11. Mayhem!

It is amazing how many different styles of comedy were represented within NewsRadio. "We’re the Asia of comedy," Dave Foley once joked, making an allusion to the ’80s rock group that was an amalgamation of former band members of Yes, ELP, and King Crimson. We had Dave Foley’s psychological comedy, Maura Tierney’s morally expressive comedy, Phil Hartman’s comedy of characterization (and mimicry), Stephen Root’s theatrical brand of comedic acting, Andy Dick’s broad physical comedy and clowning, and Joe Rogan’s brand of straight-faced comedy that was honed as a stand-up comic. The cast’s history represented a mixture of sketch comedy, improvisation, stand-up, theatre, television and film.

How could all these different styles of comedy cohabitate in a half-hour TV show? The answer: Through the prodigious use of anarchy. The litany of NewsRadio’s most anarchic episodes includes "The Crisis" [1-4], "Big Day" [1-5], "The Song Remains the Same", "Halloween" [3-5], "Daydream" [3-7], "Complaint Box" [3-14], "Jumper" [4-1], "The Public Domain" [4-3], "Pure Evil" [4-6], "Catherine Moves On" [4-7], "Who’s the Boss (Part 1)" [4-12], "Beep, Beep" [4-16], "4:20" [4-20], "Jackass Junior High" [4-21], "The Lam" [5-7], "Stinkbutt" [5-11], "Padded Suit" [5-19] and "Retirement" [5-21]. And that is just for starters. Perhaps the most obvious demonstration of the show’s flair for mayhem is "The Public Domain" in which everyone does his or her own thing in spite of Dave’s consternation and eventual distress. The disparate plot points include:

  1. Bill’s displaying incorrigible obstinacy with his musical political lampooning;

  2. Matthew continually sneaking back into the office;

  3. Joe continually sending Matthew packing: "I’m on it!";

  4. Jimmy becoming self-conscious in front of the camera; and

  5. Lisa’s admonishing Dave, who is trying in vain to hold everything together, "Dave, you never want to do any cunning plans or crazy capers," after which she proceeds with her cunning plan/crazy caper.

Season three really represents NewsRadio’s classical period. (It had the original eight-member cast with all the relationships in their native state and possessed some of the most balanced and best episodes.) However, it is season four that deserves special analysis in terms of using anarchy to push the show’s comedy further than it had ever gone before.

The first hint of season four’s direction occurred in "Jumper" [4-1], which possessed a faint hint of the surreal looseness that was to follow. However, it was the introduction of Lauren Graham’s wonderfully anti-moral efficiency expert, Andrea, in "Planbee" [4-2] that really started the ball rolling. The constant threat of Andrea’s firings sent the moral order of the WNYX office into chaos. While "Planbee" and "The Public Domain" [4-3] were very good episodes in this regard, it was the subsequent uninterrupted string of seven truly great episodes — "Super Karate Monkey Death Car" [4-4], "French Diplomacy" [4-5], "Pure Evil" [4-6], "Catherine Moves On" [4-7], "Stupid Holiday Charity Talent Show" [4-8], "The Secret of Management" [4-9] and "Look Who’s Talking" [4-10] — that successfully fulfilled this promise of extreme zaniness. They loosened the hold on reality and let the show fly off in almost every direction. The play on relationships was still there, but it was given to us as rapid-fire fragments. The timing was so smooth and the comedy so efficient that every crazy gag they threw up on the wall stuck. (For comparison, even the most ardent fans of Monty Python’s Flying Circus will have to admit that, even at its best, only half of that show’s gags actually worked — they just came so quickly and relentlessly that the duds could be ignored.)

Each of these seven episodes is in its own way a masterpiece. While "Super Karate Monkey Death Car" is my favorite of this group, "Pure Evil" seems the most remarkable in being a half-hour epic in the parallel declines of Dave and Lisa. Dave is distraught at losing the News Director job, but his evil plan to get his old job back by letting Bill run unchecked backfires when Bill’s impression of President Bill Clinton makes him immensely popular. Dave takes this as a personal failure even though it brings the station their best ratings since 1987. While Lisa has finally ascended to the managerial position she coveted for so long, her obsessiveness and consequent nervousness prevent her from successfully running a staff meeting. She becomes so disconsolate at her apparent failure that when Dave sincerely admits that she is doing a very good job as boss she mistakenly perceives it to be sarcasm and lashes out at him. The whole episode is played out across the span of a workweek, and it all ends in a poignant moment on a sidewalk — a shared affection between two totally drunk people both aware that they will not remember the meeting the next day.

As for the next episode, "Chock" [4-11], half of the show was a failure and half a success. Dave Foley has readily admitted how dissatisfied he was with the outcome of the Chock Full ’O Notes storyline, and that plot never really gets untracked (although compared to the crudeness of the rest of network television it is still a hoot). However, such things are par for the course for psychologically expressive artists, and it is worth noting that even Alfred Hitchcock had his bad days so to speak. The other storyline is as great as any other in season four. In it Lisa makes Matthew cry by shouting at him for refusing to do any work. The emotional ramifications of the incident spin out of control, and half the staff gets dragged into the brouhaha.

From then on it was back to the top with another string of ten sublime episodes stretching from "Who’s the Boss (Part 1)" [4-12] to "Sinking Ship" [4-22]. "Sinking Ship" [4-22] remains the better of the show’s two fantasy season finales. While "Space" [3-21] was merely a novelty, "Sinking Ship" (a Titanic parody) actually delves deeply and cleverly into the show’s relationships. Thus we have Dave as the captain of the doomed liner who becomes jealous over a possible romance between Lisa and Walt (here replicating the Leonardo DiCaprio role); Jimmy’s role as the ship’s rich owner fits like a glove; Matthew’s incompetence is put to deadly misuse on iceberg lookout; Joe tries to remedy the fatally inflicted vessel with his characteristically misplaced sang froid; and last but not least Phil Hartman gets the opportunity to really let loose with a nastily aristocratic version of Bill.

The anarchy reigned as much in the latter part of season four as it did in the first part of the season; it had just become subtler and deeper. Those scenes in "4:20," where Mr. James brings everyone to the smoker, Joe and Matthew are pitted against each other in an ultimate fighting match, Dave is jealous about Walt’s attentions towards Lisa but has to fend off Beth (who charmingly insists on treating the outing as a date), and Bill being a persistent nuisance to Dave and Lisa are moments of extreme anarchy submerged within the framework of NewsRadio’s relationships.

Where did this flair for anarchy come from? Could it be youthful exuberance? Was it not Dave Foley who once tellingly commented that "[Stephen Root is] just a huge punk fan, as am I, and Maura Tierney as well…"? Perhaps appropriately, it would eventually culminate in season five’s "Towers" [5-13] with Matthew’s 30th birthday sending him from his prolonged childhood into belated adolescence — as a rebelling punk. The scene where Matthew flashes his tattoo, proclaiming "Mayhem!", is our clearest look under the hood of a great machine.

One of the adjustments that had to be made for season four resulted from the departure of Khandi Alexander, providing for a male-female imbalance within the WNYX office. To address this they used Maura Tierney even more than before to generate their comedy. Not only was Tierney more than up to the task, but her comedic style in this period confirmed what discerning viewers knew from the very start — how truly great an actress Tierney is. Turning the WNYX office into a sort of boy’s club resulted in the rampant males ganging up on Lisa, never more memorably than in "Big Brother" [4-15] (the men scheme to find out who Lisa is dating), "Monster Rancher" [4-19] (where it seems like everyone becomes her suitor) and "Jackass Junior High" [4-21] (the men treat Lisa as one of the guys).

Certainly, there is no finer NewsRadio moment than the scene in "Beep, Beep" [4-16] where Dave and Lisa are starting to argue and Lisa turns to Bill and sarcastically says, "Oh, Bill. I’m sorry about what I said to you earlier. What I meant to say was, ‘I yearn for you to plunder me sexually.’ " "Beep, Beep" is close to being, and may in fact be, my favorite NewsRadio episode because it represents the apotheosis of NewsRadio’s comedy. Here all four pillars of the cast are fully functional in their primary roles. We have Jimmy launching the cast on a crazy trajectory in trying to get Dave and Lisa back together again in order to improve their job productivity. We have Bill starting fires, trying to ignite jealousy in Dave. We have Dave (at first) reacting placidly to it all, but eventually being caught up in the maelstrom as the whole thing spins out of control. And we have Lisa caught in the middle and being ganged up on, consequently providing the sexual fuel for the whole exercise. The episode was also strong in providing a good plot line for Matthew and some good lines for Beth and Joe (even though their minutes are limited), and its gags are extremely inventive and elegant (especially the Stradivarius gag and the gag about the lower second peak on the productivity chart). However, its most important achievement was having all four pillars of the cast firing on all cylinders. This allowed the episode a sustained stay at NewsRadio’s highest plane of comedy.

On a personal note, "Beep, Beep" was one of the earliest episodes I saw, and it seemed like the show made anything possible. It had full mastery of all of its elements, and it seemed to be playing comedy the way Mozart played the piano. It was a position of such supremacy that any fall from the lofty standards that had been set would have been especially precipitous. I did not know that only a few months later we would lose Phil Hartman, and we would never reach this place again.

 

(continued)

19 Fretts, Bruce. "Tuesday Night Comedy Club." Entertainment Weekly, March 31, 1995.

20 "An Interview with Dave Foley." Tibby’s Bowl Online (http://www.tibbysbowl.com).