LUDIC LOG

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a comedy fascist.

Sid Caesar is famously rumored to have dangled Mel Brooks out of a window and threatened to drop him if he didn't deliver better scripts for "Your Show of Shows"; Robert Benchley confessed to living in fear of the man who would yell "louder and funnier!" at his speaking engagements.

I am that man.

In the Simpsons fan community, if you are lame enough to call it a community, there is a rift between those who think the show has gotten better as time has gone on and the much larger group who feel it went off the rails sometime around season 4. The latter often point to inconsistent characterization, absurd situations, the lack of a moral center, total disregard for continuity, and abandonment of the show's basic premise as evidence of its decline. How do the former answer this charge? I'm one of them, and I'll tell you: fuck characterization. Fuck realism. Fuck sympathy, continuity and being true to the creative vision. Just be funny.

It's often been pointed out to me that anarchists make the best fascists; similarly, everything I despise about market capitalism and the workplace, I would enact with a vengeance if I were the King of Comedy. Writers would be fired like leaves from autumn trees; people would get their paychecks docked for even mentioning bugaboos like plausibility, consistency or dramatic structure; gag writers would be chained to steam pipes and fed dog leavings until they produced something that literally made me laugh out loud. Nothing would matter -- my reputation, the health and safety of my underlings, the dignity and happiness of my employees, what my family looked like and when they celebrated their various birthdays and anniversaries -- except making it funnier, always funnier. I would be the most cutthroat humor-market capitalist the world had ever seen, Gordon Gekko with a greasepaint mustache. To hell with dangling people out the window; I would actually drop them, especially if I had cause to believe they might one day direct "Robin Hood: Men in Tights".

Watching Andy Richter Controls the Universe brought all my ugly totalitarian tendencies to the fore. The former late-night sidekick is one of the most talented natural comic actors I've ever seen, and was, in his former role, a master of understatement and the deadly undercutting of an entire scene with a simple look or a single word. And having seen him cameo in films and on other television shows, I know his impossible-to-learn style translates well to other comic formats. But goddamn it, the show just isn't funny enough. It cares too much about its banal workplace drama. It sets up situations with tremendous comic potential and pulls the rug out from under them with predictable resolutions. It wants us to pay attention to the tedious character relationships, which we've seen a thousand times before. And worst of all, it pulls its punches, which is the ultimate crime of a show like this.

Perhaps I'm speaking too soon; only two episodes have aired. But they don't speak well for the future. Andy Richter is far too great a talent to waste his time on a project that isn't going to advance his career; and this show has "early cancellation" written all over it. It's not banal or sexy enough to draw in mainstream viewers; so it needs people like me to make a cult hit out of it. And it won't get people like me unless it stops pussyfooting around and goes for the jugular. It's hard to blame the star; he's neither the writer nor the creator of the show. But neither was Jackie Gleason; he just knew his ass was on the line, and he made goddamn sure his writers knew that if he went down, they were going to give him a soft landing. Andy is a big man, and he's worked in Hollywood long enough to have a mean streak a mile wide. He needs to crack a window, throw his weight where it will do some good, and start screaming: "Louder and funnier!"

Lustspiel macht frei, comrades. Lustspiel macht frei.