by Tim Ferguson
Pressure can drive a character to contradict their most obvious qualities, revealing deep character. When the childlike Rose in The Golden Girls reaches the end of her tether with a ruthless little girl who’s been holding Rose’s teddy bear to ransom, Rose gives the girl what seems to be a speech of surrender: ‘Oh, dear … I guess there’s a lesson to be learnt here. Sometimes life just isn’t fair’. And with that Rose snatches the teddy and throws the little girl out the door, revealing that even the sweet-hearted Rose has her limits (‘Old Friends’ by Terry Grossman and Kathy Speer).
Negations that don’t involve pressure or realisation include narrative negations, when a character makes a statement that is immediately contradicted by fate (like the two campers above), and character negations in which one character’s words or actions are negated by another, or by themselves inadvertently. In The Last Crusade (by George Lucas, Menno Meyjes and Jeffrey Boam), Indiana Jones boasts to his German captors that his friend, Marcus Brody, can blend into any culture like a native. This is negated when the scene changes to Marcus wandering helplessly through a Turkish marketplace loudly asking for directions in English.
A character’s personal qualities can inadvertently lead them to negate their own position. In The Nanny, the acerbic and gossipy butler Niles is asked if he can keep a secret. ‘Well,’ he replies, ‘I’m good until I meet the next person’ (‘The Engagement’ by Rick Shaw). The nutty farmer Owen Newitt in The Vicar of Dibley is affronted when it’s suggested he may be, well, nutty. ‘I’m not a lunatic’, he insists. ‘I have the psychiatric report to prove it’ (‘Election’ by Richard Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer).
Then there’s the classic negation gag in which one character scolds another for doing something, then does exactly the same thing. Maxwell Smart in Get Smart (Mel Brooks), regularly overrode the suggested courses of action from his partner, ‘99’. ‘Ninety-nine, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be the one who plans this.’ But then Max would announce a course of action identical to 99’s suggestion.
Clarity and stark contrast are the keys to comic negation. The change doesn’t necessarily have to be to a literal opposite (a successful negation might be a transition from, say, fury to confusion), but the clearer and greater the contrast between the two states, the greater the chance of getting a laugh. For example, making a character’s declaration or principle as lofty as possible gives them further to fall when they are undermined (when their overweening pride turns to embarrassment). Don’t be squeamish. Boldness is called for. And, so long as there’s a credible catalyst supporting the negation, the gag will work.
EXERCISE
Here are some lines suggesting a lofty moral position. Devise a pressure-based scenario that makes Bob deliberately change his mind. For example:
BOB: (to a BAD GUY) I hate people who think violence is the solution to their problems.
The BAD GUY points a gun at BOB’s head.
BOB: But for you I could make an exception.
BOB: I call a spade a spade.
BOB: I stand by my friends.
BOB: I always tell the truth.
EXERCISE
Here are more lofty positions. Devise a scenario in which Bob inadvertently reveals that he doesn’t practice what he preaches. For example:
BOB: Barbara, darling, I will be my own man, independent and strong … if that’s what you want me to do?
BOB: Beauty is skin deep. I prefer women with brains.
BOB: Our society must take care of its poor people.
BOB: Physical fitness is my obsession.
EXERCISE
Take a crack at your own emotional negations, making Bob go from one emotional state to another. For example:
BOB hears that he has to spend six weeks in quarantine.
BOB: (aghast) But I’ll be cut off from my relatives and my wife …
(Suddenly joyous) I’ll be cut off from my relatives and my wife!
Bob is overjoyed to hear his wife, Barbara, is leaving him for his mate, Dick.
Barbara is told Bob has a week to live.
Barbara tells Bob her mother is coming to stay.
CONFIRMATIONS
The flipside to negation gags are confirmation gags, in which a character confirms a (generally negative) aspect of their personality, outlook or situation. For example, in Will & Grace the lascivious, pill-popping lush Karen confirms her character when she gives Jack a guided tour of her house, showing him the doors to ‘the gift-wrapping room, meat locker, discotheque and car wash’, all intriguing elaborations of her extravagant and quirky lifestyle. Then she points down the hallway:
KAREN: Down here we have liquor storage, liquor collectibles, liquor dry goods, emergency liquors and … candles … dipped in liquor.
—(‘Forbidden Fruit’ by Janis Hirsch)
This particular character-confirmation gag plays upon the audience’s natural appreciation of a set of three. There’s a laugh when they hear ‘liquor’ for a fourth time—it suggests Karen’s list of liquors is interminable. The mention of ‘candles’ makes for a humorous afterthought to the ‘emergency’ items (for most of us candles are a more obvious emergency item than liquor). But then Karen hits us with one last reference to ‘liquor’. It probably doesn’t matter to the writer that liquor-dipped candles are nonsense; the gag relies on the rhythm of the confirmations, and Karen’s personality is strange enough to justify the oddness of dunking candles into booze. This gag turns on its unpredictable but accurate confirmation of the character’s extreme behaviour.
It’s a typical pattern and a useful model for confirmation gags: state something four times to over-confirm it, give a moment’s relief, then seal the deal by mentioning it a fifth time.
The other character-confirmation gag pattern is the ad nauseum repetition of one word or line (see Chapter Two: ‘Wordplay’). Bart and Lisa in The Simpsons confirm their tenacity when they beg their dad, Homer, to take them to Mount Splashmore Waterslide Park. ‘Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore …’It goes on day and night until Homer relents (‘Brush with Greatness’by Brian K. Roberts).
COVER-UPS
Cover-ups are opportunities to tie your characters in knots as they try to stay one step ahead of exposure.
At their heart, cover-ups are lies, making them the sitcom writer’s best friend. Lies must grow and change to survive. They’re swiftly escalated and complicated, and can provide a satisfying catharsis when they’re resolved.
Cover-ups occur when a character uses denial, concealment, diversion, a dishonest clarification or a change of context to protect themselves from exposure. The inadequacy of a cover-up may be apparent even to the character delivering it (as Kelso’s stumbling delivery below suggests—he expects Red to spot the lie).
KELSO is looking through Red ’s garage. RED enters.
KELSO: (nervously) Red … Hey … Y-You’re wondering why I’m going through your stuff.
RED nods threateningly.
KELSO: Okay … let’s see … I needed to … borrow your saw because … there’s a rabbit stuck in a tree and I want to return that rabbit to the wild … so it can lay its eggs.
—That ’70s Show (‘Hyde’s Birthday’by Mark Hudis)
A comic cover-up may be barely convincing; nevertheless it tends to work for a time, usually because the other characters don’t have the knowledge or opportunity to force its exposure. They have other things on their minds or are distracted by the further antics of the person employing the cover-up.
When cornered, the character covering up often explains themself with another cover-up. In the Monty Python ‘Parrot Sketch’, a pet-shop owner refuses to admit that a parrot he has sold to a customer is dead. First he insists the parrot is ‘just resting’. When the customer refuses to accept this, the shop owner tries, ‘It’s stunned’. When this also fails, he suggests the parrot is ‘pining for the fjords’. Each of these cover-ups is flimsy (the parrot i
s clearly an ‘ex-parrot’) but they buy time for the shopkeeper.
Cover-ups tend to follow the ‘hope principle’. Despite the feebleness of their deceptions and distortions, the protagonist clings to a thin strand of hope that they’ll get away with it.
A terrific episode of Fawlty Towers, ‘The Anniversary’ (by Connie Booth and John Cleese), is built largely on cover-up gags. Basil, having upset his wife, Sybil, on their wedding anniversary, is shocked when she storms out just as the guests arrive for her surprise party. Basil, embarrassed, tells the guests Sybil is sick in bed. In the face of their suspicion and determination to see their ailing friend, Basil uses cover-ups that become more elaborate and implausible as the episode progresses: Sybil is ‘contagious’, she’s lost her voice, she’s swelled up and doesn’t look like herself, she’s been seen by a doctor, actually it was a dentist … Poor Basil buys time with every tactic, from pretending he’s choking to forcing the maid, Polly, to dress up as Sybil. When one of the guests claims to have just seen Sybil in town, Basil invents a woman ‘from the north’ who looks like Sybil, dresses like Sybil and drives a car exactly like hers. Brilliantly, when Sybil returns, all is not lost. Basil grabs her and swiftly leads her away from the party friends, gaily talking about ‘the north’, and locks her in a cupboard. Of course, this is a short-term fix. The episode ends with Basil forced to face Sybil’s no-doubt cacophonous music. But by that time the audience has been treated to some of the funniest contortions of the truth and piling-on of pressures in sitcom history.
A single cover-up does not generally lead to the immediate exposure of a character’s dishonesty. Instead, an initial cover-up tends to provoke a series that only crash to the ground (or sometimes culminate in unexpected success) when the character’s credibility is at its lowest ebb.
a) Simple Cover-Up
A simple cover-up can occur when a character makes a Freudian slip or is caught talking to themselves, inadvertently revealing their true intentions and forcing them into an immediate correction. This chestnut works on a couple of levels: it tells us what is on a character’s mind and adds desperation to their true purpose.
SIDESHOW BOB rubs SELMA’s feet.
SIDESHOW BOB: (quietly) Soon I will kill you.
SELMA: What?
SIDESHOW BOB: Uh, ‘Son pied sent il beau’. That’s French for ‘Her foot smells lovely’.
SELMA: Oh.
SIDESHOW BOB: (quietly) Prepare to be murdered.
SELMA: Huh?
SIDESHOW BOB: ‘Eipah deemeh moodu’. That’s Sanskrit for, ‘Your toes are like perfume’.
SELMA: Oh.
—The Simpsons (‘Black Widower’ by John Vitti)
Selma is blinded by her love for Sideshow Bob, so her suspicions are not aroused by his murderous mutterings. But if the same Freudian slips were made by Basil Fawlty in Fawlty Towers, he’d be in deep trouble. Basil’s wife, Sybil, is neither deaf nor stupid and is constantly suspicious of her husband’s activities. It’s likely Sybil would take issue with Basil’s Freudian slip immediately. If this happened, Basil would have little choice but to take one of the available cover-up options: distract Sybil with a fresh topic, invent a benign context for the word ‘kill’ (‘I could kill you I love you so much’) or invent an excuse for fumbling his words (‘I’m experiencing lock-jaw’). Sybil’s eye is as sharp as her tongue so Basil would be at significant risk of retribution. His objective would be to stay a step ahead of Sybil’s reckoning for as long as he can. The writers would need to devise more cover-ups, divert Sybil’s attention, or introduce a mitigating factor (such as a blow to Basil’s head that would allow Sybil to put his Freudian slip down to disorientation).
b) Changing Context
Changing the context of an action can provide a cover-up:
Tweety-Bird sits on a chair. He doesn’t notice Sylvester the Cat preparing to hit him with a hammer. Granny walks in. Sylvester pretends to be fixing the chair with the hammer.
Sylvester’s non-verbal cover-up is lame, but it saves him for the moment.
EXERCISE
Help Bob cover up his crime non-verbally. Don’t be concerned if the cover-up is lame—use it to make the play more desperate. For example:
Bob is caught staring closely at the cleavage of a woman on the bus. He pretends he is blind and slowly feels his way off the bus.
Bob is caught by Barbara with his fingers in the cookie jar.
Bob is caught giving the stiff middle finger to Barbara behind her back.
Basil Fawlty is a Jedi master of the cover-up. Here are two examples of verbal cover-ups from Fawlty Towers:
BASIL is lurking in a broom closet, hoping to catch a girl that a guest, JOHNSON, has smuggled into his room. He hears JOHNSON speaking (to another guest, the psychiatrist DR ABBOTT, not the girl). BASIL jumps out of the closet.
BASIL: Right! The game is up!
BASIL sees who he’s confronted, quails and looks at a point high up the wall.
BASIL: Up there. A bit of game pie got stuck up there.
BASIL pokes a broom at a non-existent stain on the wall.
BASIL: There we are. Right. Enjoy your walk.
DR ABBOTT and JOHNSON continue walking.
DR ABBOTT: (to JOHNSON) There’s enough material there for an entire conference.
—Fawlty Towers (‘The Psychiatrist’, by Connie Booth and John Cleese)
Basil’s re-interpretation of the key words in the euphemism ‘the game is up’ to their literal meaning is hardly credible, but he gets away with it because of a mitigating factor: the woman in Johnson’s room is in fact his mother. Innocent of any wrong-doing, Johnson has no idea what ‘The game is up’ refers to, and in fact he and Dr Abbott have already concluded that Basil is insane.
Cover-ups generally backfire eventually, and when they do the price they exact for dishonesty outweighs that of the original crime.
EXERCISE
Help Bob cover-up his crime verbally. For example:
BOB and ESTHER are on the couch kissing passionately. BARBARA, enters. BOB jumps up.
BOB: (calmly) And so, Esther, those are the basics of resuscitation. You’ll make an excellent Pool Guard.
BOB is strangling BARBARA’s cat. She enters.
BOB is wearing BARBARA’s underwear. She enters.
Distractions
A character can cover-up by distracting others from the truth. They can do this non-verbally. Or, they may distract others by talking their way out of trouble. The exercises below give examples of each type.
EXERCISE
Help Bob wriggle out of these awkward situations non-verbally.
BOB is strangling DICK with a tea towel when he hears BARBARA approaching. BOB stu ffs the tea towel into DICK’s mouth and shoves him in the cupboard. DICK can be heard banging the cupboard door. When BARBARA enters, BOB pretends to be tap-dancing to cover the noise.
If Bob gets away with this pretence it should backfire later when, for example, his alleged tap-dancing skills are called upon.
BOB winks at a pretty woman. BARBARA notices.
Against BARBARA’s orders, BOB spits on the footpath. He turns to see BARBARA glowering.
EXERCISE
Now help Bob to distract Barbara from his crimes verbally. For example:
BARBARA has caught BOB with his fingers in the cookie jar.
BOB: I can explain the whole thing.
He stops and looks at her.
BOB: You look pale. Have you been near someone with Bird Flu?
BARBARA: Don’t be silly. I’m fine.
BOB covers his mouth with a hankie, putting on a show of concern.
BOB: Nonsense. Lie down. I insist! We can’t take any risks.
BOB pushes BARBARA onto the couch and covers her head with a towel.
(Even though Barbara is fine and the issue of the cookie jar remains to be dealt with, Bob has escaped for now.)
BOB is going through BARBARA’s emails. She enters.
BOB is putting arseni
c from a clearly marked bottle into BARBARA’s dinner. She enters.
Fixing the Faux Pas
Ever said the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time? Trying to get the toothpaste back into the tube is an excruciatingly awkward exercise, which is why it’s also comic.
While one character may attempt to save another by re-interpreting their faux pas, the ideal form of this gag has the character screwing things up all by themselves. This way, their discomfort is all their own work.
The most straightforward version of ‘fixing the faux pas’ occurs when only one word or phrase is re-interpreted:
BOB: When I think of the boss, I think, ‘arsehole’.
BOB turns to see the BOSS behind him.
BOB: Uh … By that, of course, umm, I mean you have a ‘soul’. You’re such a spiritual person and I admire that. No, really.
As with many dishonest or disingenuous acts in comedy, the more a character tries to fix a faux pas, the worse it gets. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, creators of The Office and Extras, are geniuses at this type of comic cover-up. Their comedy often explores the agony of everyday life and repeatedly shows that fixing a faux pas can be as agonising as it gets. Having inadvertently said the wrong thing, their characters have a devil of a time trying to re-interpret it:
ANDY kisses a PRIEST’s hand.
PRIEST: Oh, you don’t have to do that, I’m not the Pope!
ANDY: No, old habits die hard. My old priest used to make me kiss him … on the ring… on his finger, not like that, there was none of that going on, and that makes me sick as well, people saying priests are paedophiles and kiddy-fiddlers, and it’s probably … I mean, they probably are, you probably know some, but there’s no percentage of perverts in … but, you know … there are all walks of life, aren’t there? There are nonces everywhere, but let’s not exaggerate the issue is what I’m saying. I’ve never been touched by a priest. I’ve been touched by God—not in that way—in the heart … but, you know, or … ah …oh … Condoms. Do we need them? Don’t think so. Let the free seed of love gush forth.