Not Just Romantically Challenged

Sitcoms have a bad rap. Yes, most of the time they're hoary, glacially unfunny mastodons of television, but that's no reason to declare the subcategory dead. If there's one positive thing to come out of postmodernism, it's that nothing is ever too old or antediluvian to dig up, brush off and make relevant again. The sitcom will never really die. It's too massive to go extinct, like algae. Having said that,¹ ABC's Romantically Challenged will not be the fittest that survives.

Using a trope that has kept fiction alive since it ran out of creation stories to tell, Romantically Challenged focuses its razor-sharp commentary on el-oh-vee-ee love. As ever-so-right troubadour James Murphy has recently said, love is a murderer, though if that was the premise of this show it might be a lot more interesting. Instead love is just that elusive unicorn that we're all hoping is real enough to spot. The cast, in the sitcom-perfect 4-pronged approach, all have different ideas on catching said unicorn, whether that be naive innocence, bitter reluctance, or boisterous carnality. Alyssa Milano is bitter² about her luck in love, particularly a barely-referenced-except-to-serve-the-plot divorce five months ago to a man already remarrying. Sitcomically said, that's the basic premise: the perils of dating.

Sadly, at least so far, there's nothing new said about these perils here. In fact, the whole thing plays like a midseason coaster of an episode in the middle of an already moderately successful sitcom's waning golden years. To put it bluntly, it's lazy. But the problem with the whole criticism is that sitcoms are always lazy, to an extent. That's the nature of the sitcom. It's a rarified genre that allows its conventions to be used and reused ad nauseum because said conventions are societal fractals, containing infinite possibilities. There will always be a new scene to be written where two people who don't particularly get along at the moment are trapped in an elevator/stairwell/mine shaft, and infinite degrees of comedy in each new configuration. It's a beautiful mold to work from, honestly (at least to some of us), like a jazz standard. So reusing old sitcom standards isn't enough to doom Romantically Challenged.

It's the jokes. The reason that situation-comedies' "sit" portions are allowable is because there is room for experimentation within the form, i.e. how can we make this funny again? Community does this by being delightfully clever and meta. Parks and Recreation leans on the strengths of its cast. How I Met Your Mother uses strong characterizations in conjunction with a wonky framing concept that gives the writers room to experiment with presentation and structure. All of the above are good. Romantically Challenged does none of these. The characterizations are weakly standard, and there's nothing particularly groundbreaking in a concept that never goes beyond, as Buckwheat sang, wookin' pa nub in all da wong paces. If your characters are stock and your premise is stock, then guess what your show is going to turn out like?

Pilots are tricky buggers though, as most of them have the burden of introducing all the characters, all the central settings, on top of actually making some sort of self-contained conflict within the episode that exemplifies the types of conflicts we might be dealing with in future episodes. It's a tough line to walk, and Romantically Challenged I suppose you could say 'succeeds' at skirting the line by not attempting to do any of the above. I honestly couldn't tell, of the four main characters, who was dating, who (if anyone) had dated whom in the past, or who was related to whom. And that made the whole thing really really dirty-feeling. Was the guy asking about spanking advice talking to his ex-girlfriend? His sister? Or just some girl he knows somehow? Shouldn't I know by now? Well, I don't. Pilot fail. Same goes for the settings; here, the obligatory way-too-nice apartment and their "hangout" spot, which appears to be some sort of restaurant. Again, things are unclear. The plot was self-serving enough, pretty middlebrow sitcom fare,³ and I admit I chuckled slightly a few times (but only because I'm pretty liberal in what I chuckle at), but overall didn't achieve what pilots should strive to. Again, tricky buggers, but also again, laziness. Oh well.

Sitcoms have been called a dying breed in some circles, but hopefully what's actually dying out are bad sitcoms. Because for every Romantically Challenged that hopes to coast through our screens by "playing the sitcom hits" as it were, there's a Modern Family that can take the oldest of tropes and make them feel fresh, new, and relevant again. Just like stereotypes, tropes are usually tropes for a reason, but at this point shows have to do a little digging to find a new way to show that reason. And at this point, the only thing Romantically Challenged is digging is its own grave. Zing!⁴

Addenda

1. Stay tuned for my long-promised Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld reunion cogitation, now that I've made my way through the latest season a second time. Thank God for HBO/Larry David's long-ass turnaround time. You may understand the placement of this footnote better upon reading that future post. ↑
2. About her career? ↑
3. Milano tries to start dating again 5 months after her divorce, mostly because her ex-husband sent her an invitation to his marriage, which is totally a dick move, and totally not a good reason to start dating again just for the sake of it. I suppose you would call that the A-story. The B-story was funnier, slightly, as one of the dudes finds the perfect girl with one glaring flaw (again, pretty wonted when it comes to sitcoms): she likes the dirty talk, and our gentle soul ain't the kind of man to give it to her. This was mostly funnier only because the actor had a semblance of charisma that was absent from the other ligneous cast members. C-story, also tropological sit-comedy, had the "goofball" "writer" character getting his short stories evaluated by a high school English teacher and getting a B-. The plots are relegated to a footnote because they are as inconsequential to this blog post as they were to this show. ↑
4. And if you have to say "zing!" after a joke, it probably shouldn't go into your sitcom. ↑

Sometimes The Blogs Just Write Themselves

These days, the only things I see that inspire me to write blogs are twofold: Lost and The Real World. And so instead of constantly writing about Lost and The Real World, I hesitated. I waited for the episode of either that best exemplified television watching at its finest. And it just so happened that The Real World's finale came first.¹

This season of MTV's Ph.D-level dissertation/social experiment has proven to be a delight beyond measure after a rocky start not only for me, but for the housemates themselves. After bitter beginnings with The God Argument, The Don't-Beat-Me-I'm-Fragile Crusade, and The Nervous Breakdown, the remaining roommates have had a long enough stretch of peace to form the scar tissue of True Friendship. Through their collective sufferings and woes, these misfit toys banded together to prove to The Powers That Be that their Machiavellian meddling will not control them anymore! You couldn't buy a logline better than that. And with the clubhouse poison of Erika 'Milton Bradley' Rocker-Girl (never did find out her last name) out of the picture, the strong that survived came together tighter than drying rawhide. Their farewells were tearful, their last actions meaningful, their sorrow palpable. It was adorable. Like kids saying goodbye from summer camp adorable. They wrote on the walls, played a final (and especially 7th-grade-risque) game of truth or dare, and finally got really really fucked up (at least one of them did). And most importantly, Ol' Yellow Eyes (Callie) had an art show.

But first, some backstory from episodes lost in the abyss: The Boy Who Lies stopped lying long enough to get himself a real actual girl, not just a vagina with a torso and stems. Incredible, I know. This week we meet them in the throes of love's blossom and the wonderful Powers That Be felt them worthy for the happiest of endings. Despite initial dramatic pauses and important hesitation on whether he could handle it, Andrew agreed to have Andrea (seriously, this is not made up) move in with him, beyond the realm of The Real World, in the real world.  I believe in them, their love is real.² This newfound infatuation with the Greek goddess Andreathena, however, seriously diminishes his need to give a shit about anyone else. Callie asked him for a favor goddammit! Our Original Oh Yeah I Forgot About Her gathers the three artistes in the house--that is, herself, Andrew the cartoonist, and... Emily?... the... poet?--to display their corporate sponsored [Buy a Five Dollar Foot Long on any sub, that's right, ANY SUB. foralimitedtimeonly] personal vision of DC in a gallery. Of art. So goddamn Andrew better get goddamn painting. But in a beautiful moment of planting and pay-off, we hark back to Andrew's near-disastrous, short-lived political cartoon career. The man's a procrastinator--and I for one, can relate. I've been procrastinating this whole season.

So then Richard Alpert sez, he sez--oh wait, what show are we on?--So then Andrew does the paintings, but he's almost late, blah blah blah, just one last bit of drama where we learn characters like Andrew have bettered themselves oh-so-slightly from "a procrastinator who turns things in late" to "a procrastinator who turns things in with just enough time to let the ink dry;" Inspector Instigator even made a last villainous showing when he decided to say to Callie The Budding Yet Fragile-To-Criticism Photographer that anybody with a finger and an eyeball can take pictures. But again, The Inspector has gone from "instigates until he makes someone cry" to "instigate until you can say sorry and sound like you mean it." That, or everyone has just learned to ignore him. But in the end (or "in the deep end" as Ty or the proverbial She might say), the art is a success, if a little damp. She even sells some photos. So naturally, it's time to celebrate.

And celebrate they do, and the best bit of drunkenness of the year manifests in the form of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Gay Boy tease-boxing some guy literally called Hockey Guy and getting thrown into a wall. Now his nose is all busted! On the day his dad is coming to town! So they can both go to a fancy (and probably expensive! -- my occasionally Republican and entirely fictional editor) DC dinner party, featuring Obama appearance #2!³ Oh what a Marcia Brady conundrum! But luckily, he's the kind of man who's not afraid to wear make-up. You know, like Andrew. He goes to the dinner with his dad, and they fist bump and clap hands and jump up and down screaming "Barack!" in little girl voices, and all is going just dandy until, riding the high that comes with mob mentality, the FBBNPMGB accosts the most interesting protester ever to have his face blurred on television. I had no idea the Darwinists were against gay marriage. Apparently there are evolutionary zealots as well? But back to the accosting, the Darwinist is berated without a chance to retaliate and Mike's uncomfortable dad teaches his son a valuable lesson about giving each other a chance and he makes him apologize to the now wimpering Darwinist. Parents connected with while in DC: 2 of 2 for Mike!⁴

That means our final Oh Yeah I Forgot About Him goes to Lenny Kravitz, who didn't do much except look like a total badass by blowing off everyone in the house in his final goodbye confessional, instead saying that he'll be most thankful for his band. Peace out Lenny!

And slowly they trickle out, and you can tell how much they love each other by how hard they hug each other, until there are none left, only the voiceover of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Straight Girl, summing it all up with a "What I Learned..."moment. So in the end, it turns out, we found ourselves forged together in the fires of Calamity, we found out who we really are, we found True Love. All in all, not a bad social experiment.

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Postscript: The Reunion Show
It was exactly what you would expect. They bickered and laughed, and talked unironically of True Friendship and Love. Also, there was swearing. Liberal amounts of Friendship swearing. But overall, the same shit happened, rehashing the Big Events of the series and reinforcing the fact that none of these people will back down. Only Erika cried (big surprise), and it seemed like everyone settled back into their original roles, pre-Finale. The Bisexual Duo voraciously defended their bisexuality, Callie was sweetly naive (though it was tantalizingly hinted at that she may be a closet hipster?! Hipsters can't be nice Cal!), and Inspector Instigator was less a Snively Whiplash-scheming sort of villain than a Dastardly and Muttley-comedic sort of villain. The guy's never going to look good when he opens his mouth. But at least Andrew's True Love has continued post-camera-bombardment.

Somewhat sadly, the most interesting part was watching Andrew fidget in the background when the spotlight wasn't on him, because who gives a shit what you're all doing now that you're not on TV anymore. It was surprisingly unjuicy and anticlimactic overall, and their bickering felt as uncomfortable as it was way back in Week One, only this time, as I said, there was Friendship swearing. Maybe I should start watching The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Fresh Meat 2 (quite the unruly title), because it looks like those people really know how to fuck each other up.

Addenda

1. Yeah, it came first like two weeks ago, apologies for the constant delays here. ↑
2. This newfound belief in the wondrous machinations of The World's Greatest Social Experiment ties into the housemates as well, as my relationship with them grew as they grew with each other. And when clubhouse poison Erika 'Barry Bonds' Rocker-Girl left, we were all free to let loose and have fun with each other. I felt like I was 13 again. ↑
3. At which point I had one of those sublime moments of realization and appreciation of the time we live in, where historic things are happening, in a country emerging from a time of hopeless dark despair and moving into a future once again filled with possibility rather than more of the same. Yes, The Real World made me remember that it's a good time to be alive. If that doesn't prove a.) the show's relevance, and b.) how far I've come in this season of nonsense, then I can't do anything more for you. ↑
4. Though his political hopes might be dashed by the previously mentioned drunken tickle-fight that resulted in a nose gash, which was broadcast on national television. But then again, without the national television part, would he have had the opportunities to participate in the politicking that solidified the dream in the first place? A real monkey's paw situation indeed--wait, am I talking about Lost again? ↑