One of the beauties of long-form storytelling is that we get to experience the complex lives of interesting characters with them. We get glimpses into their dreary office jobs, their petty dramas with friends, and even their embarrassing defeats. We get to know them intimately, discovering the comedy and sadness that colors their worlds. We want to know how they react to it and what they’ll do next. Like any sensitive human being, these characters are diverse, and that’s why we love them. But over the course of a show (perhaps too long), the complex characters we once knew can become caricatures of themselves.
All characters are exaggerated in some way to entertain viewers, especially in sitcoms and teen dramas. But as each new season tries to outdo the last with more laughs, more tears, and more drama, the level of exaggeration turns once-funny characters into one-trick horses. Hundreds of characters suffer this fate, and each show essentially turns into a poorly made parody.
For example, “The Office,” a sitcom with a mission to highlight the day-to-day wonder of a mundane nine-to-five job, accomplished that mission with a realistic ensemble cast. They exploit each other’s boredom, each with hopes and dreams of finishing work at the end of the day and finding fulfillment in their personal lives. They all achieve that in season one, but by the series finale, some of the characters are just shells of their former, fleshed-out selves. No character exemplifies this more than Kevin Malone (Brian Baumgartner, “Trash Truck”). He was a competent accountant in his younger years, but it can take him a while to figure out what’s going on in the office. If he was confused by Jim’s (John Krasinski, “A Quiet Place”) pranks or couldn’t figure out how to use the copy machine, you’d laugh, but you’d never think of him as a reckless fool.
Problems inevitably arise when the eagerness for laughs outweighs the happiness of the characters. It slowly became less important whether Kevin could actually do the job he had held for years, or even basic math. By the end of the series, what mattered most was how stupid he could be for a punch line. The Kevin we meet at the beginning of the show is not the guy who spilled a pot of chili on the carpet and thought scooping it back would solve the problem, or the guy who was persuaded to stop because he actually thought leaving out the tentative word would save him time. Nobody cares if he does these things, because by that point his exaggeration had become the new norm. Of course, he was just a bumbling idiot in the office, and who remembers that he used to be a regular accountant?
These exaggerations don’t just extend to writing choices, but to every aspect of the character’s portrayal. In Season 1, Kevin had a disinterested, slow voice when he delivered his lines. He’d laugh when his coworkers laughed, but that didn’t mean he’d always laugh at childish sex jokes. But the new Kevin is almost a kid. From the higher-pitched voice that gives depth to every word that comes out of his mouth to his constant laughter at things only a 12-year-old would find funny, he’s the new kid. That’s what makes us laugh, right? That’s what it’s all about?
The show’s problem isn’t just its prioritization of cheap, easy comedy — laughs make you feel good, no matter how sophisticated their construction — but the show’s storytelling is much more taxing. Kevin’s storyline is thrown out the window, and any hope of audience empathy for him (as well as empathy for the mature Jim) is squandered. You’re no longer watching a human being, you’re watching a walking punchline.
One of the most famous examples of a very slippery slope is Ned Flanders (Harry Shearer, Spinal Tap) from The Simpsons. His case was so severe that the phenomenon was named after him, “Flanderization.” He was a versatile character at the beginning of the show, but happened The show ended with him as the epitome of a negative evangelical Christian stereotype, branded as religious and devoid of other character traits. He’s no longer a caring father, generous neighbor or upstanding citizen, but merely an extremist caricature for the show to poke fun at. While it’s inevitable to highlight certain character traits during its staggering 35 season run, there’s no excuse for them to drown out the rest.
Part of the problem is our addiction to overly long-running series. It’s sad to see our favorite shows cancelled too soon, but it’s just as painful to see them go on for too long due to an over-abundance of production. By the time a show becomes completely unrecognizable to us, we wish it had ended while we still had it in our hearts. Flanderization doesn’t just extend to characters, it extends to entire TV shows. Sometimes a series that starts out with the intent of making a statement about a genre or the world at large turns into a prime example of the very thing it was trying to criticize. Take “Glee,” for example. It started with characters that were already exaggerated as a way to satirize kitschy teen dramas. By sticking to this goal in its first season, the show stood out among its peers as an original and unique storyline. With so much going for it, it leaned so heavily into outlandish teen drama storylines that by the final season, viewers weren’t even sure if the show was even satirical anymore.
A similar fate befell the legendary Gossip Girl, which began as a satire of soap operas. In its early seasons, it found great success poking fun at the genre’s staples of love at first sight and dark family secret storylines. But after just a few seasons, it lost its enthusiasm and started churning out evil twin plots and secret baby reveals like there was no tomorrow. Gossip Girl became the biggest culprit in exploiting cheesy, predictable soap opera clichés. No longer speaking out about these patterns, it exploited them to survive, at the expense of originality. Gossip Girl lost its identity and, as a result, became less fun to watch.
Without purposeful storytelling, television goes from a rich escapism and reflection of the world to a hollow calorie spree aimed at occupying as much of our time as possible. Its ability to make us feel, think, dream is infinitely diminished. I’m not just going to sit back and watch a series of gaudy caricatures flash across my screen. We need real humans to keep the TV lights on.
Summer Managing Arts Editor Mina Tobia can be contacted at Email:.
