Re: Respond Please -- Saturday Night You Bull Sessions

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Date Posted: 02:28:25 02/11/04 Wed
Author: CCS
Subject: Re: Respond Please
In reply to: Prateek Srivastava 's message, "Respond Please" on 21:36:35 02/08/04 Sun

Ok, I got through the first part and am partway through the second, and I get the general idea of it. Frankly, it doesn't seem all that funny. The jokes amount to something vaguely gay happening to the one kid and him running screaming and other really inane stuff like the guy with the bags and the kid deciding whether to go to the mall or do homework. I've read about sit-com scripting, haven't actually tried it, but the one thing that seems consistent between the shows I like to watch and the books I've read is solid characters the viewer can easily associate with.

A sit-com pilot (of which I would consider this as) is absolutely definitively about setting up these characters. Instead, you run through a series of gags, and your "characters" just happen to be involved in them, but I couldn't really apply a comic perspective to any of the characters. The comic perspective is what makes the characters funny, and why we laugh at them. Tim Taylor from Home Improvement is a completely inept hardware guru. You can see that instantly. Most of Home Improvement's physical gags are inspired by this disposition. Similarly, George Castanza from Seinfeld is neurotic, and all the tough situations he finds himself in come from his own complication of matters. Your characters don't really seem to have perspectives other than a few general notes about age/physical build/name/etc.

Finally, consistency of theme is important in sit-coms, each episode should form a cohesive whole. It should just be some collection of events, there should be some cause an effect from event to event that creates a sense of (click back on your browser if you don't want to hear the "H" word) heightening throughout the episode. What occurs in one block between commercial breaks should have been set-up from the previous act. From what I've read so far, this doesn't seem to happen. People just go places and stuff happens there. The only genre this really works alright with is Mockumentary, everything else really needs a bit of consistency and tension to carry you through the whole episode.

Anyway, so those are my comments on that. I'm gonna post some reviews of the rest of the sketches as soon as I toss my laundry in the dryer.

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Replies:

Re: Respond Please -- Prateek Srivastava, 21:31:02 02/11/04 Wed
Oh fudge! -- Stupid, 22:04:11 02/11/04 Wed