World's Greatest Fisherman!’”

And finally, Nancy Caronia shares that “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is my choice for cultural critic of 2017. Here's a new piece he wrote on Get Out.” Jeff Renye adds, “Kareem is a member of the Baker Street Irregulars. Interesting fella.”

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other spring connections or contexts you’d share?