Humor, Interrupted

Here on the Internets, we know narrative digression all too well as the “hyperlink.” Those of us who are accustomed to, and indeed savor, the buds of info that bloom on the page waiting to be plucked may find the passive, linear experience of the boob tube–no matter how hi-def–all too boring. For this reason, some of us gave up our cable subscription ten years ago. But there are a few extraordinary television writers out there who know that the modern mind is both skittish and starving. They are the writers of the few sitcoms I’ve never missed, such as 30 Rock, The Office and Arrested Development, whose plot lines freely whip-pan to flashbacks, dreams, or related media. In his fascinating article in the New York Times, The Sitcom Digresses, Ross Simonini analyzes what he aptly calls “hyperhumor,” tracing it roots to the “the Postmodern literature of the 1960s and ’70s, a time when writers of metafiction began following in the lineage of Tristram Shandy, stressing interruptions of story over story itself.” Wasn’t Steve Coogan in the movie version? He played Alan Partridge, too, and had that great dream sequence. But, I digress…