“MICHAEL SCHUR: I believe that there are many, many, many, many
advantages to doing a show on a premium cable or streaming service like, for
example, there’s no commercials, you can curse, you can do whatever you want, you
can make the episodes whatever length you want-
ANDY GREENWALD: I like that “doing whatever you want” was the third
thing after “cursing”.
MS: Cursing, I, I wholeheartedly support cursing on TV. I think
there should be more cursing in general- and more bleeping
AG: But bleeping is funnier than cursing.
MS: I kind of agree, um, but you can also, like there’s on network
you run, you have to run the credits over the show which interrupts the show,
there’s snipes for other shows that interrupt your show… so I, there obviously,
there are many obvious advantages of going somewhere besides a network, but I
think there are also advantages that are maybe less obvious of staying on
network, besides just a sense of loyalty that the NBC Peacock means something to
me, it does. I think comedy works really
well when there are a lot of obstacles to it, um, I think obstacles breads
creativity and breeds good problem solving and I think that comedy works best
when it’s very crisp and lean, and I think that if you say to someone like,
“You can have as much time as you want, and you can- there’s no commercials,
and you can mill around, and just get in that pool and swim around”, I think a
lot of- my opinion, some comedies, many comedies, or at least half hour shows
that are on other networks, premium
networks we’ll call them, can get a little “meander-y” and a little
kinda soft. And that’s not to say that’s bad, or maybe that’s exactly what
they’re going for, but there’s a way in which having to write in a crisp,
three-act structure, or now it’s like a four-act structure- which is a whole
other problem, but having to write to, a
certain, when you’re breaking stories it forces you to be really lean and mean,
it forces you to edit yourself, it forces you to think about the classic
storytelling structure of Act One, Act Two, Act Three, and I, and I, it’s not
that you don’t remember those things, you don’t suddenly forget them if you go
somewhere else, but I think it becomes less vital to your process, and I kind
of believe that it’s good for writing to be, to be presented with those
specific obstacles- for comedy at least.
…
MS: The show should be as long as the story demands, not as long as
you can take with it. And part of what I like about being on a network is- it’s
a little annoying that every episode has to be exactly twenty-one minutes and
thirty seconds, I think it’s extremely unlikely, that the optimal length for
every single episode of every single show is exactly that long… but it is a
sort of, like, this is the deal man, that you have to write, and edit, and act
a story that is length, and it’s not very long, and there’s something that’s
kind of perversely appealing about that to me.”
Little did Mr. Schur know (or
maybe he did), that a few weeks after that conversation, Netflix would release Love- a comedy partially brought to them
by the King of the Non-Edit Judd Apatow. The show is ten episodes long, and the pilot came in at a little over 40 minutes with the rest of the episodes
averaging 33 minutes per episode. The length of these episodes, especially the pilot, has been a common complaint of the show. Judd Apatow has made an entire career in
comedy since 2005’s The 40 Year Old
Virgin based upon his refusal to edit down his movies (or entire storylines
as was the case with his wife Leslie Mann’s character in Funny People). It’s made Mr. Apatow very wealthy and powerful- but
it’s also caused a decrease in the quality of his work. Either way, it
shouldn’t have been a surprise that a Judd Apatow project was as long as it
was.
However, Mr. Apatow is not the
only one guilty of creating comedies that are too long. Tina Fey, arguably Mr.
Apatow’s equal in terms of power and creating content, had this same problem
with the second season of her show Unbreakable
Kimmy Schmidt. The first season of show, while originally airing on
Netflix, was created and shot to be aired on NBC. Therefore, it had the same
constructs and obstacles that Mr. Schur discussed earlier. A Tina Fey, and her creative
partner Robert Carlock, project is known for jamming in as many jokes per
episode as possible. That’s partially what made the first season of Kimmy Schmidt so hilarious. However, Fey
and Carlock did not have those restrictions for the show’s second season, and
it showed. By Netflix giving Fey and Carlock a longer leash and more freedom,
the show seemed unable to have that same zip, swagger and ability to throw out
a nonsensical, yet gut bustingly funny one-liner like it did in the show’s
rookie season. The quantity of the jokes seemed the same, but they were more
spread out since the episodes were longer. Therefore, the jokes didn’t land as
effectively as they probably would have if the episodes were only 22 minutes
long.
Netflix isn’t the only network
guilty of this (although we’ll get to them later), as Showtime and HBO also
give their creative teams more leeway and more freedom- largely in part that
since these networks don’t have commercials. Comedies on these networks have to
be a full 30 minutes. While that’s still less time than the average episode
length of Love, it’s still
significantly more time than a network show like Parks and Recreation. I think the time length hurts the quality of
these shows. That’s a huge reason why I give up on Veep. I got excited when I saw that their episodes were only 30
minutes long, but as I binge watched the show’s first two seasons, I realized
that, “holy crap, these episodes are a full 30 minutes in length”. There is
just too much time to fill and not enough content (or jokes) for that time.
The comedies that (I believe)
succeed the most are the ones that either highly self-edit themselves, or have so
many interesting subplots bursting at the seams that the extra time is
essential. Mr. Schur worked with Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, the creators of
Netflix’s Master of None, to edit and
edit their episodes to create ten short films that are as crisp as possible.
Since both Mr. Ansari and Mr. Yang come from the world of network comedies and
enlist help from a man who strongly believes in the 22-minute episode format,
they are able to create the best possible project. Or, take for example
something like Netflix’s Wet Hot American
Summer: First Day of Camp. That show has a principal cast larger than the
amount of superheroes in Captain America:
Civil War with at least 6 different subplots going on at once. That’s a
show that needs time to bounce around from place to place and character to
character and Netflix gave that show that freedom to bounce.
Premium networks and streaming
services have given us some great comedies. But at the end of the day, the
evidence is clear, especially for streaming services, that there does need to
be more notes and editing done to these shows if they want the best possible
product. As a showrunner and creator, it’s certainly nice not to have your work
criticized at every step of the way, but ultimately, that criticism will
probably make you and your work better as a result. This is even more important
as the best and brightest move away from the networks and their notes and move
towards premium networks and streaming services. As channels like HBO and
Netflix dominate the comedy landscape (and they pretty much have already), we
all need to work on making sure we have the best comedies possible.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE 22 MINUTE EPISODE? LET US KNOW ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE!
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