Australian Tumbleweeds
The Sum Total of our Melbourne International Comedy Festival Coverage 2011
We don’t really cover stand-up / live comedy here all that much and so, while the spotlight shines brightly on the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for the next few weeks we’ll mostly be ranting away about Chris Lilley and trying to drum up support for Tony Martin’s nerd-friendly interview show A Quiet Word With… (starts this Saturday!).
But, in a moderately impressive segue, recently Mr Martin linked on twitter to the following in-depth article. It’s well worth checking out if you actually are interested in stand-up comedy in general, and MICF in particular. Because it’s not like we have anything interesting to say on the subject.
The News Team of Dorian Gray
For all the tough questions being asked on Hungry Beast, one seems to have been overlooked: why is it that, when producer Andrew Denton says “The whole point of this was to bring new people into the industry”, this third series sees the same faces back in the ring for yet another swing?
After all, by this time these guys are no longer “fresh young faces” – they’re just the Hungry Beast team. A team that, judging by the first episode at least, has pretty much given up on comedy in favour of relatively straightforward investigative journalism with some snark sprinkled on top.
This seems to be the fate of ‘news comedy’ in Australia: over the course of a year or so The 7pm Project went from a news-based comedy show to a news panel show with a few smart-arse comments thrown in. It’s hardly surprising considering scripted jokes cost money and require talent, while investigating news often requires little more than a google search or putting a call out on Twitter. And as a straight-up news show, it’s certainly at least as worthwhile an effort as anything on the commercial networks (not that that’s saying a whole lot). It does mean it’s slowly drifting out of our remit though, thus sparing Dan Ilic the dubious pleasure of our sniping.
Still, when one of the bigger selling points of your news show is that it’s giving fresh young faces and voices a shot (without that angle, why not just watch one of the many other in-depth news programs the ABC currently puts to air – they have trained professionals doing the same job without the distracting snark) it seems fair enough to ask why none of these fresh new faces have gone on to work on any of the ABCs many other in-depth news programs yet.
Yes, Marc Fennell is now reviewing movies on Ten’s morning show The Circle, and alumni Veronica Milsom went on to appear on the short-lived Live From Planet Earth. Otherwise, zip*. And after two series surely some of these big talents should have moved up to the big leagues – especially as with each series the team’s numbers are whittled down, like a internet pundit interview-heavy version of Musical Chairs.
In the Green Guide interview quoted at the start of this post, Denton says “This third series has been an evolution but it’s not like they’ve reached their peak now. They’ve got a lot of learning to do and a lot of possibilities to explore”. Really? After two series? At what stage does someone say “ok, playtime’s over”?
There’s nothing wrong with training – new talent has to come from somewhere. But if your show’s point is that it is all about training, at what stage does ‘the talent’ get kicked out of the nest? And if they’re here to stay – if they’re going to be judged as qualified television makers rather than eager newcomers – how long are we expected to wait for them to reach their peak?
*Oscar has since let us know that “Jessicah Mendes and Kieran Ricketts, from the first two seasons of HB, are now working at ABC News. Daniel Keogh has gone on to report for the ABC’s Science Show”. Which makes it five success stories (if you count Live From Planet Earth) out of HB’s original team of nineteen.
Vale Laid
Yes, Laid finished up a few days ago, but it seemed like a good idea to wait just in case the Fairfax papers – specifically The Age – tried to slip in some more good words for a show they love so much they should just bloody well marry it. During its final week it somehow scored not one but two glowing reviews in The Green Guide – and this for a show that, thanks to being based around a storyline that developed and continued week after week, was impossible to follow if you hadn’t already been watching. What’s next, glowing reviews of the final ten minutes of Chinatown?
No minor reviews these either. Lorelei Vashti devoted her entire 10/3/2011 column to Laid, kicking things off with the comedy highlight of 2011: “Being a friend of [Laid creator Marieke] Hardy’s it is tricky to write about this show but as it has been one of the most anticipated local comedies this year, it would be remiss not to cover it.” That’s right: Laid was more anticipated than John Clarke’s return to The Games. It was more anticipated than Chris Lilley’s new series Angry Boys. It was more anticipated than the return of 2/3rds of Get This to television, more anticipated than Adam Hills getting his own talk show, more anticipated than Ben Elton making an Australian series, more anticipated than Hamish & Andy moving to television, more anticipated than any show made by anyone with any kind of established reputation in Australian comedy. Oh wait, maybe the “being a friend of Hardy’s” line is the one to focus on here.
In one sense it’s nice to actually have confirmed the fact that the best way to get blanket coverage of your television show – let’s say it again, two separate reviews in the Green Guide during the show’s final week – isn’t to actually make a good show, but to be mates with the people writing the reviews. It means that the reviews can safely be ignored by those readers looking for a guide to a show’s actual entertainment value or quality, while keenly read by those wanting to know what Vashti’s pals are up to this week. This kind of favouritism isn’t exactly news, of course, but it’s rare to see it so insistently, offensively, disgustingly blatant.
[It does, on the other hand, go some way towards explaining why The Age seems to have been running a “the internet is full of mindless haters” campaign over the last month or so. We’ve covered most of it in the various Live From Planet Earth threads (though there was yet another story on the hurt anonymous internet posters can cause to media personalities on six figure salaries in the most recent Sunday Age), but where The Age’s stories have focused on the supposedly mindless hate of decent shows / people that the internet fosters, their blanket love of Laid is a display of how they plan to use the power they heap scorn on the internet for displaying. It’s a bit rich to claim that old media is a better source of information than blogs and twitter when your staff seem largely interested in uncritically talking up a former workmate’s projects.]
Without full access to the ratings it’s hard to know how well Laid did. The few figures we have seen suggest that it held steady at around half a million viewers nationwide, at least for the first few weeks. Which, based on wild guesswork, is good but not amazingly great for that timeslot – it’s safe to assume Summer Heights High did a lot better, for example. Still, turns out all this good press has paid off: the night of the final episode Hardy tweeted:
“The ABC are keen on another series and we have begun writing. See you in 2012.”
“We are currently writing a second series and the ABC are keen. If all goes well we will shoot in July/August.”
Here’s a question: Huh? Forgive us for being a little tardy, but didn’t the show end with the mystery of the dead boyfriends being solved? What is a second series going to be about, apart from letting us all know that the ABC wants to be in the Marieke Hardy business so badly they’ll throw cash at pretty much anything?
Personally, we say put money on a spin-off called YEAR ZERO about a woman who meets her dream guy then goes about exterminating all her previous lovers so she can erase her dodgy past and be The Perfect Woman for him, but that’s mostly because, well, that’s kind of the vibe that came off the show itself after a while. Actually, the one single solitary interesting thing that came out of The Age’s blanket Laid coverage was the way no-one seemed fully sure whether we were actually supposed to like Roo or not.
[this is the point where a crasser blog would mention the review that said Alison Bell as Roo was pretty much channelling Hardy. Yes, this is that blog]
“Frequently unlikable” and “shifting between various states of bewilderment, awkwardness and straight-out obnoxiousness” were a couple of the terms used to describe Roo in this final run of reviews. Which is a bit of a shift from “resourceful, smart and sometimes sure of her opinions, but also uncertain and a little daffy”, which is how she was described in Debi Enker’s initial review in the Green Guide’s 3/2/2011 issue. At least the all-over-the-shop nature of Roo’s personality remained a constant; whether this is down to inconsistent scripting is up to the viewer to decide.
While it’s possible that the general souring of opinion towards Roo may have been a result of the show’s dramatic progression, it’s only six episodes long: how much dramatic progression do you expect (sources say the ABC sent the first two episodes out to reviewers, so Enker was writing having seen a third of the show)? Considering the mate’s rates reviews Laid has been getting, it seems equally as likely that the shift in response to Roo’s character only came about when the reviewers saw the final episode and realised the whole story only really makes any kind of sense if Roo has been a bit of a bitch in her dating history. Which we guessed a few weeks back – not because we have the slightest idea what we’re talking about, but because it was screamingly obvious that there was no other way for the story to end.
Laid was an inconsistently scripted, frequently poorly acted, rarely funny sitcom designed to pander to a middle class audience that prides itself on its sophisticated sense of humour – one that involves plenty of saying “that’s hilarious” and very little actual laughing. All that’s fine: those people need television too, and tweeting about Q&A can’t fill up their entire week. But when it’s given a second series (despite the idea of a second series making about as much sense as a sequel to Titanic) seemingly on the back of glowing reviews almost entirely written by Marieke Hardy’s mates, then something has to be done. And thus, a snarky blog post is born.
The Audacity of Hype
We’ve heard a lot in the past week about how the BBC would screen exclusive footage from Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys as part of their biennial fundraiser Comic Relief. Appearing on Comic Relief is obviously a massive coup for any Australian comedian – Comic Relief is a long-established, high-rating spectacular featuring the cream of British comedy talent – but it’s notable that Lilley’s Angry Boys wasn’t considered one of the highlights in Britain.
Throughout the broadcast there were numerous plugs for comedians who would be on soon, but the first plug for Angry Boys didn’t come until around 12.20am. There was another plug for it 10 minutes later, and also mentioned as coming soon were Australia’s own Axis of Awesome, but anyone wanting to watch either would clearly have to force themselves to stay awake.
Finally, at some point after 1am, when a large chunk of the audience had probably gone to bed after a hard weeks work, about three and a half minutes of Angry Boys was shown. If you want to see it, it’s on YouTube. Then again, why bother? It’s just more of the same.
Axis of Awesome, who performed their 4 Chords Song, were on about 20 minutes after the Angry Boys preview. They performed live and went down really well with the studio audience. The Angry Boys clips, despite getting a big build-up from the quartet of celebrities who introduced it, didn’t get much of a reaction from the audience, who didn’t seem to have heard of Chris Lilley or find the clips funny.
It’s fascinating that no one in the Australian media has noted this, or questioned the fact that Lilley seems to be basically making the same programme over and over again.
Anger is an Energy
There’s a clip from Chris Lilley’s upcoming series Angry Boys currently doing the rounds (for example, here), and surprise surprise, it contains no surprises whatsoever. Well, maybe it does if you were expecting Lilley to do anything new or different now that he’s playing with the big boys (Angry Boys is co-funded by the BBC and HBO), because judging from this clip* we can look forward to six hours** of more of the same three characters*** Lilley’s been serving up (with minor variations) for the last decade****.
*yes, it’s a one-minute clip. Maybe the rest of the show is going to be wildly different. But c’mon: the Japanese mother is a mix of Ja’ime and Ricky Wong, and the twins are from We Can Be Heroes. It’s hardly a sign of an artist looking to stretch himself.
**you didn’t know? Initially announced as a 10 part series, Angry Boys seems to have grown to 12. It’s up to viewers to decide whether this is because Lilley’s work is so hysterical he couldn’t cut it any further, or so meandering and self-obsessed that once again we’ll have a series with a couple of plot-heavy eps at the start, a couple at the end, and a big stretch in the middle where Lilley seems to just be amusing himself.
***did anyone else think that with a title like “Angry Boys”, Lilley was actually going to head down the path blazed by Jonah in Summer Heights High and create some characters with at least a trace of depth? Prior to Jonah, Lilley’s “drama” consisted largely of smashing stereotypes together (Mr G versus “the system”, Ricky Wong versus his dad): if he’d taken a step forward with Jonah’s personal issues, this looks like a big step back.
****at the end of this series, Lilley will have made 26-half hour episodes of basically the same program. Considering that program is pretty much a one-man show focused entirely on him, is this some kind of record? And, considering how young Lilley still is, is there any chance of him doing anything seriously different in his career? Or in twenty years time will he still be frocking up and making fun of Asians?
The Twenty Twelve Games
One of the biggest stories in comedy in both Australia and Britain in the past week has centred on the allegations made by The Games‘ writers and creators John Clarke and Ross Stevenson on The Drum Unleashed.
According to their article, over a period of “almost four years”, conversations and correspondence about producing a British version of The Games took place between Clarke, Stevenson, Rick McKenna (producer of Kath & Kim, who acted on Clarke and Stevenson’s behalf), Jon Plowman (producer of countless BBC comedies and latterly Head of BBC Comedy) and writer John Morton (People Like Us). During this period Morton “was lent DVDs of The Games” and “acknowledged he had never previously seen nor heard of the show and was impressed and keenly interested” in being involved.
The conversations and correspondence then appear to have ended (why is unclear and no reasons were given in The Drum article), but now Twenty Twelve, a satirical mockumentary about the organising of the London 2012 Olympics which, say Clarke and Stevenson, bears “marked conceptual similarities to The Games”, has been made for the BBC. The writer and director of Twenty Twelve is John Morton and the Executive Producer is Jon Plowman.
An open and shut case of plagiarism you might think? Not according to the BBC, who told Chortle the other day:
Twenty Twelve is an original and distinctive comedy series looking at London as it counts down the last 1,000 days before the 2012 Games begin. It is written by John Morton who created People Like Us and Broken News for the BBC. Its comedy is delivered through a distinctively British sense of humour.
We have investigated the complaints made in relation to The Games and have found no evidence to support the allegations of copying. No use has been made of any material deriving from The Games and we are confident that the allegations are without foundation.
There are, as Tony Martin pointed out on Twitter, questions to be raised from that statement:
1. As the BBC is accused of stealing the idea, are they the right people to ‘investigate’ the complaint and find it ‘without foundation’?
2. Why no denial that Morton had seen the DVDs? Presumably because no-one is disputing that he did. Therefore…
Although it’s also notable that, as far as we are aware, Clarke and Stevenson have yet to take any action beyond penning their piece for The Drum and presumably being the ones who made the complaint to the BBC. Here’s why: plagiarism could not be proven in this case unless an episode of Twenty Twelve contains lines, characters or plots that are identical or extremely similar to lines, characters or plots in The Games. The evidence of four years of conversations and correspondence between Clarke, Stevenson, McKenna, Plowman and Morton does not prove that plagiarism has taken place. Ross Stevenson, who is a lawyer, is no doubt painfully aware of this.
We have watched the first episode of Twenty Twelve and could not find lines or characters in it that are like any in any episode of The Games, although the are slight similarities between the situations in the two shows. We see no reason to disbelieve Clarke and Stevenson’s claims, and we do not endorse the practices they suggest have taken place, but the similarities between The Games and Twenty Twelve pretty much begin and end at “conceptual similarities”.
Autopsy Ambulance
It’s already become established wisdom that the failure of Live From Planet Earth comes down to one man: Ben Elton. (ok, and twitter, but let’s come back to that later) LFPE stunk on ice not because of Elton’s actual stand-up – generally acknowledged to be the best thing about the show and the only thing really worth saving from it – but because he was also the man writing all the sketches. Or was he?
In late 2010 a “comedy insider” passed on the news to one of us that a bunch of 7pm Project writers – some of whom had come across from The White Room and The Bounce – had left that show to go work on Elton’s upcoming project at Nine. At the time, it was interesting mostly for the way it suggested that The 7pm Project was moving even further away from its original comedy concept. But in the light of the repeated line that Elton was writing everything over at LFPE– parroted by critics across the land – this info was a little puzzling.
Had they hired writers then sacked them without them ever putting pen to paper? Were writers just sounded out but never hired? Did the writers get the ball rolling before being shunted aside? Had our source got things totally balls-up? Was this our big chance to pitch an All The President’s Men-style movie about a massive cover-up in the comedy biz? Well, kinda. Except for the movie pitch part, that’s definitely going to happen (only about Hey Hey it’s Saturday).
We’ve since discovered – thanks to another “comedy insider” – that there actually was a writers room on Live From Planet Earth, but that they had “very little influence or input” regarding the finished product. So it seems Elton shouldn’t shoulder all the blame after all – there was a team of writers helping (to some extent) put the sketches together. But why weren’t they credited in the first place? Rumour has it that Elton has it in his contracts these days that he be credited as the sole writer on his television shows – but that’s just a rumour (if anyone knows more either way, we’d love to have it confirmed / denied).
Unsurprisingly, as the show went to air it seems those involved were increasingly pleased that they weren’t being credited for their involvement, and it’s hardly likely they’d be rushing to put it on their resumes now. So we’ll probably never know how much real involvement the writers had on the show; Elton’s hardly likely to suddenly say “I blame my writers” (and who would believe him), while the writers themselves weren’t credited at the time so why ‘fess up later to such a train wreck?
It’s hard to feel bad for Elton in all this, even if he’s been attacked for something that wasn’t (strictly, entirely) his responsibility. He was the man in charge, and his stamp was all over the finished product. Still, he wasn’t alone on this particular sinking ship, so the blame should be spread around at least a little. “A little”, by the way, doesn’t mean “to people on twitter”, who… I mean, c’mon…
Seriously, having people like The Age‘s entertainment writers Karl Quinn and Jim Schembri claim that the evil hordes of twitter whipped up a hatestorm that sank Live From Planet Earth only makes sense once you realise they’re so scared that twitter will make their jobs as taste-makers obsolete they’re running the kind of scare campaign that usually features the dead rising from their graves.
Let’s break their version of events down: Twitter is full of nameless people who get off on their own hate, so when an easy target came along like #LFPE they whipped themselves into such a frenzy of baseless hate that the show itself didn’t stand a chance. Only hang on: Twitter isn’t like some guy with a megaphone strapped to the roof of his car circling your block – you have to actually be part of Twitter to see what people are saying on Twitter. And if Twitter is mostly used by haters, how does their message of hate get outside the circle of hate to infect the rest of the viewing public? Who, let’s not forget, have to have been incapable of realising on their own that the show was no good for this theory to make sense?
Live From Planet Earth seems to have been such a disaster that for once the blame has to be laid somewhere. Problem is, what we’ve got is the media attacking outsiders – whether on the internet or from overseas – instead of trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. It might help the press paint the picture they’re interested in painting, but how does it help ensure that this kind of disaster doesn’t happen again? After all, some of us would actually like to see Australian comedy on our televisions again…
Truly the Sweetest Plum
Anyone’s who’s been observing Triple M since the axing of Get This knows that comedy hasn’t really been their focus lately – and by comedy we’re talking real comedy, like sketches and funny chat from comedians, rather than a small group of boofheads punctuating their sports chat with vaguely shocking comments followed by “Ha ha ha, steady on mate!”. So it was a pleasant surprise towards the end of last year to see Triple M hire Nick Maxwell and Declan Fay to bring their excellent podcast The Sweetest Plum to radio. Now Maxwell and Fay are doing the drive time shift in Sydney every Monday to Thursday (with Roy & HG on Fridays), and in Melbourne on Fridays (although this appears to be a best-of of the Sydney shows). There’s also a best-of podcast of the Sydney shows with a special podcast-only show each Friday, and based purely on that podcast The Sweetest Plum is excellent programme.
Maxwell and Fay take all the standard components of a commercial radio show – the topical chat, the personal anecdotes, the call-ins, the celebrity interviews – and not only do them extremely well, but in a genuinely funny way. And part of the reason they’re funny is because what they’re saying is real. Theirs isn’t the censored talk of seasoned media types, who can’t say what they really think about, say, a fellow well-known person because they “don’t want to burn bridges” or are worried about a possible libel action, this is the talk of people who say what they think, and are amused by the mere idea that they’re working in radio and are meeting famous people. It’s also the talk of people who don’t seem bothered by the prospect of burning the odd bridge, or have any desire to whip-up media coverage about their show, or wish to do anything other than have fun and make each other laugh. In a landscape where anyone in the public eye seems scared to do anything that isn’t 100% safe these attitudes are refreshing, possibly dangerous.
Comparisons to Get This and Martin/Molloy are somewhat inevitable here. Maxwell and Fay certainly seem to have been influenced by those two shows, but more importantly to have brought a lot of themselves to their show too. So you get spoof-ads for a range of “Plum” products (as you did on Martin/Molloy with products like The Martin/Molloy Comedy Channel) and there are multiple plays of clips from the media to hilarious effect (extracts from John Michael Howson’s on-air breakdown and Charlie Sheen’s recent interviews have been played repeatedly on the show), but you also have a programme hosted by two people who are quite different to either Tony Martin, Mick Molloy, Ed Kavalee or Richard Marsland.
Whether the The Sweetest Plum will rate well enough for Triple M is another matter. “Pure comedies” like this don’t seem to be to everyone’s tastes, even on a radio network which has historically served comedy better than many others1. So let’s hope this does well, because if there’s a radio show which deserves a national audience it’s The Sweetest Plum.
1 Hardcore Get This fans may disagree with this, but apart from The Sweetest Plum there’s not been a show like Get This on any commercial network since.
Executive Decision
Now that the chorus of voices calling for Live From Planet Earth have faded, their unholy bloodlust sated, a new round of voices can be heard. “They pulled it too soon”, these voices say, “They didn’t give it a chance to find its feet”. And who’s to say they don’t have a point? Well, us for one.
To be fair, it’s true that television shows do need time to settle in. Talent should be nurtured, formats need to have their rough edges smoothed off, and audiences require time to get used to things that might be a little new or strange. But does anyone seriously think that given an extra few weeks Live From Planet Earth was suddenly going to blossom into a show that was worth watching?
This wasn’t a pre-recorded show, and it wasn’t like the producers didn’t know they had a turkey on their hands – for all the on-air swipes at both Twitter users and the general press, when you’re getting that much negative feedback you’ve got to know something ain’t right. So obviously after week one there were massive changes made to try and improve the show, and more changes were made yet again after the ratings continued to slip in week two. Right?
Of course not. Changes were made – week two was a better show, thanks largely to more Ben Elton stand-up – but by week three it seemed pretty clear that we’d seen all the alterations we were going to get. Having Elton increasingly interact with the sketches was a change, but it wasn’t going to save the show: sacking most of the cast after week one would have been more like it.
It’s easy to forget that television isn’t one big organisation from top to bottom. In this case, Nine was buying Live From Planet Earth from production company Freemantle. Presumably Nine was expressing serious doubts – and perhaps asking for changes to be made – after the first night. When those changes weren’t forthcoming, what else could the executives do but axe it? Put another way, what subtle depths did Let Loose Live – sorry, Live From Planet Earth – contain that audiences wouldn’t pick up on until week six?
That’s the other side of the argument: the show itself was basically fine, and that eventually the audience would have discovered it. Problem there is, unlike the usual midnight burial that passes for an Australian comedy launch, Live From Planet Earth was given a solid promotional push – ads, billboards, the lot. People knew it was on, they tuned in, they weren’t that impressed with what they saw. Without serious changes, those viewers wouldn’t be back, so where would these new viewers be coming from?
Hang on a second: why are we making this case for it being axed? It’s not like it was a long-running proven stinker like Hey Hey it’s Saturday – surely the benefits of having it on air training up new talents and getting viewers used to Australian sketch comedy outweighed the drawbacks? Well… no.
Some Australian sketch comedy shows have improved over time. The Ronnie Johns Half Hour went from being barely watchable in its first series to moderately funny in its second. But more often than not any improvement is accidental, the jokes remain as painful and unfunny at week twenty as they did at week one, and all we’re left with is a constant re-enforcement of the idea that Australian sketch comedy is, well, either The Wedge or Comedy Inc.
It’s not like the secret to making halfway decent sketch comedy is an actual secret: find a team that have built up some kind of chemistry together, maybe bring in a more experienced mentor (preferably not, but someone’s got to have some experience), and then let them do pretty much what they want. If it has to be live, try to throw in some pre-recorded stuff in there for variety; if it’s pre-recorded try to have a mix of studio and outside settings to vary things up. It’s not a sure-fire recipe for success, but it’s a damn sight closer than trying to pretend it’s 1972 and people will watch a badly-written sketch that’s just two people talking for five minutes.
Basically, the line’s got to be drawn somewhere. Live From Planet Earth seems like it probably should have been given another week, but why? It wasn’t getting any better and after three dud weeks a fourth wouldn’t have made any difference. Following on the heels of the slow but steady ratings decline of Hey Hey it’s Saturday last year, the real question here has to be: who’s running things at Nine, and why can’t they force changes on their live shows once they start to go down the toilet?
Laid: I Like It Both Ways
One of the many fun ways to pass the time while waiting to laugh watching Laid is to spot the various lines and scenes lifted from other shows. Sometimes they’re too generic to seriously attribute to a single source: for example, no-one actually invented the term “ass-clown”, but it’s not exactly in common usage in Australia either. So when writer Marieke Hardy uses it she’s not stealing it from anyone, she’s merely bringing it to the attention of a wider audience. I guess.
Sometimes they’re more of a homage: the sudden brutal car-crash death of a character in episode one echoed a recent, similarly sudden car crash death in an episode of the most recent – but still from well over a year ago – episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. One of this blog’s readers pointed out that some of the dialogue at the start of episode two of Laid recalls a scene from the HBO comedy series Bored to Death. Another has pointed out that the entire concept of Laid – a young woman has to deal with the fact that all her lovers die – happened to Maggie in quirky US drama Northern Exposure well over a decade ago.
Of course, there’s no such thing as an original idea, it all depends on the execution, using the same concepts is hardly stealing, maybe it’s a tribute, and so on. Nothing we’ve spotted (to date) is even up there with that episode of the Hardy-penned Last Man Standing that had a somewhat similar storyline (a lead character goes out with a hot racist chick then tries to make up for not dumping her by doing good deeds) to an episode of US sitcom Andy Richter Controls the Universe that had shown on Nine around 2am the previous year. No-one seemed to care too much about that one at the time, so we’re hardly kicking up a fuss here.
One thing that is worth pointing out tho, is Hardy’s use of unattributed quotes – that is, using lines from other shows or comedians without saying where they came from. Whether it’s the Anchorman quote in episode 2 (“I’m in a glass case of emotion”), or the Bill Hicks line in an upcoming episode (we won’t spoil it for you here), they’re pretty much the only case where you can firmly say “that came from somewhere else”. And it doesn’t even matter.
No-one seriously expects a character to chime in after the “glass case” line and say “nice Anchorman quote, dude”. It’d ruin the joke, such as it was. Either you recognise the quote and think “ahh, Anchorman, what a funny film” (perhaps swiftly followed by “I wish I was watching it right now instead of this guff”), or you don’t and you laugh at the line itself because it’s a funny line. Or maybe you wonder why a guy sitting on a lawn is talking about being trapped in a glass case.
In a better show than Laid, there’d be subtle, funny ways to make the fact that this is a quote clear. The character might quote movies a lot, so that after a while you’d realise any odd thing he said was probably a quote even if you didn’t know where it came from. The scene itself might recognisably come from another source – shows like Spaced and Community (the paintball episode) or even Seinfeld’s JFK riff make this stuff work all the time. Maybe the show itself would exist in a kind of heightened pop culture-referencing world, maybe the person the quote was said to would make a joke or sneering comment about the quoter’s ability to make up his own dialogue. And so on.
But not Laid. Laid just throws the line out there. If you get the reference, maybe you’ll laugh. If you don’t, maybe you’ll laugh anyway at the strangeness of it. It’s not like it adds anything to our understanding of the character past maybe that he’s a lazy, unoriginal dick. He doesn’t drop more movie quotes and his having watched Anchorman doesn’t come into play again. It’s just a lazy way to get across in a moderately funny fashion that he’s in a bad emotional place.
Whether that laziness is on the part of the character, or on the part of the person who wrote the dialogue for the character, well… it doesn’t really matter, does it? Like everything else in Laid that feels like it’s come from somewhere else, it works just as well either way. Maybe it’s a reference to being lazy; maybe it’s just being lazy. Maybe it’s a reference to a funny scene from somewhere else; maybe it’s just that scene done again. Damn you postmodern deadpan irony, you’ve won this round…