For the past dozen years, the amount of the Trujillo family’s televiewing has dropped considerably. Whereas late last century we watched and at least kept track of dozens of programs — mostly half-hour sitcoms — today we watch things like Masterpiece Theater, a smattering of PBS offerings on Sunday, Keeping Up Appearances, 60 Minutes, and not much else.
The “not much else” doesn’t include occasional pro football games, especially when the Oakland Raiders are on, which is almost never. And I enjoy basketball playoffs, the World Series and the Super Bowl.
But in keeping with an effort to stay informed, we vow to watch a few of the new programs. Two Broke Girls comes to mind. Now even though astute readers will probably claim that TBG has been on the air for years, to us it’s a new offering. It’s about . . . well . . . two broke girls. It has a laugh track and a sophomoric plot. Remember, “sophomore,” from the Greek, combines “sophos” and “moros,” meaning wise and foolish, thus a wise moron.
We watched about half of the new (to us) episode Monday night and wondered how many geniuses it took to write the script. Well, probably zero. All the writers need is to build in a painful action that keep repeating it.
Let me explain:
In the episode we watched, one of the Two Broke Girls, throwing a hissy fit because of something her boyfriend said or didn’t say or did or didn’t do. So she transferred the business end of her foot to the boyfriend’s groin. He groans, as the package of canned laughter raises its volume. But let’s analyze that for a minute: Does anyone recall having been kicked in the nether regions without groaning for a half an hour and wondering whether the blow would require a trip to the E.R.?
Well, that bit of alleged humor is a theatrical and cinematic commonplace: Some Little Leaguer is upset that his coach hasn’t lplayed him enough, so as the verbal exchange becomes heated, the brat kicks the coach in the groin. We saw that in previews in a Santa Fe movie house, and that action drew lots of laughter from the audience.
So when did a blow to possibly the most sensitive area of the anatomy become a case that induces paroxysms of laughter? The 15 minutes we watched in Two Broke Girls was sure to have innumerable references to sex. The women use names of fruits to refer to the portion of the man’s anatomy that one of them struck.
In the restaurant where the TBGs work, there were six (that we counted) references to the sex act, all of them couched in euphemisms, all of them so obviously and amateurishly contrived that they make intelligent viewers want to turn off the TV set.
So we did.
But really now, are TV viewers so obsessed with sex that the 22-minute script that constitutes most half-hour TV sitcoms that we need constant jolts of such alleged humor? Recently I read about a TV program that tried to go beyond blatant sex; it’s called potty humor.
But let’s not go there.