fandomhigh | Birth of Television Comedy, Monday, Period One

"Today, we'll be talking about sketch comedy," Mitchell began. "Another brand of TV humor that's been around since time immemorial." He raised his eyebrows in amusement. "Perhaps the most famous of sketch comedy shows was ~~meta for~~ Monty Python. It aired in the late 1960s, early 1970s, and explored the boundaries of absurdism. Since, it's practically been implanted into many minds across the globe. 'And now for something completely different', anyone?" He rubbed at his hands. "Made up of a couple of friends straight out of Cambridge-- it's still hard to avoid John Cleese these days. Another big part of it was their completely random animation. The ensemble changed the field of comedy, especially on TV, for good."

"Sketch comedy is fairly simple. You've got a sketch - that's a short scene - and you sprinkle it with comedy. The genre hails from music hall and vaudeville, types of entertainment where they had to string a lot of tiny things together to form a program to entertain the unwashed masses. It found its way to radio, from which all things found their way to television. Sometimes, sketches happen once, then tail off into the next. Other times, you'll find a situation and characters from a sketch reused across the programme, or even the entire series. The main thing is that there's no long storyline to string them all together."

"Out in the States, you've got shows like Saturday Night Live who use sketch comedy to lampoon the news," he continued, "It doesn't all have to be absurd. A lot of it comes from improvisation, too - just a few people farting about in a room."

He grinned at the class. "Today is easy," he said, "We'll be watching some ~~meta for~~ Monty Python sketches, and then I'll be pairing you all off to make your own. You all get one word to work around, too. I'll be expecting to see these next week."

He jotted names on the whiteboard.

Bod - Delirium - Grass seeds
Robin - Chloe - Living legend
Kate - Layla - Epic showdown

"Now get to watching."

[[ ~~wait for the~~ ocd up! ]]

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And that got him a raised eyebrow. "What?"

"Just wondering if you're going to tell me or play the avoidance game."

"Why should I tell you?" Kate asked, and raised both her brows now. "It's old news."

"You yelled and stormed out of my classroom last week," he pointed out. "If I was even remotely pretending to be a teacher..."

"Yeah well you're not."

It was surprisingly easy to slip from cheer to that trademark near-expressionless thing of hers.

"I just had a bad time in First Aid. Or after it. Whatever."

"What happened in First Aid?" he prodded, lightly.

"Major catastrophy simulation in the Danger Shop," she said, her face still a stubborn mask. "We were in the gym. Lots of cots."

And lots of blood.

That whole 'explosions outside, complete uncertainty inside' part of the scenario, on the other hand, hadn't had much of an effect on her.

"Wait, he simulated an emergency hospital setting?" Dubious Mitchell was... dubious. "No wonder you were put out." Was it really that hard, Kate?

Yes. Yes it was. "Hmph. Guess so." See?

"You guess so." Look, that dubiousness wasn't going anywhere ~~unlike the mun and her no good day~~.

She shrugged. "It was just a simulation."

... Yeah, and that wasn't the problem. The problem were the memories of real-life situations it had dragged up.

"Which once again brings us back to the flouncing."

"What exactly is it that you'd like me to say, Mitchell?"

That was one sarcastic curious headtilt she was doing there.

"Oh," he said, "I think you know what I'd like you to say and you're simply being--" Ineffectual hand gestures, "...you about it."

She snorted, derisively, but her voice went a touch... colder? That was probably the right word.

"I don't think you want to hear it."

He had the decency to flinch a bit.

"Look, Kate," Mitchell started, "You storm out, I'll ask." It didn't sound as steady as the first few rounds, though. "All right?"

"But does that have to include trying to drag stuff up a week later when I've obviously already dealt with it?"

Forced it back into murky pits of repression, she meant. But at least she'd lost a bit of that icy edge, between this statement and the last.

"It does when I haven't seen you," he said. Even though he was generally the same about his own issues--

Wait, no, scratch that. Mitchell dealt with his own issues by not talking about them at all until some unrelated blow-up came up.

"It's all right not to have things settled, you know."

"What touching advice," Kate said dryly. She raised a hand to rub at the back of her neck, letting some more of her indifferent mask fall away. "I already did the whole little heart-to-heart thing with someone."

"So can I at least get the digest?" Mitchell asked, with his sincere-yet-mocking face firmly on.

"Fandom can suck some major ass," she replied, rolling her eyes. "Isn't that what it always is?"

"See, and if you take a dart, and throw it right in the middle of a line between that answer and the full heart-to-heart," he said, mock-considering it, "We reach about the level of detail that I'm going for."

"Well I don't really feel like running you through any of the same crap you already know about."

Birth of Television Comedy, Monday, Period One

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