Author: Kevin Webb

Welcome, freshmen, to Dead Week. Your friends from other universities may have told you about an incredible week where they have literally nothing to do but study for their finals. As of this week, those people are no longer your friends. They aren’t liars, but they may as well be, because Dead Week is anything but.

While it isn’t dead, it’s pretty close. Teachers will sometimes (not always) reduce workloads, which means more time to study for responsible students. For the rest of us, it means more time for, again, anything but.

When it comes to procrastination, I am a Viking. I’ve Photoshopped myself kicking Oski into the pit from “300,” I’ve morphed friends’ faces together to envision their hypothetical children, I’ve written columns about TV under the guise of Dead Week advice.

As of late, though, none of that has been necessary. Why? This fall season, television has done it all for me.

I know TV traditionally has a pretty bad reputation, especially among academics. It’s shocking how many students on this very campus grew up without knowing that power coins can summon huge transforming robots called Zords, or that when Tim the Tool Man Taylor grunts, you had best duck for cover.

I also vaguely recall seeing commercials comparing a brain watching TV to an egg being scrambled, which was ironic given the advert’s medium, as well as the fact that eggs are way more delicious when scrambled.

As a lifelong TV watcher, though, I think we’re entering a new golden age, where even average shows are smarter and faster than their counterparts a decade ago. Yes, I am only going to be talking about sitcoms in this column (if you only watch TV for the reality shows, you really have no business reading, anyway).

I’ve been reflecting on how shows like “30 Rock,” “The Office,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and, my new favorite, “Community” can exist when only a few years ago we were stuck with formulaic programs like “Dharma and Greg,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and the countless sitcoms set in a magazine office/radio station/TV newsroom.

First of all, comedies today have room to develop. Unlike their forebears which traditionally started and ended in the same place every week, comedies today can have characters, plots and settings that change from episode to episode, and with online distribution, DVRs and the availability of relatively cheap DVDs, audiences can be trusted to get jokes that build on old ones.

A show just on the cusp of this phenomenon was “Arrested Development,” a series that arguably remains unsurpassed in cleverness. If you haven’t seen it, please stop reading this and watch every episode immediately. Twice. Unfortunately, the show came out just as TV show DVDs were becoming a common product and just before recent episodes could be seen online. An episode of “Arrested” independent of the ones that preceded it is confusing and only sporadically funny, a fact that I believe spelled its premature demise. But “Arrested” nonetheless paved the way for more complicated comedies, and for that we should all be grateful.

The next huge reason the modern sitcom trumps that of the old is the near-absolute death of the laugh track. Although the laugh track lingers in some decent shows (“How I Met Your Mother,” for example), ever since “The Simpsons,” an increasing number of comedies in primetime have axed it. Firstly, comedies now have more jokes. The laugh track takes precious time from those and imbues the actors with an unnatural awareness of their medium as they pause for laughter from an unseen audience.

More significantly, killing the laugh track means blurring the line between comedy and drama. With canned laughter, audiences leap from laugh to laugh and any pause between these seems uncomfortable and awkward. With it gone, writers can seamlessly move the show from high to low and give even light comedies heart. Anyone who describes “The Office” as merely a sitcom has clearly not been paying attention.

Comedies today are also no longer required to have likeable characters. George Costanza paved the road for TV douches everywhere–without him there’d be no womanizing burnout Andy Botwin on “Weeds,” no self-absorbed pretty boy Jeff Winger on “Community,” no entire cast of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” Characters like George are horrifying to watch because they expose our basest thoughts and instincts, but also therefore tap into a very raw comedic vein shows from generations before didn’t know existed.

Ultimately, though, the biggest reason comedies today succeed is that they take risks–big ones. Just imagine if Mr. Brady had stolen a golf club from a corpse at a wake, Lucy had lost the Contest, or Gilligan had released a bloodthirsty seal that later bit off the Skipper’s hand.

So study hard, but remember–if you have to take a break, leave room for TV.

Five and a half years ago, one of the biggest reasons I came to Stanford was that no other university has a band quite like ours. I grew up on their “Controversial Actions” Wikipedia page, and when I found out my HPAC had been one of the brides in the band’s infamous marriage gag at BYU, I gained an admiration for her that no transcript could ever provide. And although many of the Band’s actions may have been tasteless (see: Notre Dame, Oregon, USC), each has stemmed from a legitimate, socially conscious stance (opposing bigotry, environmental destruction and murder and excessive media attention).

It is thus with a huge amount of pride that, as of the ASU field shows, I am now a band writer. The Band comes up with the shows they want to perform, and writers come up with material to bridge the formations and inspire others.

I am also proud to say that I wrote much of this past weekend’s Girls Gone Wild show at USC. The show, which dug into sleazebag GGW founder and USC alum Joe Francis, included entirely factual lines like this:

“USC can’t take all the credit for the successes of its students. After all, it takes a special kind of man to be wanted for sexual harassment, drug trafficking, tax evasion, prostitution, child abuse and disruptive flatulence, but that’s just the kind of captain of industry Joe Francis is.”

But a few things led this show to draw attention across the Internet (Huffington Post, Twitter, etc.) and in our own administration. First of all, there was the fact that god-among-men Jim Harbaugh orchestrated an utter, 55-21 shaming of USC. Confused and distraught, several SC fans then complained about the Band show they booed through.

Their most frequent qualm was that the band formed a soap-on-a-rope in reference to Francis’s prison stays. While the Stanford athletic department approved this formation, during the show the complex arrangement got muddied, and USC fans misinterpreted it. As one USC fan tweeted: “Stanford marching band makes an ejaculating penis.” The Twitter name of that reliable witness? @emmadoes69.

I wish I were making that up. I also wish that her opinion hadn’t mattered, but the USC fans’ inaccurate, angry tweets, combined with their e-mails and phone calls (one man called in saying he somehow saw a formation where a father was having sex with his daughter), have forced our athletic department to pay heed.

I certainly do not envy our administrators who end up having to placate upset audience members any time the band does something offensive (which, if Band had its way, would be pretty often). At the same time, though, I wish they had said, “We truly are sorry you saw a penis (or a man having sex with his daughter)–while the formation was unclear, having talked to band members and seen the footage and formation charts, we trust that they did try to form a soap-on-a-rope.”

At the very least, I wish they had said, “Dudes. It wasn’t a penis. The band’s made penises before, and that was definitely not one.” Or even: “You know what? Joe Francis is, truthfully, kind of a douche. The band has every right to criticize him.” It’s frustrating seeing the representatives for our school having to bend over backward to apologize for things the band didn’t even do, when the majority of blogs, videos and comments on the Internet have been overwhelmingly supportive, often calling the show funny, timely and poignant.

Perhaps it would help if band supporters called in as often as its detractors. Maybe then we would be able to write the Big Game show we wanted to. Instead, we’ve had to remove cheap digs at Cal (example: that their hippies smell bad. It’s such an old, classic, harmless joke that I would be shocked if anyone still found it offensive), as well as our substantial jabs (we had a joke about their athletic department siphoning funds from their academic budget. Problematically, band sided with Cal’s furious professors).

It’s a shame because these cuts are unnecessary, but it’s even more disappointing because tomorrow is the most important Big Game in decades. If not even band can mock Cal for fear of upsetting their fans, who can?

That is, aside from the football team. I hope we go for two every chance we get.

Apart from the Band, one of the biggest reasons I came to Stanford was the rivalry; during Princeton’s admit weekend, I once asked my RoHo if they had one.  His response: “Well, Penn kinda thinks we’re rivals with them, but I mean, there’s just no way they’re on our level.”

The second we stop throwing mud is the second we cease to be rivals with Cal and start thinking we’re too good for them. Our rivalry is fun because in most ways, Stanford and Cal are pretty equal. They can handle jokes at their expense just as we should be able to tolerate ones at ours. It’s college. It’s fun. It’s necessary.