Inessentials

On Wednesday, Psych returns for its fifth season on USA, a network that has solidified a place as the most-watched cable network by developing original content branded around a helpfully loose “Characters welcome” theme. (See a good discussion of its branding and the role of genre at In Media Res.) Critical reaction to this show is some mixture of ignoring it and reviling it. And frankly, I’m not sure I disagree with a lot of the criticisms of the show: the writing is too on-the-nose, the acting is too mugging, the humor is too broad, the mysteries are too predictable, the lead character is too irritating (to other characters and to us), and… well, you get the idea. Even the score gets trashed.

Despite all of these (and in some of these cases, because of them), I dearly love Psych. There’s probably no show I enjoy watching more than Psych, none that makes me laugh more, and none that gets watched as quickly after the DVR records it. And it really comes down to one simple thing: Psych is funny.

Funny makes up for a multitude of sins. I’ll watch and rewatch a funny show far more quickly and more regularly than an otherwise superior drama. So when Psych‘s fourth season gets released tomorrow, it will soon make it into the DVD player for a second viewing, and probably a third viewing within a year.

There are some things to be said in favor of Psych. The supporting cast is stronger than Monk, a show that is viewed more positively by critics and Emmy voters. They’re about equal on the quirk-o-meter, for whatever that is worth, and both can attract some solid guest stars. But for me, the show works for one main reason: Dulé Hill.

Critics (and, I suspect, many fans) claim that the show lives or dies by the James Roday’s performance at the center of the show. Shawn Spencer is the fake psychic, after all, and he gets the most lines and the most story arcs. I can’t disagree that the show rests a lots on his shoulders. But what makes Roday’s mugging and irritation to others watchable is Hill’s Burton “Gus” Guster.

Gus fits into a particular subgenre of the bromance that I think of as the Male Black Best Friend. There are Lenny and Carl on The Simpsons, Phil and Lemm on Better Off Ted, Shawn and Gus on Psych, and (the fullest realization of this subgenre) J.D. and Turk on Scrubs. In each case, there is a pair of male best friends, one Caucasian and one African-American, who view each other as equals and are viewed by outsiders as inseparable. (The second half of Community‘s first season saw them pairing Abed with Troy, interestingly putting a twist on the formula by putting a character of Palestinian-Polish descent in the role of the white friend.)

With Phil and Lemm, the idea was that these are codependent coworkers who need each other to be successful. Lenny and Carl began as background figures, drinking buddies to Homer, but The Simpsons has generated a lot of humor out of their pairing. Scrubs pushed the bromance aspect farther than any show or film has yet done, but what interests me the most about it was that it gave Turk more stories and a greater depth of characterization than any other Male Black Best Friend, Guster included. Turk not only supported J.D. through residency and beyond, but he had an interesting and complicated relationship to Carla and had meaningful interactions with the rest of the cast. Gus has far less of that characterization and almost no relationships that aren’t mediated or interrupted by Shawn, and thus he suffers as a character. But he surpasses the others in the central role of the Male Black Best Friend: alleviating the white best friend’s perceived dorkiness by being equally dorky.

The joy of watching Psych for me is watching Hill’s performance as the Male Black Best Friend to a character that is built out of hamming it up and irritating others (including his father and those who sign his paycheck). Hill finds a nice balance between joining in with Roday’s antics and giving a look of sharp displeasure or an annoyed tone of voice that serves as a helpful counterpoint. Psych never passes up a joke, a reference to an ’80s film, an antic, or a farcical conclusion,(except in a handful of darker episodes near the end of the last two seasons). And there is simply too much silliness in the show for one character to carry without the show self-destructing. Many are annoyed at Tony Shaloub being nominated for his portrayal of Monk yet again, but that show is nothing without his performance. Roday’s take on Shawn is too thin to do the work of carrying the show single-handedly. So we have Burton Guster to carry us through, to take the weight off Shawn, to serve as a bridge to the somewhat more realistic characters on the show, and to ground Shawn.

This ancillary nature of the MBFF is disturbing insofar as it suggests that a television show can’t survive with a black lead or further contributes to racial tokenism. And there is probably something significant in the fact that Hill’s most famous role was on The West Wing, where he was a late addition to the cast, forced by NBC to address complaints about its whitewashed primetime lineup. To their benefit, USA has always promoted Psych as a two-lead comedy, but unfortunately that’s not how the show actually works in terms of stories or characterization. Gus is no more than the MBFF.

But I return to Psych because it is funny and because of Hill’s performance. In one of the show’s few (mostly) serious episodes, Shawn is tracking a serial killer and finds he can’t work under the stress, so he asks Gus to be his surrogate and lighten the mood. Rather than aim for mimicry, Hill delivers a performance as Gus that takes Shawn’s levity into absurdly literal territory and thus makes a joke of the very idea that Gus could be funny. But the real joke is that Gus is the funny one. Shawn is the class clown, the big-joke guy who can’t take anything seriously. Gus is the classic straight man who gets more laughs with an exasperated look than the wildly gesticulating man beside him.

Big spoilers for “Chuck vs. the Honeymooners” (3.14) (Monday, April 27, 2010) and general spoilers for season 6 of The Office

Last night’s Chuck (which is the first of six episodes added after the initial run of 13 episodes in season 3) brought a lot of satisfaction to those who had been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Chuck and Sarah to get together. Finally, an end to all that UST (Unresolved Sexual Tension, to use Mo Ryan’s acronym). Most critics have focused on the myth that a show takes a nose-dive in quality after the leads finally get together (the Moonlighting myth). “Look at Jim and Pam on The Office,” these critics say. “There are still interesting stories to tell about being in a relationship, not just about leading up to a relationship.” And these critics are right (except that The Office example is ill-timed, since the best part of season six has been the budding romance of Andy-Erin and not the established relationship of Jim-Pam). There is no part in dragging out a relationship of two characters who seem like they should be together simply to avoid dealing with the new problem of writing them as a couple.

Andy and Erin, from The Office (photo from fanpop.com)

Unfortunately, though, critics have been forced to deal with a rift among the devoted viewers of Chuck. Some fans’ major interest in the show is in seeing Chuck and Sarah get together. Known as ‘shippers among critics (as in “relationshippers”), these fans primarily care about casting aside any obstacles to Chuck and Sarah and getting them together as quickly and as happily as possible. Critics are then in the position of needing to distance themselves from these fans while also reaffirming that there is no point in keeping the leads apart for arbitrary reasons or because of the Moonlighting myth. I’ve written before about how this season of Chuck is an example of how shows (often in their third season) push the lead character away from their allies/friends to add new levels of drama. This was partly accomplished by the introduction of Agent Shaw (Brandon Routh) and Hannah (Kristin Kreuk) as romantic possibilities for Sarah and Chuck, respectively.

What I want to focus on is Sarah. But to do that, alas, I must write about Chuck. A lot has been written about Chuck, which is appropriate on a show that bears his name. But Sarah’s story is in many ways the more interesting one. To an underappreciated extent, Chuck is a show by, for, and about fanboys. It’s the now-classic tale of geek-gets-girl. From Sam Raimi’s Spiderman to Josh Schwartz’s The O.C. to beer commercials, the last ten years have seen a new popular narrative established in which the Geek (brown, tousled hair, glasses, shirt untucked, comic book obsession) wins the Girl (blonde, svelte, a little tomboy-ish). This is derivative of some of the college nerd comedies of the 1980s, but one important twist is that the Girl must recognize that what makes the Geek geeky is also what makes him lovable. Also, the Geek may have a Rival, but this is more often the cause of undermining the Geek’s self-confidence than forcing the Rival out of the Girl’s gaze. Because deep down, this narrative says, the Girl really does like the Geek better, and they would be perfect together if only the Geek could gather the courage to be with the Girl.

One of the dangers with this narrative is that it reinforces the focus on the man (the Geek, in this case) even as it redefines manliness. If the story of the Geek getting the Girl is about the Geek overcoming his lack of confidence, then the story will have to follow him getting that confidence. It’s still all about the guy.

We’ve seen that problem pushed to the forefront in this season of Chuck. Sarah was shoved aside this season while the Geeek (Chuck) tried to earn her love (by becoming a spy) while fending off the Rival (Agent Shaw, who, like all Rivals, represents what the Geek is not but thinks that he must be to deserve the Girl). This left the viewer with one episode in which the Girl makes her move, followed by twelve episodes in which she sits idly by watching the Geek become unrecognizable. Since in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, it is the Geek’s geekiness that makes him suitable to the Girl, when he loses that geekiness he becomes too much like the Rival. And then the Girl may as well be with the Rival. Watching this unfold, however, it reinforces an underlying problem with the Geek Gets Girl narrative: the Girl is completely passive. She simply reacts. This is less noticeable in films (such as Spiderman) where one small goal (e.g., breaking into acting) is enough to distract away from the Girl’s passivity. But over the course of 50 episodes of a television show, it is difficult to find a way to make the Girl an agent with a life and decisions that are her own. This season of Chuck‘s greatest failing has not been avoiding a Chuck-Sarah romance, or introducing Agent Shaw, or putting the Intersect in Chuck’s head, it has been giving Sarah nothing to do. This is a problem embedded in the Geek Gets Girl narrative, but it came to the forefront this season.

Remember when we got backstory on how Sarah became a spy (2.10)? Remember when Sarah shot a Fulcrum agent to protect Chuck’s identity (2.11)? These provided ways to make Sarah a person, someone who makes decisions with consequences and has a story of her own, within the loose confines of the Geek Gets Girl narrative. This season Sarah has been reduced to a prop, whose job is to watch with Sad Eyes while the Geek tries to become like a Rival. She is a passive spectator, rather than a worthy partner to the eponymous hero.

What I liked about last night’s episode of Chuck was not that Chuck and Sarah finally got together, but that Chuck and Sarah were treated as equals. Both were trying to be good partners to each other, considering the other’s desires as at least as important as their own. That Sarah is once again Chuck’s equal is nicely captured in the smartly choreographed fight scene from the episode.

There is still a fundamental inequality to the show that I don’t think it will ever overcome. As we saw in the pre-credits sequence of “Chuck vs. The Honeymooners,” Sarah is in an expensive, barely-there neglige while Chuck is in a plain t-shirt and lounge pants. Sarah, no matter how realized the character becomes, will always exist also as eye candy in a way that Chuck does not. (Captain Awesome, who was yet again shirtless, is supposed to roughly even things out I suspect, but it doesn’t approach the level to which Scrubs took the equity, requiring that every episode of a woman in underwear also have a man in underwear).

Sarah may begin to be treated, finally, as an equal to Chuck, but she will still be the Girl.