Life's Comedies Turned TV Hit

Executive Producers David Kohan and Max Mutchnick have turned their success as writers into a production company. The duo is most popular for their show, Will and Grace, which earned sixteen Emmy Awards and eighty-three nominations. Their style of writing has common elements that are reflected throughout Will and Grace as well as their situational comedy Four Kings. Kohan and Mutchnick use thematic motifs of friends becoming family, life in singlehood and witty sarcasm to create their life-like comedies.
These life-like comedies have a tendency to reflect Kohan and Mutchnick’s lifestyles with a trend of following Mutchnick’s closely. Some of the major themes in Mutchnick’s life are brought into focus in his various works. Mutchnick was raised in a single parent Jewish household; these aspects of religion and singlehood can be seen throughout Mutchnick and Kohan’s work. Mutchnick also has a very great female friend that he relies on heavily, who has become almost part of his family. Another aspect of Mutchnick’s life that is probably most like his works is his single status (until 2006) and his openness about his homosexuality. Kohan’s life is also mirrored in his work with Mutchnick as he grew up and lived in New York and enjoyed an extensive life in singlehood.
David Kohan and Max Mutchnick met while they were both in their mid thirties while writing for the 1980’s family comedy The Wonder Years. They have been writing and producing as a team ever since. There are two main thematic motifs that can be seen as a common thread relating back to their original work together. These include friends becoming so close they resemble family and the use of witty sarcasm.
The Wonder Years theme song “With a Little Help From My Friends” could be used to describe many scenes from Will and Grace as well as Four Kings.

In both of these shows characters are often seen giving each other advice in the form of wisdom. These scenes can be characterized by their similar locations and use of framing, or camera shots. These words of wisdom are primarily seen around the kitchen table with a medium long shot capturing this as the background and most of the actor’s body. The camera then pulls in to a medium close up, focusing on the actor’s upper body, to get the feeling of closeness between these sets of friends. The use of framing along with dialogue makes the viewer understand the relationship.
The relationship for these characters is one of more than just friends; it is as if they are family. In both of these shows it is as if they rely on the support of one another to get through to the next day. There is also the tendency to see a love/hate relationship between each of them. This can be summed up when Grace says, “My love for you is like a scar, its ugly but it’s permanent.”
Another thematic motif that plays off of the aspect of friends becoming family is the idea of life in singlehood. In Four Kings as well as Will and Grace the main characters are middle aged and still living with their friends rather than creating a family of their own. The characters displayed are predominantly single and are often talking about their dates or lack of luck with dates. In Four Kings this bad luck streak can be seen when Jason and Bobby go to call the girls they met and end up calling a pizza place and the morgue. This bad luck is often also discussed when Will talks about his lack of a love life on Will and Grace.
The luck isn’t bad for all of the characters on these shows. Grace and Jack are often seen dating multiple men at the same time, while Jason from Four Kings also has his own luck with the ladies. The scenes that are set up to pass time in their relationships fade from a dark screen into a camera shot of cars passing by with a short consistent melody. This is a common thread that can be seen in Kohan and Mutchnick’s work.
Witty sarcasm and the use of sexual banter are also evident in Kohan and Mutchnick’s work. They write this sort of humor in and often look for a reaction from each character. This can be characterized by zooming in on the actor’s facial expressions along with their uneasy body language. This technique can be seen with Jack’s wrinkled nose and shift of weight from one foot to another after Grace jokes that lying around the laundry room naked cannot be considered a spa. Another example of this is the focus on Jason’s face when Bobby steps in and kisses him while he is trying to pick up a girl in the bar, thus ruining any chance that Jason may have had. The technique of using sarcasm paired with reaction shots gives the viewer a sense of realness and connection with the character. This is an important aspect that can be linked from show to show and even back to Kohan and Mutchnick’s work on The Wonder Years.
Kohan and Mutchnick use thematic motifs of friends becoming family, witty sarcasm, and life in singlehood to create their life-like comedies. These comedies draw on aspects of both of their executive producer’s lives and mirror characters from real life. Using framing, editing, and spacing Kohan and Mutchnick have created a common thread that can be seen throughout their various works. Their mise en scene, or look and feel, has established their work and can help the viewer establish a connection within their shows.


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Transparent Critic Becomes Television Confidant

You may be wondering whose blog you have stumbled upon. I may not be an accredited writer, and you may not know my name, but I know a thing or two about television (or at least I like to think I do). That being said, I hope to use my blogs as a guide for television viewers. I want viewers to question what they are seeing and hopefully make a connection with a program. By pursuing these goals I will further my study on the ideas that audiences have different values that effect how they interpret shows and how television programs take these interpretations into effect. These ideas will help me to situate myself as an ordinary audience member who is trying to find meaning in what I am viewing as a transparent critic. By finding meaning in programs and relating to my audience I will act as a television confidant rather than an expert.
My goals for my television criticism include persuading my audience to take a different approach to the programs they are watching, furthering my exploration of the connection between television and an audience, all while bringing a unique perspective to the text I am analyzing. It is important for viewers to approach programs in multiple ways. By keeping an open mind the viewer allows themselves to see many aspects of a show. As a critic I hope to open the viewer up to these new aspects so they can start to see the entire creator’s work coming together. This will help the viewer to find what is important to a particular editor, director, or writer. After viewing shows in this manner the viewer will be able to establish their likes and dislikes for stylistic choices. These stylistic choices will provide a background of knowledge that the viewer will be able to use to make comparisons between multiple shows.
Another key tool that I will push my viewer to use is their cultural background. This tool will help further my exploration of the connection that is created between television programs and their audiences. O’Donnell points to the connection when he states, that it goes “beyond description and evaluation…to a level of deeper cultural diagnosis” (9). Audiences use certain cultural discourses to help interpret what they see. Cultural discourses are often rooted in set value systems and personal experiences. Values such as loyalty, respect, honesty, and reliability are often at the center of television programs. By reaffirming or challenging these values programs help us to determine what we find degrading, heartbreaking, humorous, or uplifting.
Corner and Butler’s view of television draws on the idea that the viewer uses their own cultural beliefs and values to evaluate television and establish a meaning within a program. They believe that audience members bring their own pre-constructed thoughts to a program, but these thoughts may not always align with other audience member’s views. This is why I am interested in television as an object of study with focus on Corner’s idea of centripetal force (5). Corner’s centripetal force is the thought that television unites multiple perspectives. The idea that television is established by bringing together a wide array of meanings can be linked to the humanities approach. This approach states that people find their own multiple meanings through their thought process.
The idea of multiplicity is also linked to Butler’s idea of polysemy, or many meanings (7). The two ideas, centripetal force and polysemy, just go to show that the viewer has an opportunity to make their own judgments and conclusions based on what they see along with their previous knowledge. An example of this could be seen with one of my favorite shows, MTV’s the Real World. I can see that the show is trying to demonstrate the struggles of personal life and the pressures of society on our age group, because this is something that I can relate to as a college student. However someone of the Baby Boomer’s generation may simply see the show as a bunch of drunken college kids with anger issues.
For me this is the most interesting part of television. The thought that the same program can convey a range of different thoughts is fascinating. As a television critic I plan to explore the complexity of having such a wide array of meanings in such a short time span.
While exploring these thoughts I hope to establish myself as a transparent critic (Brudson 312). I want to situate myself as part of the audience. After reading my critiques I want the reader to feel like they are at the same level as me. By making myself into a transparent critic I will take on the challenge of writing a solid critique while keeping the state of mind that the audience and I must be on the same level. I would like to establish a sense of camaraderie with my reader so they will listen to my thoughts and trust what I am saying is valuable information.
As a critic I will use my goals of persuasion, exploration, and meaning making to draw my reader in. By finding the meaning in programs and relating to my audience I will act as a television confidant rather than an expert. I will guide my reader to new possibilities and use evidence and previous knowledge to establish credibility. My readers will come to find that there are various meanings in each television program, but it is the way in which you choose to interpret each meaning that gives the program its true purpose.
References
Brunsdon, C. (1993). Identity in feminist television criticism. Media, Culture and Society, 15: 309-320.
Butler, J. (2002). Television: Critical Methods and Applications (2nd ed). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Corner, J. (1999). Critical Ideas in Television Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, V. (2007). Television Criticism. New York: Sage.