Hi. I'm back, with a week more of posts about PARKS & REC, which is one of my favorite sitcoms. Honestly this blog could be nothing but PARKS & REC posts. Half of them might be suggestively titled Duke Silver memes, but hey, who wouldn't love that?
Today I want to talk about Jerry Gergich, aka Larry Gengurch, aka Lenny Gengurch, aka Terry Gengurch, aka eventually Garry Gergich, which despite being his real name I am not using because we don't even learn that until what, season 5? 6? He came to the big dance as Jerry, and that's what I'm calling him.
There are many things to say about the Jerry of it all. First of all, it's such a crazy idea to take a show that is filled with wacky but fundamentally wonderful people, and then insert one character they all are so incredibly cruel toward. It's just so unexpected to see someone like Leslie be so irrationally mean; and that's what makes it so funny.
Which is in itself a great lesson: Give your characters a way to express parts of themselves that we won't see coming. Because that stuff is gold for everybody. The audience loves to watch it, the actor usually loves to play it and it's a lot of fun to write.
Here's another Jerry lesson, what I would consider the main one: Crazy things get funnier the more you do them. Being mean to a nice person once is shocking (potentially). But being mean to the same person a hundred times is hilarious.
I don't know why. I don't make the rules. It just is, especially if you can avoid being repetitious--which PARKS AND REC is astonishingly good at. I can't think of once where they repeated an attack against Jerry. Every time they went after him, they found out a different angle.
It's something you see in improv a lot. When you feel like you're in a disaster, you've said the wrong thing, don't freak out. Lean into it. Do it more, or let your partner. It'll get funnier.
(There's a fun writing exercise in here somewhere--pick the lamest joke or the dullest idea you can, use it at the top of a scene, either from something original or one of your favorite shows. Then no matter how bad it seems to go at first, force yourself to use it at least three more times in say, 2-3 pages. See what happens.)
Of course it's also true that Being mean to decent people is generally very funny (although if we're talking reality TV it's also generally awful, so please don't do it).
I could go on and about Jerry (see: I could go on and on about PNR). But here's one more thing about his character that I really love: He becomes our means to having an inside joke about everyone else.
Pretty early in the Jerry is the Worst tapestry, the writers revealed that actually he has an amazing life in every way (truly, every way, ahem). Really, he has the life they all want. And the Pawnee members of the cast never recognize it, other than maybe Ron, who usually is not in on the Jerry hazing, and Ben, who isn't from Pawnee and therefore isn't under that spell, most of the time.
The result is that every time the characters are mean to Jerry, we get to laugh not only at him, but at them. Their animosity exposes their own complete ridiculousness. For me it's the sitcom equivalent of that motif in scifi drama FRINGE where every episode there's a spooky looking dude somewhere in the background if you pay attention--another layer of entertainment going on, in other words, and placed there just for us.
That's not a thing you can pull off in every show, or should. There are also really different ways of doing it; like every episode having a hidden reference to BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER or a Sondheim lyric.
It's just a question worth asking: Does my show have room for an inside joke? A game within the game?
