(no subject)

Julie had a good observation about Inside Amy Schumer: many of the premises are excellent, but the writing fails to live up to them except in flashes. The performances, direction etc. are usually committed and amusing enough so it's just this holding everything back. It's oddly similar to the Onion problem, where it's almost always a mistake to read the actual article. Hearing the broadest summary of a sketch is probably more fun than watching one, since you immediately start to see the possibilities - or anyway get a sense that someone funnier than you could. Much different from the normal way comedies fail, as most do, from either having no ideas of their own or trying to go way too far with thin ones. Not that Schumer et al. don't go too far in the wrong directions, just there's often a clear-feeling right one that gets mostly and maddeningly neglected. It almost feels like there's someone brilliant on the writing staff whose efforts get swamped by inferior ideas of others, because of an atmosphere of democracy or something, which was the impression I got from Family Guy back at its height, where the general, nasty and easy run would get interrupted by a few seconds of something amazing every now and then.

Julie's take: "It's like they just talked about it for fifteen minutes when they needed to talk about it for an hour." Maybe that? I guess the real mystery is why any comedy writers' room works, when it does. And not just for comedy, or groups, or writing: what lets people know when an hour is called for? The material doesn't tell you, or anyway there's something stopping almost everyone from listening to it properly - or rather absolutely everyone almost all the time. Alas.