Deciphering Comedies

Lately I’ve been seriously addicted to a comedy show: New Girl. It’s about this girl, Jess who is looking for an apartment and ends up living in a loft with three other guys who are best friends. There’s Schmidt, the guy with the money that insists on everything having to be perfect, who is kind of in love with Cece, the model, which is Jess’s best friend. There’s Winston the ex basketball player. And Nick the really disorganized guy who hasn’t figured out his life yet, and who has a mutual attraction to Jess.

I’ve never really paid much attention o why and how comedies are so funny and inviting to people. But after reading chapter twenty of Thank You For Arguing, everything makes much more sense. All comedies have this repetitive script, just like chick flicks, and romantic novel. I’m not saying they’re necessarily telling the same story, just that the story line is really similar. Well as romantic stories always begin with the girl hating the guy and then reaching a problem, ending with them falling in love and blah blah blah. Comedies, as I learned, also have certain trick that Shakespeare used many years ago. And these are some examples of what I got out of one episode of New Girl.

The episode I analyzed was about Jess being mad with Cece because Cece had become rather superficial after becoming a model, but Jess screws up and has to make up to Cece. In the other side, Schmidt is infuriated with Nick because he claims he love Nick, but Nick doesn’t feel the same way about Schmidt. And Winston is just in the background supporting Schmidt.

The fist figure I got out of this episode was when Winston was trying to make a point to Nick, and he did so by denying what Nick was saying, and by using a low tone-turning the volume down.

NICK: Nobody buys people cookies for no good reason.

WINSTON: You sill don’t get it, do you?

NICK: Nobody!

WINSTON: That wasn’t a cookie that was a piece of his heart, now if you don’t mind, GOOD NIGHT.

Now, before this argument started, Schmidt had given a cookie to nick, but Nick hadn’t put much importance to it. Also Winston had emphasized to Nick how rood he was for never saying good night to him. That would explain the ending of the argument. Even though this is a really silly argument, that is kind of the point, and Nick ends up feeling guilty at the end of the scene, while Winston ends up sounding more reasonable.

Another example, more to the end of the episode was when Nick finally tried to be nice, and bought a cookie for Schmidt, but Schmidt seemed insulted.

SCHMIDT: This is so terrible!

NICK: You gave me a cookie, I gave you a cookie.

NICK: You gave me a cookie,  gave you cookie.

NICK: Gave me cookie,  got you cookie.

NICK: You gave me a cookie, I got you a cookie man.

NICK: You gave me a cookie, I gave you a cookie. We’re even!

NICK: We’re even Schmidt!

NICK: What do you want from me Schmidt!

Here the opposite happened, Nick amplified the argument to prove his point. At the begging he said it real low, and with every new phrase he amplified the volume, until he was just screaming. He got to a climax and “used overlapping words in successive phrases to effect a rhetorical crescendo”.(Pg. 225)

Although this script might seem incredibly silly, it works perfectly. We can see how scripts for comedies are created taking this, many year old tools, and creating pieces that attract audiences by using these figures. Now I can be able to say every time I’m watching a comedy, every technique that is used. Although I will probably get hit in the face by whoever is watching it with me, because, nobody really cares about that stuff, only if you know what it is, and then it’s really interesting.