Characters Make Comedy
When you watch a sitcom on TV you’re being conned. Because what you get is not a ’situation’ comedy, but a ‘character’ comedy.
Characters drive comedy much more than situations and I’m going to use one example to explore this.
Our subject is going to be 3rd Rock From The Sun. To those who never saw the show it ran on NBC (BBC in the UK) between 1996 and 2001 and starred John Lithgow and KristenJohnston. The premise was that a group of aliens were disguised as humans and sent to Earth (the 3rd Rock of the title) to learn about humanity.
My contention is that this science fiction concept could have been played in many ways, only one of them being comedy. For instance this concept could easily have merged into an X Files type of show, with humans trying to track down the infiltrators. Or perhaps a serious investigation into the foibles of humanity. Luckily, and thankfully, the producers chose comedy, though the concept in itself was not new. Think of My Favourite Martian.
Our alien explorers consisted of the following. **** Solomon (John Lithgow), was the High Commander and leader of the expedition. He played the role of the family provider and took the position of physics professor at Pendelton State University. Information officer Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) was given the body of a teenager and forced to enroll in high school, leaving security officer Sally (Kristen Johnston) to be the homemaker and communications officer Harry (French Stewart) to spend his life as either unemployed or in short-term jobs.
Each of these characters displayed specific and defining characteristics. **** was bombastic, self opionated, arrogant and petulant. Sally, though outwardly beautiful, was tough and macho. Tommy was the typically mixed up teenager and Harry was the oddball no-hoper. They were perfect American humans, but their lack of knowledge of the subtleties of human life led to many of the show’s comedy moments. That could, genuinely, have been called ’situation’ comedy.
But that is not what is remembered about the show, it is the characters. They overflowed with easily forgotten one-liners which only worked because they were rooted in the characters. This can easily be seen by trying to transpose a **** line to any of the other characters. It just doesn’t work. Similarly, Sally’s unexplained lust for Officer Don, though hilarious, could never work for any of the others.
For the writer, therefore, it is important to recognise that character is much more important than situation when writing comedy. The Solomons, whether alien or not, could be exported to any time or place and still be funny. A situation could certainly be funny for a moment but a humourous character is timeless.
Every successful comedy rests on characters that make us laugh, and the better they are painted, allowing us to really know them, the funnier they can be.
As **** Hilarious once told me, if in doubt, pick the guy with the funny name.
By: Gurmeet Mattu
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Filed under Writing And Speaking by on Jul 2nd, 2010. 