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Thank You, Josh Grier!

Or: What My Imaginary Encounter With The Lead Singer Of Tapes ‘n Tapes Taught Me About Relationships, Personal Style, And The Death Of The American Sitcom.

Last night anxiety overtook me. I’ve been fretting incessantly about tonight’s Tapes ‘n Tapes concert and the very real possibility of seeing my ex-girlfriend there with her new boyfriend (who was her ex-boyfriend while I dated her). We didn’t have a very good break-up and it escalated into a pathetically one-sided war, wherein she moved on with her life and found happiness while I spent many nights lying in my darkened bedroom listening to the National and thinking dark thoughts. It’s been about two weeks of worry since I discovered (accidentally, through Facebook) that she was attending T’nT’s performance at the Metro, and that boiling cauldron of self-doubt and panic finally bubbled over, resulting in a long and pathetically one-sided conversation with Josh wherein I expressed concern about my haircut, clothes, and inability to find a new girlfriend before 9 p.m. tonight.

Does this matter to you, reader? Probably not. But this episode made me seriously re-evaluate the merit of all those shitty old sitcoms that the majority of America watched from (roughly) 1950 - 1998, which was basically the golden era of canned laughs and half-hour life lessons. At some point around the turn of the century, people decided that game shows and reality programs were somehow more fulfilling than watching Kirk Cameron and Alan Thicke working through some complex moral issue by cracking one-liners for twenty four minutes. Which, I can’t really argue with, or, rather, don’t care to, since what the majority of America watches on TV doesn’t affect me one way or the other - I haven’t watched prime time television since I turned twelve, and I don’t talk to “normal” people on any kind of regular basis. But: I was raised on sitcoms. And I think part of me is still stuck on the mindset that they instilled, namely that any problem can be solved with a little humiliation and some solid parental advice. That was always the formula of the shows I liked best; I generally dismissed anything too weighty or “realistic,” as they distracted me from my consumption of frozen pizza.

The reason I started thinking about sitcoms is that what I needed last night was advice. And while Josh is always ready with seriously solid advice, there’s some stuff that you need to hear from a higher authority than your best friend. After all, Josh occupies the same basic plane of existence that I do - so while I will gladly take his word as gospel on anything from what movie to rent or where to get my oil changed, the Tapes ‘n Tapes conundrum required advice from on high. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I pondered, “if Josh Grier strolled into the gas station right now to purchase a six pack of Coors Light and a pack of smokes, and I explained my dilemma to him, and he offered me some words of wisdom? And then we partied together in the parking lot, before I had to go back inside to mop and place four different varieties of hot dogs on the roller grill?” And this is how I think about everything - at every critical juncture in my life, when faced with a crucial decision and finding nothing within himself but confusion and self-loathing, I have wished for one of my heroes to magically appear and right the entire situation with, at the very least, a crusty old maxim about the importance of being myself.

I think of life this way because of sitcoms. Whenever a character faced a truly serious problem, there was always a special guest star to pop in and set things straight. And this never happens in real life. The closest I’ve ever come is when Mike Felumlee (former drummer for Alkalilne Trio, for one album [From Here To Infirmary]) used to drop in at the hot dog stand with his wife to get some grub. And I never asked him about shit - I didn’t even let on that I knew he once drummed for my favorite band. I mean, he did get kicked out. Probably a sore subject. Anyway, sitcoms set me up. They made me believe that you can a) solve complex problems in half an hour and b) do so with the help of a random celebrity run-in. And I don’t know whether this has seriously hampered my problem-solving skills, or turned me into a person who actively wants to solve problems. Either way I’m fucked, as wanting to solve problems doesn’t really mean much unless you have the equipment necessary to actually do so, but I want to know how harmful these shows actually were. Like anything in life, it’s a matter of degrees.

My favorite modern sitcom is According To Jim. You can go ahead and judge me for this; I’m far past the point of caring. I judged myself pretty harshly when I first started watching the show, as it’s maybe the biggest punchline on network television. People use According To Jim whenever they want to illustrate a point about how dumbed down traditional sitcoms have become, but if we’re being totally honest, I don’t see how it’s any stupider than any given episode of All In The Family. And Courtney Thorne-Smith is way fucking hotter than Edith Bunker. But: The reason I so enjoy watching the exploits of Jim Belushi’s only slightly fictionalized alter-ego is that every episode begins with a problem, usually based on a lie that Jim has told. The set-up takes about five to seven minutes, and then the hi-jinx begin: Jim has to tell more lies to cover up the original one, and everything escalates from “madcap” to “fucking insane,” before finally Jim is ostensibly “caught” by his wife. Except, she never really catches him; there’s always some final lie that no one is the wiser to. Jim always wins, and this is inspiring to me, as I never win.

There is a belief deep inside the core of my being that if I could become really, really good at lying, I could win. And this is totally the antithesis of every respectable sitcom ever; According To Jim is way more subversive than most people realize. But the merits of Jim Belushi’s inexplicably highly-rated but (apparently) little-watched sitcom (name one person you know, besides myself, who will own up to fandom) are entirely beside the point. Jim, along with Charlie Sheen’s truly heinous Two And A Half Men, is the only sitcom currently airing that I can even name. And despite rarely turning on the boob tube myself (with the exception of my daily dose of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert), I stay pretty current on what the networks are doing. And none of them are doing traditional sitcoms. The really popular shows among my peers, like The Office and 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother, don’t even have laugh tracks, which in addition to making them totally awkward also makes me wonder: How are you supposed to know which parts are funny? I would probably make a fantastic “Average American viewer.”

But: what the fuck does this have to do with anything? Nothing, really. Or everything. On one hand, practically everyone in my peer group watched the same shows that I did. But none of them seem to have the same problems that I do - the same ridiculous expectation that everything can be tied up neatly before the credits roll. They all seem to accept life and, generally, get over shit, while I spend my time praying that the lead singer of a semi-obscure indie rock band will miraculously show up to fix my problems. Maybe it’s this: When I look at the major issues in my life, almost all of them are sitcom problems. I don’t worry about the economy or the homeless or politics; I worry about my ex-girlfriend seeing me in an old shirt.* And I don’t know whether I’m blessed or cursed, but I know that it is the fault of the traditional American sitcom, and I know that I’m extremely pissed that those shows aren’t popular anymore.

Because these issues are pressing. And TV got me hooked on the crack of quick fixes and special guest stars, and then cut off my supply.

-A.C. Angiulo

*Actual quote from my conversation with Josh: “We broke up six fucking months ago. I should have a fucking new shirt by  now!”

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