As Noel proves on a weekly basis in Popless, your life history is inextricably tied to your aesthetic judgments. So it's with some trepidation that we revisit the art, literature, and pop culture that we loved years ago. Will that sitcom that was a weekly source of delight back in the days of Aum Shinrikyo, Jacques Chirac, and Christopher Reeve falling off a horse not thirty miles from my apartment still seem as funny and inventive today? Or was it all just the pre-marriage, mid-grad school, Contract With America haze?
I'll be investigating that question with this summer's examination of Newsradio, one of my favorite television shows of all time. I can't pretend to be an unbiased inquirer, though — I'm entering the project ready to laugh and love with America's never-cracked-the-Nielsen-top-25 sweethearts, Dave Nelson and Lisa Miller, and I'm likely to cut even the soggiest episodes some slack. I certainly don't expect to be disappointed, although if I am, the wrath of the spurned lover could well ensue. And along the way, I'll be reconsidering the legacy and potential of the traditional three-camera situation comedy, a form I grew up on and a form that I continue to believe in, even in these postmodern times.
So with that in mind … WNYX News time: Tuesday nights in 1995!
"Pilot"
Raise your hand if you made a special effort to watch the first episode of this midseason replacement because you were a Kids In The Hall fan. Dave Foley — one of the many Daves that Bruce McCulloch knows — made his debut on American TV, and those of us who'd grown fond of the boyish, gap-toothed comedian through KITH reruns on Comedy Central were pretty damn excited. (Cue Jimmy James: "That kind of strong language don't fly with me, Dave.")
And looking back on it, it's amazing how many elements of the Newsradio mystique were already present, in embryonic form, in the pilot. In the typical fashion, the pilot was shot long before the series got the green light for more episodes, so Dave's hair is atrociously feathered, the engineer ("Rick") is played by Greg Lee, Catherine is mentioned but has no lines (and is played in the background by a different actress), Matthew is only a moderate spaz with absolutely no cutesy detritus on his desk, et cetera. But an impressive amount of the series is already on model: Jimmy James, a character whose inscrutable hick-mogul enthusiasm was central to Dave's stuck-in-the-middle-with-you character arc, strolls onto the set completely formed from the first moment, and the whole point of the pilot seems to be to introduce the frenetic open-plan office energy that keeps Dave constantly off-balance for five seasons.
The teaser opening, in which Dave walks confidently into a building lobby and chats with the security guard, planning his elevator ride to arrive at the WYNX offices precisely at 9 am, establishes the Dave Nelson personality as a direct extension of the characters Foley played in a thousand KITH sketches: a man whose confident self-image is completely conditional on the inputs of his environment. It takes only an instant for that adult certainty to crumble, turning Dave into an anxious, exasperated, lost kid. And it's Foley's peculiar genius — I say this as a huge Dave Foley fan — to make that kid lovable, and to make us want to root for him.
It's also impressive that the very first episode features the appearance of what I think of as the signature Newsradio shot: a static medium shot in which a character runs full speed into or out of the frame. Here it's combined with Foley's gift for physical comedy (yes, he was once lithe enough to do physical comedy!). It's a callback to an earlier (very funny) bit of physical comedy where Dave briefly waffles between following Jimmy James into the office and picking up his scattered briefcase and papers on the floor. In the second occurrence, Ed the erstwhile news director has come back up the elevator after ostentatiously quitting, sliding his file box of office possessions into the lobby. As he and Jimmy stride back into the office, Dave starts to follow, but has to dash back to the box upon hearing Jimmy (offscreen) say "pick it up." I've been so conditioned to the inherent comedy in that combination of framing and blocking that the mere appearance of a static medium shot at the right camera distance causes me to chuckle.
"Inappropriate"