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.
Today Google 
