American television comedy series characterized by a shift of tone. Its humour is not sarcastic and distanced but rather warm and humanistic.
A few days ago, Gry Rustad wrote about cynical, “bullying” irony (“the joke that wasn’t funny anymore”) falling to the wayside as comedy focused on “community” and delivered with (nearly) wholehearted warmth has taken its place. This same shift caught my eye a few years ago. Ever since Napoleon Dynamite, my sensibilities were alive to the …
Gry Rustad concludes that new shows like Community, Parks and Recreation and Modern Family are at once similar to yet also markedly different from typically postmodern shows like Seinfeld, Family Guy and Arrested Development. The difference? Heart. A yearning for connection, affect and meaning…
