Thoughts on Episode 8ACV04 – Parasites Regained (SPOILERS)

[Reply #40 on:]

Well, this one is special definitely for one reason - with it the show coame to 144th episode, twice as the original FOX run. 

[Reply #41 on:]

It's always funny to read Americans talking about how no single human being could ever be responsible for more than 40% of a good episode of TV by themselves, given that single-person penned scripts with ad libs from the lead actor form the backbone of 60% of the BBC comedies that Americans either adopt more-or-less wholesale twenty years after they stop (Steptoe and Son, for example - remade a decade later in America as Sanford and Son), or use as a loose inspiration for their most popular network hits (House of Cards, as another example).

It's partly because Americans can't wrap their heads around the idea that a TV series can exist with fewer than 100 episodes without being considered a miniseries.

I will say that I don't think something like The Simpsons or Futurama would ever happen without a substantial team of writers. I could probably name fewer than five British comedies that have the same density of jokes that a good American sitcom will typically have -- but they do exist. Father Ted, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, I'm Alan Partridge, Peep Show... Notably -- all of these shows have at least two writers though.

And the rest are usually two people working together, with one supplying the jokes and the other supplying the plot (The Office, Red Dwarf, etc).

I've never heard of the plot / jokes breakdown before. I can totally see how that might be the case with Red Dwarf but that's absolutely not how The Office was written and it's not how most British comedies are written either.

It's quite possible for a single writer to come up with a brilliant comedy script. It gets done all the time. It's just not possible for American studios to accept that anything can be done without doing it by committee, which is how the Writers Room came about. And now that it's common practice, nobody thinks it can be done any other way.

Well, no... the writers' room came about from the American studio system requiring 20+ episodes of a TV show to be written every single year. A British sitcom will typically give us 6 episodes and that isn't on a fixed, yearly schedule. It's extremely common to get 5+ year gaps between a series of a British show.

[Reply #42 on:]

Bad:
To state the obvious, Nibbler pooping outside of a litterbox is well-established, back to episode S01E04. Adding that requirement as a motivation for an adventure is not convincing.

I think it's fair to assume that he doesn't have to poop in the litterbox every single time he goes. But he needs to do it fairly regularly.

The joke in the first worms episode about how very small atoms were expensive, therefore shrinking was ridiculous, was one of my favourites. Sad to see it ignored here with the shrinking ray.

At least The Professor built the new shrinking ray in front of us. It's easy enough to buy that he just invented a way around the limitation he set for himself last time.

Episodes with a package delivery:
0/4

There are like 100 package deliveries in the next episode so you should be fine.

[Reply #43 on:]

I'm a little late to the party here, but one thing I want to add to the whole individual writer vs. writers' room discussion: I understand that comedies are largely room-written (the bonus "Jurassic Bark" commentary provides a great rundown of what that process looked like during Futurama's original run), but I also think that each writer has a unique style, sensibility, and approach to their work. I can't count how many times the Simpsons commentaries praise John Swartzwelder for delivering first-draft scripts whose material was largely retained in the final episode as aired (and I seem to recall Mike Reiss or Al Jean noting that Jon Vitti was his mother's favorite writer, which suggests Vitti's credited episodes have a certain vibe to them. On the flipside, George Meyer has very few episodes credited to him, but many of the show's best stories/jokes originate with him). It also seems pretty clear that even if stories are broken in the room, the actual writing assignments are often made based on which writer would be best suited to the concept.

I guess what I'm saying is I think there's a middle ground between saying the credited writer means everything and the credited writer means nothing. There's a reason Ken Keeler has written every season finale, and I don't think it's just tradition: I think he has a knack for it. He also strikes me as a writer with a strong "voice" that manages to remain intact (to some degree) even after a script is revised/rewritten in the room. Some of us (myself included) may have a tendency to exaggerate the singularity of Keeler's talents, but I think the guy—sort of like Swartzwelder—is a bit of a character himself, and his odd little idiosyncracies find their way into his work, even after that work runs the gauntlet of the writer's room.

[Reply #44 on:]

There are absolutely certain qualities I associate with specific writers on Futurama that suggests the old line about who gets credited is largely meaningless isn't exactly accurate.

David X. Cohen's episodes tend to be reliably VERY funny and in a very Futurama way -- which makes sense seeing as he's the showrunner.

Ken Keeler doesn't strike me like an especially funny writer, (by Futurama's standards) honestly. He's great at plotting, emotion and big, complex ideas. He seems to have a love of things like country music, real-life astrological bodies, etc that make their way into his work a lot.

Eric Rogers episodes are consistently bottom of the barrel with a huge amount of cringey, terrible jokes that often barely even make sense and often fairly mediocre, unimaginative plotting too. I think it's very telling that he wasn't asked back for the revival (which he's confirmed to be the case on Twitter).

Maiya Williams seems to write solid episodes that are actually on the funnier side for the show but perhaps leave a tiny bit to be desired in terms of plotting (the way Bender's ass getting back to him at the end of Assie Come Home or the "eh screw it let's just kill the sub-parasites" ending of Parasites Regained for example).

Etc.

[Reply #45 on:]

Bad:
To state the obvious, Nibbler pooping outside of a litterbox is well-established, back to episode S01E04. Adding that requirement as a motivation for an adventure is not convincing.

I think it's fair to assume that he doesn't have to poop in the litterbox every single time he goes. But he needs to do it fairly regularly.

For the poop thing - yeah, it could /possibly/ be explained, but it still wasn't convincing. The explanation would have to account for Leela becoming aware of the need for special litter before she knew Nibber could talk. It's far-fetched.

The joke in the first worms episode about how very small atoms were expensive, therefore shrinking was ridiculous, was one of my favourites. Sad to see it ignored here with the shrinking ray.

At least The Professor built the new shrinking ray in front of us. It's easy enough to buy that he just invented a way around the limitation he set for himself last time.

The shrink ray was similar - it was thrown out in a couple lines of dialog, with no real acknowledgement of past episodes. Which is often fine, if it serves the humour. But it kind of took the wind out of the joke about very small atoms existing but being pricey, so it was a net loss, in my books anyway.

[Reply #46 on:]

've never heard of the plot / jokes breakdown before. I can totally see how that might be the case with Red Dwarf but that's absolutely not how The Office was written and it's not how most British comedies are written either.

The Office was written by Marchant and Gervais. According to a TV interview from between S1 and S2, M supplied the overall cringe-humor and wierd jokes like encasing staplers in jelly. G supplied the arc for his character. M and G then worked out the  rest between them.

For Black Books, Dylan Moran plotted the episodes and came up with character arcs. Other writers were brought on to put the surreal comedy into the episodes, since Miran's original pilot relied heavily in very dark, bleak, almost existential humor.

David Renwick wrote multiple comedy series' where he was the sole writer of credit. But he had a number of "consultants" advising where some lighter notes or pure slapstick might help prevent the comedy from being a little too grim.

It's a longstanding tradition for Armando Iannuci and Steve Coogan to pair up to write various shows (most famously Alan Partridge).

Blackadder was written by Ben Elton and had history jokes sprinkled in by Richard Curtis (see the DVD extras for Season 2, IIRC).

Peep Show was by Armstrong and Bain, who plotted the series arcs. They brought other writers in and allowed the cast to ad lib to refine the cringe factor and ramp up the surrealism.

Plot and humor coming from two separate sources is quite rife through British TV writing. There's just not a lot of meta-content out there regarding the process. Doug Naylor and Armando Oannuci are probably the folks wove said the most about that, and they honestly haven't said much outside of snippets in interviews or DVD extras.

Anyway... The Writers Room, according to Robert Llewellyn, works at roughly the same pace as the average British sitcom, but constantly rather than for a quarter of the year. It's a churn. It's also got a lot more voices. So it is hard to establish a good comparison vis-a-vis workload. But it appears to be simply a bigger, noisier, room than the old UK equivalent.

The reason we got huge gaps between series in the UK has historically been the byzantine funding apportionment processes from the BBC HQ and C4 who produced most of the comedy series that have become beloved classics.

Most of the writers mentioned above have had 6-18 episodes ready to film at a time, with only 6 being greenlit at once. Most of them have sold scripts with blank character names to the BBC for miscellaneous purposes. And plenty of staff writers at the BBC sit in dark rooms carefully polishing turds that might never be broadcast for most of their time.

British TV is a fucked up industry in many ways. But when it comes to words on paper, it's not unproductive.



I stand by my comments.

[Reply #47 on:]

For the poop thing - yeah, it could /possibly/ be explained, but it still wasn't convincing. The explanation would have to account for Leela becoming aware of the need for special litter before she knew Nibber could talk. It's far-fetched.

Counterpoint: Leela is actually seen throwing out Nibbler's litter in "That Darn Katz!", which is after his cover was blown.

I know it's fun to try and rationalise continuity errors, but I think it's clear they pulled this idea from their butts.

[Reply #48 on:]

've never heard of the plot / jokes breakdown before. I can totally see how that might be the case with Red Dwarf but that's absolutely not how The Office was written and it's not how most British comedies are written either.

The Office was written by Marchant and Gervais. According to a TV interview from between S1 and S2, M supplied the overall cringe-humor and wierd jokes like encasing staplers in jelly. G supplied the arc for his character. M and G then worked out the  rest between them.

Interesting. Everything I've ever read/heard them say on the matter is that they would basically improv their way through first drafts of the episodes into a tape recorder and then Merchant would clean it up while Gervais would fuck about, generally annoy Merchant, but throw ideas out and what have you while he was doing it.

It sounds like it was very similar to their dynamic on their old radio show, minus Karl Pilkington. I think their respective work without each other shows that they're both desperately in need of each other from a plotting perspective. It certainly doesn't imply that one of them was handling the plot and the other was handling the comedy. Gervais for example clearly understands what plot beats a show/movie needs to contain to work but has no idea how to earn them.

For Black Books, Dylan Moran plotted the episodes and came up with character arcs. Other writers were brought on to put the surreal comedy into the episodes, since Miran's original pilot relied heavily in very dark, bleak, almost existential humor.

So you're telling me Dylan Moran didn't bother to write any jokes into the show? What you're describing sounds like a writer wrote everything and then brought in people to do punch-up which is absolutely not a plotting / jokes split like you described before.

David Renwick wrote multiple comedy series' where he was the sole writer of credit. But he had a number of "consultants" advising where some lighter notes or pure slapstick might help prevent the comedy from being a little too grim.

Again, absolutely not what you were describing before.

It's a longstanding tradition for Armando Iannuci and Steve Coogan to pair up to write various shows (most famously Alan Partridge).

But it's not like Coogan writes the plot and Iannucci writes the jokes, is it? They both do both.

Blackadder was written by Ben Elton and had history jokes sprinkled in by Richard Curtis (see the DVD extras for Season 2, IIRC).

Yes but they both wrote jokes. In fact they would go back and forth doing rewrites of each other's works. Draft 1 of an episode by one person, draft 2 by the other, draft 3 by the first person and so on. They famously had a rule whereby if one of them removed the other one's joke, they weren't allowed to add it back in later. It was gone. That really suggests that both of them were writing jokes to me -- not just Richard Curtis.

Peep Show was by Armstrong and Bain, who plotted the series arcs. They brought other writers in and allowed the cast to ad lib to refine the cringe factor and ramp up the surrealism.

Once again, Armstrong and Bain both scripted and plotted the shows and wrote the vast majority of the jokes together. It wasn't split between the two of them. The fact that a total of six episodes out of 54 are credited to other writers doesn't change that. Neither does adlibbing.

Plot and humor coming from two separate sources is quite rife through British TV writing.

I wasn't disputing the idea that two writers often work together in British comedy. I was disputing the second half of your sentence: "with one supplying the jokes and the other supplying the plot". That isn't how it works.

[Reply #49 on:]

One will usually supply the plot insofar as drafting the episode.

The other comes in and they fuck around together until it's funny.

There. Does that make more sense to you? The point I was making was not that one writer does plot exclusively and the other exclusively does jokes. It was that with one writer laying down the bones of the episode and then bringing in the other to help flesh it out, an episode can be written without twenty people being needed.

You're getting hung up on me describing this in (admittedly flippant) terms of there being a split between writers "doing plot" or "doing comedy", when that's not what I meant to imply.

As you mentioned, Blackadder was plotted by one writer for each episode. Then polished up by the pair. And that's when the rapid fire humor comes in rather than the fun one liners. You get jokes being added in on top of (and throughout the buildup to) the main joke of the scene. Background jokes. Dialogue tweaks. Re-takes for an actor to nail the right facial expression that is another source of humor.

And my overall point wasn't even that this process is utilized in British TV writing. It was that this process (which in the examples I gave includes maybe five or six people at its most person-intensive) can birth more than six scripts a season. There are often several  "lost episodes" in script form that just never got filmed for British shows (examples; Red Dwarf, The Office, Keeping Up Appearances, Yes Minister, The Good Life, Only Fools and Horses, Waiting for God, To The Manor Born, Doc Martin, Spaced).

Six episodes is what the BBC or C4 paid for and aired at a time. The six best out of potentially two dozen scripts.

Just to address things quickly, point by point: sounds like we saw the same interview for The Office. Marchant laid out the episode premise and structure with Gerbil tatting around in the background and giving Marchant the lines for David Brent. Marchant worked around this.

Dylan Moran didn't wrote "jokes", no. Character driven, dry, surreal, darkly humorous set-pieces that needed the mood lightened a little appears to have been what he initially came up with. So, a first draft. Which then got tidied up.

Same thing for David Renwick. He wrote something grim, and then other people were enlisted to add lighter notes. Sounds very much like my description. First there's a plot. Then there is collaboration. Then it's funnier.

As I understand it, Coogan and Iannucci's process is very much that they take turns coming up with plot and jokes. One provides "this happens" and then it's the other's job to make it worse in a way that the audience will enjoy.

Elton and Curtis both wrote jokes, yes. You will note that I mentioned history jokes in particular. And as much as they took turns drafting, Elton has always claimed to be the major architect of the subject of episodes, with Curtis having taken credit for "anything that's really funny or really gross".

The fact is, one person writing the bones of a TV episode from scratch and then allowing a small group of others to add flesh is the norm in Britain, if you prefer a more considered phrasing.

Whereas a wholesale effort by committee is usually what happens in American TV - multiple writers will craft the skeleton, sometimes several teams of writers pitching competing bare-bones plots that may be Frankensteined together by the showrunner. And then everybody in the room weighs in on the dialogue line-by-line.

And it goes through several passes around the room, several looks over by the showrunners, before it goes to shooting.

And then it may be subject to rewrites during production. Which may be pretty substantial processes. Sometimes with completely fresh eyes brought to the script.

Everything is filtered through twenty brains, rather than half a dozen.

And yet, despite this, American TV shows are still not necessarily producing more scripted material. Just filming more of what they produce.

[Reply #50 on:]

Yeah sorry. I got hung up on thinking you meant what you said. But totally happy to just move on due to clear confusion here.

Writing a first draft isn't the same thing as plotting, by the way. That's not to say that some writing partnerships don't work that way, but I suspect the majority do things the same way a US writers' room does which is to "break" the plot as a room, then send one writer away to write the first draft based on that plot.

[Reply #51 on:]

Writing a first draft isn't the same thing as plotting, by the way.

The first draft tends to at least inform the outline of the plot though. My apologies for any confusion.

Let us move on indeed. To the next episode.

[Reply #52 on:]

Worst episode of the new run. It felt like a holdover from the Comedy Central years.