Sorry things have been quiet around here, apparently there was some kind of national vote or something? Anyway, I'll have my Gossip Girl review up soon, and next week I'm hoping to pick up Pushing Daisies to replace Mad Men (tear). So anyway, with that out of the way onto the review!
I've been reading Sarah Vowell's new book, The Wordy Shipmates, which is all about the Puritans. One of the early essays is about what happens when sitcoms try to present very special episodes about American history (classics include The Brady Bunch and Happy Days, both of which did Thanksgiving episodes). So it seems somewhat appropriate that this week's Sunny carries on that grand tradition. Unfortunately, it also carries on this season's tradition of not being very funny.
Vowell's essay is partially about how difficult it is to enjoy these kinds of episodes once you know a lot about history. I admit that I ran into this problem, specifically with all the Sweet Dee is a witch jokes. Maybe its just me, but I've never associated witch hysteria with Revolution-era Philly, almost a hundred years after the Salem panic of 1692. The slave jokes also felt a little weird to me. However, I almost wonder if they were making fun of the way sitcoms tend to play history as broad as possible when they do concept episodes like this. Perhaps they were driving at some sort of meta-commentary on the sitcom form in general? Or (and I think this is more likely) they were just making fun of Dennis, Charlie, and Mac - the tellers of the story - for being total idiots.
The rest of the episode doesn't really seem to support either thought. Instead, Mac and Dennis are up to their usual schenanigans; trying to get on the good side of British General Rickety Cricket. Cricket falls for Dee, who is uninterested until he promises her lots of money and an English manor. Meanwhile, Charlie and Frank end up with a bunch of guns that don't work.
I had hoped that the reason why the last few episodes were weak was they had been so focused on making this concept episode awesome. At the very least, I thought this episode might break the pattern of saminess that has made the last few episodes so bland. Ultimately, however, this felt just as paint by numbers as the rest of them; they just used a different brush. The jokes were a little better, especially Rickety Cricket getting his head blown off, but it still wasn't nearly as funny as seasons 1-3. Even the aforementioned head-blowing-off wasn't nearly as much of a showstopper as it should have been.
So what's happening here? How did a show that was once so funny become so tedious to sit through? I think its problem may be that its lost a bit of its freewheeling edginess. This show has always been best when its been plugging horrible, horrible issues into sitcomy contexts. And mocking "the historical episode" seems like the perfect way to do that. Yet here was none of the subversiveness that has marked the show's best moments. Instead, it feels like each episode draws the show closer to redundant shtick, be it Frank's scheming, Dennis and Dee's vapidity, or Charlie's Charlieness. We've definitely hit some kind of wall here, and if cracking the Liberty Bell won't get us over it then I don't know what will.
C+
No comments:
Post a Comment