The Devil's In The Details

Something I feel this Golden Age of TV has embraced and perfected is attention to detail. I first noticed it with Arrested Development, tiny tidbits of the Bluth family scattered in conversation and recalled by others out of context that made the world Michael and Co. lived in actually feel lived in. Of course, Arrested got a little wrapped up in the tiny details to the point where if you didn't know what the hell a Banana Grabber was then you probably didn't know why Buster seemed to be so afraid of sheep or why everyone kept making Godzilla noises, but that's what happens when you put a show in a corner with nowhere else to go. But attention to detail in television goes deeper than that.

I mentioned a certain subgenre in my very first post here that I'd like to highlight for its attention to detail. In fact, so-called "absurdist" comedies like Tim and Eric Awesome Show (Great Job!) or Family Guy* don't so much pay attention to detail as present hyper-specific information as jokes. Granted, these shows are absurdist because they take it to an extreme, but since the miraculous revival of Family Guy, the rest of television seems to have taken notice of this particular form of humor: outlandish yet precise pop-culture references, over-sharing of intensely detailed personal information, and in many cases the tendency to recur these specificities within an episode or even over the course of an entire season.** And as new network shows get made by younger writers for audiences not only familiar with but fans of the comedy of Adult Swim and Comedy Central, you can see tidbits of the absurd sneaking into the shows that even my parents like.

And so I call your attention to the latest episode of Modern Family, which pulled of a number of niftily fresh comedic devices, the first of which may have been the most subtle. I think it takes a certain size of gonads to begin an episode with the setup for a joke that has little to do with any level of plot, or that many viewers would even notice until the (magical***) 3rd payoff. Each of the kids gets their own confessional to tell us the one thing their parents say to them they hate the most (Luke hates "don't talk black to me" the most, until someone yells from off-screen that he needs to listen more closely****). Each line is intensely specific to the character, including Luke's perceived malapropism, but we have no idea what the hell it has to do with anything until later in the episode when Manny's mother tells him "it's just not appropriate because she's your teacher." I'm happy to see networks trusting their audience to actually pay attention to what the heads on screen are saying, instead of envisioning the viewing audience as mindless zombies who need to be bashed in the head with every bit of information in order for them to get it (though see the *** note, below. Some evils are just necessary, and not necessarily evil).

Another example of what I am now calling "The MacFarlane Complexity" is Phil. Phil owes his entire existence to non sequiturs and pop culture references, though I don't mean to detract from his character or the performance, because he is actually funny (at least to me, and my Mom, whatever that tells you). Phil is presented as a dad trying to be hip, and what's more hip than non sequiturs? Non sequiturs are funny and Phil's dying to be funny, even when he thinks he's dying ("there's an Alien inside me!"), and up to what he never ceases to remind his family could be his deathbed ("don't talk black to me," which might just be the drugs talking, but it happens to be the magical 3rd time we hear one of the lines kids hate). It's no coincidence that Phil is consistently the most talked-about factor on this show, because he dares to be what older television-watchers/critics might consider to be "edgy" when in reality, he's what all us kids are already used to, which in turn makes it more all the more excruciating (and funnier) watching an adult try to skew younger (you know, with juries and such*****) in an attempt to identify with his kids.

And so, the cycle is complete: instead of shows influencing the popular culture, popular culture cannot help but permeate the show, which in turn affects the shows around it, which make up the popular culture itself. It could all be due to this newfound attention to detail, or hyper-specificity, whichever way you want to put it. Or all that details business just could be good writing, and the cyclicality of it all could just be the nature of the pop culture beast. Whichever way you look at it, at least it's funny, right?

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*(I know at least two people who just bit their lip at the mention of those two shows in the same sentence)
**And yes, sure, Tim and Eric is very obviously more absurd than Family Guy but to the general watching public, I would venture to guess that all they see is "weird." Or "how could anyone think that could be funny? A 'Snuggler?' An animated fat man farting? Give me a clean-shaven Charlie Sheen or a good old Homer Simpson on my screen now please!"
***Three is the most magical of numbers, so much so that there is a supposed "Rule" of "Threes" where everything has to happen three times for anyone to notice how funny you're being. It's an old, maybe a bit crusty standard, but hey, it works.
****Or does he? That was a pretty magical payoff at the end in the hospital bed.
*****See? There are so many levels!