New Girl’s most
recent episode “Pepperwood” was arguably the funniest episode this season, but
it skimped on the plot. Its B-plot was so underwhelmingly developed (despite
being low-key and sincere like the best New
Girl plots), while the A-plot danced a fine line of eye-raising broadness. It
was easy to forgive the lack of plot grounding the narrative because it was
packed with jokes; hilarious, varied jokes that it could make it easy to forget
just how ridiculous it was to see Jess and Nick stalking one of her creepy
adult students.
To a lesser extent, How
I Met Youth Mother’s recent episode “Ring Up” experienced similar
circumstances. The plot devices of the episode were iffy at best (Ted is
getting old! Robin’s engagement ring makes her invisible!), but there were more
jokes in the episode than there has been since early seasons of HIMYM. While New Girl managed it a bit better 1) because there’s no serialized
end game to get to and 2) it’s newer and fresher, the fact remains (that for me
at least) the abundance of jokes slightly makes up for just how little I cared for
or believed in the plot.
Happy Endings is
one of the most joyously funny series on television. It crams in a cornucopia
of jokes, and so we often forgive just how awful its plots can sometimes be. But
if you actually stop to consider some of the stories that Happy Endings bases its jokes around, they can be fairly idiotic,
weird, mean-spirited and generally questionable. However, what most people
admire about Happy Endings is that
this is pretty much solely what it aims to achieve. It thins the plot to a
minimum and ramps up the jokes per minute.
On the other hand, New
Girl and HIMYM’s best episodes
were not “Pepperwood” or “Ring Up”. In fact, we know both series are capable of
producing much more neatly and interestingly plotted episodes than these two
episodes. HIMYM’s best episode this
season remains to be “Final Page” (the mid-season finale where Barney proposes
to Robin), while New Girl has had a number
of really good episodes this season that are arguably better than “Pepperwood”,
including “Fluffer”, “Models”, “Menzies”, “Eggs”, and “Santa”. While these
episodes were not nearly as funny as “Pepperwood” or “Ring Up” (“Final Page”
reaches a bit too hard for jokes at times – especially in Part 1 of the episode
– and the A-plot of “Models” does not stack up with just how good the sub-plot
about the cookie is), they’re not nearly as good as other work we’ve seen from
these series. Telling a good story seems to trump just how funny that story may
be.
Let’s take Cougar Town
as a different example. Cougar Town
isn’t always a massively funny series; at times, it’s very amusing but it’s not
typically gut-bustingly laugh worthy. However, Cougar Town is perhaps a better series than New Girl, HIMYM, and Happy Endings. Though I may not laugh as
much when I watch Cougar Town, I
almost always finish an episode satisfied. Characters face issue and problems;
they confront them; there are resolutions. Sometimes the characters evolve;
other times status quo remains. But it tells believable, practical stories
about characters I like and care about, and it does it consistently, and
effectively.
However, I maintain a good deal of respect for series that
have the ambition or the fortitude to pack an episode with jokes and do it mindfully
enough that the episode doesn’t go off the rails. It brings with it
difficulties of a different sort than telling a fully realized, well-arced
narrative. It’s hard to determine just what will or won’t make people laugh.
Sometimes an episode is going to please some but totally alienate others.
If a show’s plot is going to be suspect though, it needs to
be at least making me laugh so much that I could care less that it’s all rather
pointless.
What does everyone else think?
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