The Chris Moeller Archives

The end of America's "two-act" standard?

"Everybody Loves Raymond" signed off tonight with a poignant, funny episode that the network and show's producers thoughtfully and modestly limited in length to its usual half hour. As Ray Barone's family members were forced to briefly contemplate life without their spouse/sibling/child, my thoughts turned to our new lives without the American sitcom. Bloated and worn, whipped and drained of every ounce of its creative existence, it appears we will now begin trudging ahead in our lives without one of the most elastic and once-comforting artforms in America.

What Lucy begat, Gleason structured, and Mary and a handful of others broadened slowly began disintegrating a decade and a half ago. "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," the inspiration behind all the great workplace comedies, experimented away from the 'two-act' formula. "Taxi" abandoned the single-shot directing approach; and by the time "Seinfeld" had ended, the number of scenes in a half hour show had exploded to as many as 40. "The Simpsons" deserves the most credit for exploring new frontiers in television comedy (particularly its timing and pacing)-- so much so that today's great comedies (read: "Arrested Development") are more like cartoons than they are "All in the Family," or even "Cheers."

The last distinct "extended coma" for a television genre that comes to mind occurred in the mid-1980s when "Moonlighting" (finally on DVD May 31st) introduced a hip, over-dialogued, music-licensed approach to the private detective series. It proceeded to bludgeon the traditional mystery formula with Lizzie Borden-like conviction. "Hill Street Blues" had added layers of character and atmospheric texture to the structure, but "Moonlighting" openly mocked it. (By the time "Hill Street" ended, there was little left for it to influence. With "LA Law" still at its peak of production, even "Hill Street" creator, Steven Bochco, was borrowing more from "Moonlighting" than from his own past success.)

The tube was still populated by private detective series and police procedurals after "Moonlighting," but structurally, they would never be the same. (How do you keep viewers down on the "Hawaii Five-O" farm after they've seen Bruce Willis converse with a clay-mation telephone?) Just as TV still restocks the mystery genre (now almost exclusively forensic science-related,) we will still see "Raymond"-like family living rooms on television for some time to come, arguably even a lot of them. But what we will not see for an indeterminate period of time is "Raymond's" freshness and originality. The artiste has left the building.

It's a tribute to Ray Romano's show, really, that it endured the way it did. It didn't become the last of its breed by flaunting the rules and writing new ones, like "Moonlighting." It played completely by the old rules. The show's creators took an education and an understanding of what Lucy, Norman Lear, Barry Kemp, Jim Burrows and the Charles brothers had been doing for nearly half a century, and they wrote an inspired new chapter in the text based on the earlier work.

The analogy will sound odd, but I compare it to the way the Plains Indians treated the bison on the prairie. According to historians, the native hunters didn't simply tear off the hide and leave the corpse of the animal to rot after a killing (like those cavalry baffoons who will never know the enlightenment of "Stands With a Fist" or "Dances With Wolves.") They ate the meat, used the bones for their tents, and fashioned jewelry from the animal's teeth. (I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.)
Romano, co-creator Phil Rosenthal, and the ELR writing staff drew from their own experiences (the fruit of the month, the taping over the wedding video, etc. The piano lesson episode, I believe, came from my life.) They brought back the lighter, softer pace of an earlier time. Their efficiency even included finding a recurring role on-screen for Rosenthal's wife. (Monica Horan played Robert's wife.)

Despite that minor cast change and an unfortunate clunker of an episode in which the family traveled to Italy, "Raymond" stayed true to what it was. No ridiculous ratings stunts, no pregnancies, no changing of the focus to the children. They pulled a soft sponge out of the lukewarm sitcom water, and lightly squeezed all of the water out. Tonight, they had the good sense to drop the sponge on the edge of the sink and walk away, without squeezing until their grip had become raw.


When I first wrote this text, I used the phrase "death" in an early reference to describe the next status of the sitcom, but on second pass I changed the phrase to "extended coma," because the sitcom isn't dead. Young people are enjoying reruns of "Cheers" and "The Golden Girls" every day across this land, chuckling perhaps at the outdated hairstyles and clothing, but seeing these shows for the first time, and warming to their gentle nature and sense of humor. They are stories based on tried and true formulas, imagined by talented people. Everything old one day becomes new again. In the meantime, the genre will gradually replenish itself, while we enjoy the revolutionary and captivating original programming of HBO, and at least one hysterically-funny network show.
The old sitcom walls hold feelings of great nostalgia. They were frequently comforting, and they often supported great architecture. But right now, they're down, and I for one plan to make the most of my freedom.

posted by CM @ 11:57 PM