#jaywalk cop

Simon Rich gives some good (though not terribly new to practitioners) humor-writing nitty-gritty in this interview. Status is one of my favorite dimensions of comedy, and I have so much left to learn about it.

COMEDY WRITING ADVICE FOLLOWS:

For instance, in my web series Jaywalk Cop, we decided early on that the titular cop, who treats jaywalking very seriously, is more interesting in a world where everyone agrees with him. In this world, then, he’d be highly respected, like the investigator-hero of a straight crime drama. Even the show respects him — it’s implied by Brendan Swift’s camera work, by the actors’ deadpan performances, by everything that implies this show is supposed to be a drama.

We wrote the setting around Jaywalk Cop’s high status, and making everyone respect this ridiculous figure opened up plenty of jokes, like when his computer-hacker colleague says “Your skills really are more important than mine!” Which is the implied message of many hacking scenes in hero-driven action movies or shows for tech-anxious dum-dums.

And it let me make a slightly off-game joke: Jaywalk Cop is bad at technology. Not just from the viewer’s perspective, but from the show’s perspective. It’s the one joke where the show doesn’t take JC’s side—it catches JC with his guard down and reveals an “uncool” flaw (unlike, say, the flaw of being incapable of true love). And I’m fairly sure this is the only uncool flaw we can give him, or the whole system falls apart. The joke only works because it’s the one exception from the world of the show.

We even could have made JC bad at computers in a way that the show implies some respect for, by presenting it as something he’s simply too busy and practical for. But we definitely don’t. Even the hacker speaks with gentle Genius-Bar condescension when helping JC fix his flip phone. In an upcoming episode, JC struggles to use Seamless on an iPhone right after several civilian characters show no such difficulty. One of them even tries some amateur troubleshooting. I think that’s crucial.

So! Pay attention to your characters’ status, and which jokes it opens up. Reinforce status when possible, undercut it only in exchange for something else (like a joke, a dramatic turn, or character growth).

This Tuesday, Jaywalk Cop premieres at the Channel 101 NY screening. I wrote this with narrative savant Daniel King and shot it last fall with an impeccable cast and crew.