Requiem on the Final Decade of NBC Comedy

There's an early xkcd cartoon wherein Randolph Munroe pleads with Jim Davis to "Throw off your commercial shackles.  Challenge us.  Go out in a blaze of dadaist glory."  The past decade of NBC sitcoms--in particular The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Rec--has felt like that cartoon brought to life.  And it was glorious.  It all ended in flames, with ratings that fell like a meteor and burned so bright that they may have permanently destroyed NBC comedy for good (serious, NBC has formally announced the end of its comedy block this Spring). But it was still glorious.

To a very specific generation--say, folks currently in their mid-20s to mid-30s--this past decade featured some of greatest sitcoms to ever air in our lifetimes.  Now, the ratings of The Office, 30 Rock, Community, and Parks and Rec were positively abysmal among all other demographics.  But that's just another way of saying they were too good for this world--and if you were to go strictly off of my Facebook newsfeed and quotes from my college friends, you would have assumed that these were the most popular shows in America.  These were our shows.

And now they're gone.  As in, right now.  Mark your calenders, visit its grave on anniversaries, this is it.  Yes, Community is still set to debut its 6th (and likely final) season on Yahoo! in less than a month, limping across the finish line to its self-imposed #sixseasonsandamovie--but still crossing it.  But for all intents and purposes, the era is over.  I mark today specifically as the end, for last night was the Parks and Rec series finale.  I don't even care that the ending was ridiculously schmaltzy and a blatant series of wish-fulfillment, those characters dang well earned it!

For it's not just Parks and Rec that ended yesterday--it's the end of the decade marked by the debut of the U.S. version of The Office in 2005, the show that would give birth to its spinoff-in-spirit Parks and Rec--that is, before the latter found its own voice as a human cartoon that sang the praises of reckless ambition in the face of a hilariously indifferent world (a fair description of the show's own relationship with its ratings, too).   

The Office for its part pulled off the tricky balance between paying homage to the original, deeply-cynical U.K. version, while still making the show it's own (well, at least for its first 6 seasons, arguably).  Both versions mined the inherent absurdity of the white-collar workplace with funhouse mirrors that distorted to reveal so devastatingly that we laughed just to keep from hurting--but the U.S. version was still somehow able to carry an infusion of genuine, unmistakeable American optimism.

I also argue that The Office, in addition to begetting Parks and Rec, created a spiritual home for that madcap, mile-a-minute parody and deconstruction of NBC itself, 30 Rock--which in turn cleared the way for its spirit animal Community, wherein the lowly community college paradoxically became backdrop for the most brilliant show on television.

There was a brief stretch in, say, 2009-2010, when all 4 were on at once Thursday nights--never were all 4 at their peak at once, but it was nevertheless just shy of a perfect night of television.  We didn't know what we had.  But how glorious that we had it at all. 

Now, these were 4 completely different shows--but what they shared was a rapid-fire joke delivery that trusted you to get it without the laugh track, that rewarded your intelligence, and that allowed you to still genuinely care about these characters, too.  These were the shows about the losers--but also about how the losers can learn to grow, to be better.  Each of these shows violated the iron-clad rule of sitcoms that the status quo must always be maintained at all costs, that no one can improve, and for that they were punished terribly in the ratings--and, like the characters they portrayed, these sitcoms became better than their approval ratings.

They were also all fearless, never afraid to go big concept, big ideas, or big budgets that far exceeded what their meager ratings justified. And while NBC execs no doubt tore out their hair and gnashed their teeth at their last place numbers, those of my generation who were on these shows' wave-length laughed uproariously and gratefully!  Now the flame has burned too brightly to last, the inevitable finale has come, it is the end of NBC comedy--but my oh my, what a way to go!

These were the capstone shows, the ones who exceeded even the dizzying heights of such old NBC classics as Cheers, The Cosby Show (ugh...), Friends, and, yes, I dare even say Seinfeld!  After this last decade, NBC comedy can progress no further.  Perhaps at a certain subconscious level, NBC knew this as well, and figured that if their best days (ratings-wise) were behind them, then they might as well finish last a blaze of Dadaist glory--and heavens be praised, they did, they did!