What is it about the whole ‘spaceship crew thrown across the galaxy, trying to get home’ concept that makes TV writers consistently botch it? Avenue 5 is a bad show, and in a way distinct from other entire in the subgenre; in this case, it’s conceptually flawed. The plot concept is that, in the near future, a cruise spaceship has been knocked off-course, turning a six-month cruise into a three year journey. The comedic premise is that all the people are incompetent idiots and assholes, and everything they do makes the situation worse. The problem is that these two ideas… don’t fit together all that well.
Aristotle said a good plot has an ending that is ‘surprising and inevitable’, and I do believe the same thing applies to jokes. The main problem with Avenue 5 is that it starts at a hundred and then doesn’t have anywhere to go, comedically speaking – we keep starting with characters saying or doing the most monumentally and obviously stupid thing with no motivation, and then everyone complains how stupid it was, and then nothing comes of it as they move onto the next stupid thing.
Comedically, this doesn’t work. Two of my favourite comedies – It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and 8 Bit Theater – also work on the comedic premise of irredeemably stupid and terrible people causing chaos repeatedly, but they both operate on simple farce logic, where the underlying joke is that both sets of protagonists are making the world much worse, for themselves and for everyone around them.
There are flashes of inspiration on Avenue 5. My favourites are two plots; one when the characters accidentally break a waste disposal pipe, and in the process of fixing it, accidentally cause a massive pile of turds to orbit the ship (this even leads to an odd moment of sympathy, where the repugnant and stupid owner of the ship (Josh Gad) gets the idea to project lasers on turds to make them less disgusting to look at). The other is when the characters act out a plan to speed the ship up by throwing out non-essential items collected from the crew and passengers, only to accidentally throw them out the wrong side, lengthening their trip even more.
But as I said, I think it fundamentally couldn’t work because of the premise. The thing about Always Sunny and 8 Bit Theater is that their premises don’t necessarily demand the ridiculousness that happens; “five people who work in a bar” shouldn’t necessarily lead to “one of the characters publicly insisting we should eat dogs” and “noble heroes setting out to defeat Chaos” shouldn’t necessarily lead to “two of the heroes slaughtering every dwarf they meet for fun”. This, again, is part of the farcical structure of both works; we have, step by step, found our way from a rational premise to complete absurdity.
Avenue 5’s premise, on the other hand, kind of invites the ideas it plays with. You hear a spaceship has been thrown across the galaxy, and you think “oh, yeah, they’ll split into different groups, and they’ll run out of food, and they’ll mutiny at some point and host elections and whatever”. If anything, with this premise you have to do everything possible to avoid chaos – the characters have to do everything they can to avoid having to eat each other, or depose the Captain, or split the ship in half.
It’s a shame, because I actually grew to like a bunch of the ideas Avenue 5 is playing with. One of the reasons I stuck with it all the way through is because I’m a giant scifi nerd, curious to see what the show would get wrong and how I could fix it, and this meant I very quickly fell in love with the ship itself. It’s probably the best part of the show; certainly the source of many of its best gags (I’m tickled that there’s a fake bridge that looks like any cliche scifi show and the real work is done in a grimy basement-like room).
I even grew to like specific characters. Billie (Lenora Crichlow) quickly emerges as a representative of what the show should have been, a competent worker who quickly finds herself unable to emotionally handle the position she’s in; she rightly holds herself as one of the most practically intelligent people on board, but is no better at holding her temper than anyone else; like Dennis Reynolds, her belief that she’s the sole sane person in a sea of idiots is specifically what gets in her way of being the sole sane person in a sea of idiots.
Matt (Zach Woods) is funny because he’s a self-described nihilist who ends up the show’s version of Tracey Jordan – willing and able to do and say just about anything if it amuses him (another good plot is when he disappears with crucial information, the characters believe he’s trying to commit suicide, but he actually turns out to just be looking for snacks). But I did end up warming up to Captain Ryan (Hugh Laurie). The premise of his character is stupid and not well-thought out; he’s not actually a real Captain, and he even fakes an American accent to maintain his cover.
This ends up raising a lot of questions, and I’m never entirely clear on what he actually does for a living; an early gag is him getting incredibly exasperated when people keep attributing a past triumph to him (“That was the paramedics, I just watched.”). There’s a few implications that he’s an actor – Gad’s character mentions picking him out of a set of headshots – but then he seems to have quite a bit of experience as a Fake Captain as well as being weirdly surprised when other crew members also turn out to be actors, and talks about them as if he isn’t one.
On the other hand, in the second season he ends up evolving into the most sympathetic character by virtue of being the character most aware of his own limitations. For the most part, he accepts help and the expertise of others and ends up using his positions, where he has to, to try and fix situations and keep people safe. This ends up giving his quips a certain edge that the other characters lack.
When discussing why this show is so weirdly bad, people often point to how Trump-era satire has tended to imitate the most abrasive and unpleasant aspects of our current shared reality. Josh Gad’s CEO character is like this because actual CEOs like Elon Musk are acting like this; Karen (Rebecca Front) is a reference to the ‘Karen’ meme of abrasive and entitled middle-aged women, examples of which litter the internet. This has led to people remarking that just because this is happening doesn’t mean we need to write it down.
But I also think that, with Avenue 5 in particular, there’s a bit of wires getting crossed. Like me, I think creator Armando Iannucci and his crew think spaceships are cool, and I think he really wanted to make a space show of some kind, and because he’s a comedy writer, he figured he’d make it a comedy. The problem is, well, they’re all trying too hard. It’s not coming to them as naturally as everything else they do.
I’ve been thinking; unlike serious drama, comedy benefits enormously from having one simple point you drive into the ground. Iannucci’s The Thick Of It illustrates through all its examples that UK politics is a messy system largely driven and maintained by people trying to hold onto their jobs; it’s not the most profound observation, but it powers a profound number of hysterical jokes. My favourite scene in the show is when Malcolm Tucker and his opposite number Stuart Pearson collide whilst their respective ministers are debating on the radio, and they hysterically throw threat after threat at each other before deflating, realising the futility of what they’re doing, and deciding to make a temporary peace out of exhaustion.
You can see this in other comedies. 30 Rock has a few different principles it makes jokes out of; television being largely inane, or Republican politics being about maintaining systems of elitism. That is to say, there are larger truths that keep violently asserting themselves. This is even true for Always Sunny; the Gang’s pop-culture-infused worldviews keep getting slapped down by the fact that most people they meet are basically competent and willing to do boring shit every day to maintain their lives. Avenue 5 lacks any kind of perspective like that; it’s mostly just people being stupid, with no fundamental truths pushing the comedy forward.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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I hadn’t thought about it in these terms before, but yeah, the show lacking a fundamental dramatic or comedic core does get at the heart of why it doesn’t work. (It has a dramatic setup, obviously, but that’s a different beast.)
Also good to see a breakdown of what works here. I have a soft spot for Hugh Laurie’s Captain Ryan, partly because Hugh Laurie, but also because “person suddenly forced into leadership position far beyond their experience” is a great story engine, naturally throwing off drama and comedy, and Laurie leans into that.
Ultimately, it’s a statement about how unfunny the show is that I kept wishing it weren’t a comedy at all, but it’s also because I’m still looking for a good dramatic/SFnal TV take on this premise, and I’m frustrated by seeing bits and pieces here that could be great. And I think the comedy does slightly foil the potential for great execution here, and it would even if it worked (although then it would be a much better comedy): the premise naturally, and dramatically, should lead to major changes in the characters, but while comedies absolutely can do major, game-changing character arcs, they’re less fundamentally suited for it.
There’s no way around it: we’re both just going to have to write Lost Ship stories.
Motivating myself to write the epic space opera I always dreamed of specifically to get it out of the way so I can focus on writing these concepts we keep hashing out.
Ultimately, it’s a statement about how unfunny the show is that I kept wishing it weren’t a comedy at all…
Yeah, there’s an extent to which one can be either a mark for a concept – I’m always up for assholes on a spaceship – or, paradoxically, love a concept so much that it keeps getting in the way of one’s enjoyment. Usually I can put aside the fact that this isn’t ‘my’ take on a show because I can at least see what the writers are doing, but botching one’s own concept makes it extra-frustrating.
What did we watch?
Secret Base, The History of Scoragami, “A Stat About Nothing” – This didn’t do much for me, but we start with a clip of George talking about Bobby Hebert, who contributed to a Scoragami the Sunday after that episode, so this has something for everyone. Interestingly, despite getting up to the end of the 2024 season, there is an episode left about “the future of Scoragami.” I am really curious what that is about. (I wonder if he presciently touched on Scorgami ties, since there was one last night.) This is a fun series, even if I will never actually watch a football game again. Concussions and violence? Not fun. Weird math? Hysterical.
The Practice, “One of Those Days” – With almost nothing to hang the defense of George Vogelman on, Ellenor and Eugene turn to what is now openly called “plan B”: blaming one of the witnesses in hopes of creating reasonable doubt. And even though frankly it’s clearly a desperate move, and really gross to blame the victim’s brother, it works. Oh, and George one more asserts his innocent and the audience has no reason to think he’s lying to Ellenor. But this is not the end of it, and knowing what is coming, I am wondering it rewatching this will be much harder than watching it the first time.
Frasier, “The Apparent Trap” – Frederick cooks up a scheme to get his parents back together. Or does he? A very clever episode that plays on the messed up chemistry between the exes and on the incredible rapport Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth have. The gags are never too far over the top, and the denouement – Frederick is playing a somewhat complex but believable game to get a mini-bike – is utterly satisfying.
A Mighty Wind
The “six months later” ending deflates this just a touch: it recalibrates back to funny mockumentary territory, but a huge portion for the film has actually been “gently funny heartwarming musical drama,” so it doesn’t quite gel. But the performances are terrific–Catherine O’Hara is luminously expressive, Michael McKean can do no wrong, everyone here is firing on all cylinders–and the music is even better. I actually love how unabashedly the movie leans into the power and pleasure of it, with Mitch & Mickey performing their signature romantic duo–with building tension over how the long-estranged exes would handle the number’s kiss–and the other groups filtering into the wings to watch with transfixed enjoyment, bated breath, and even tears (that shot of Parker Posey clinging to Jane Lynch hits hard).
RRR
Rewatch for Movie Club. This movies rules. I’m not always in the mood for this kind of huge, bright, bold, exuberantly mythic take: when it’s badly done, it leaves me exhausted and on the verge of a headache, and sometimes even when it’s good, it’s sufficiently not my speed that I have a hard time imagining going back to it (see: Everything Everywhere All at Once). But this somehow is for me, even if I don’t want a steady diet of it. I think that’s because–and I talked about this in the Movie Club discussion–it has a backbone of straightforward story and clearly defined characters who are all pursuing what they want. The movie lets that lead them to some absurdly awesome, awesomely absurd places, but all the over-the-top is rooted in real emotions, real motivations, and real choices. (This made me think of Tristan’s Sin City article again–this isn’t low-budget, but it’s using CGI, complete with a sheen of unreality, to make the most of that budget, and it’s embracing the pulpy stylization that lets it achieve, all while having completely different aims from Sin City.) Tons of killer scenes here. And great music.
Anora
This has been on my to-watch list since it came out, and I was very pleased to finally get to it, even if I don’t think I have anything to say about it that people haven’t already said. Mikey Madison is fantastic, especially in the second half, when she no longer has to perform any kind of bubbly, sexy sweetness, and she splits her time between vulnerability and feral defense of her new life: the way the camera holds on her face as Vanya strips away any hope that he’d actually stand up for her or their marriage is gutting. Yura Borisov is exactly as good as everyone said, too, and it’s beautiful to watch him become the film’s conscience. Great ending–I’d somehow heard or osmosed something similar but bleaker and more trivializing, and this was much better–and a great movie overall.
The audience gasped a bit in the theater when Vanya goes “What are you, stupid?” A real gut punch moment. At least Igor has the guts to ask that Vanya apologize to her.
Love the comparison of RRR to Sin City here, the unreality as a way to emphasize the pulp energy. Should Sin City have had more musical numbers? Obviously yes. And music-wise, that bit of the other groups being invested in Levy and O’Hara in Wind is really well done, similarly to Best In Show these people are goofy but also very good at what they do and there is an internal recognition and respect for the performance and art on display that makes their own characters stronger.
Obviously, the musical version of Sin City would star Tom Waits
Wallace And Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit — Family movie night! As a feature this does have a few slower points (the nephews weren’t quite on board with some of the more droll bits/gentle parodies) but it is still a delight and the ending is great, Gromit in full Keaton mode. And there are two secret weapons here — the Aardman style applied to bunnies is never not funny, they’re so dopey yet expressive; and the voice cast brings in massive ringers Helena Bonham Carter and Ralph Fiennes, charmingly plummy and comically menacing, and they are a blast.
The Wizard Of Oz — Second family movie night! Absolutely hilarious to Boss Baby this in regards to David Lynch, what struck me was the uncanniness of the good, in particular Glinda, as well as the menace of the wicked. Glinda is a creepy force in her own right, it’s Dorothy’s persistence and heartbreaking openness that is really heroic. One of the nephews had read the book and was grousing about the beginning being in black and white, so it was great to see his reaction to Oz proper. And while the Munchkins do go on, the sets are just bonkers here, I’d forgotten how wild the Wicked Witch’s castle is, and the physical comedy from Bolger in particular got a lot of laughs. I was always annoyed by Burt Lahr as a kid, give me a real lion dammit, but his stammering bluster won me over as an adult, what a ham.
Chonkqing Hot Pot — struggling hot pot restaurant owners in the titular city accidentally tunnel into a bank vault and fail to rob it. This was post-Oz and I was pretty dozy for the first half but the first half is pretty fucking dozy to begin with and the lead is a dud, he and his friends have a falling out and a woman they had a crush on as schoolchildren comes back into their lives (as a possible way into the bank) and blah blah blah no one is committing cool crimes here! Except for some real robbers and they are the “bad guys,” not to me they are not! The end gets weirdly violent but it’s still a cop-out, various villains fight each other while the protagonist is tied to a chair. The fuck are we doing here. This was put in the Criterion Chinese crime film section that recently yielded the excellent Wild Goose Lake, this Sundance-ass movie is also leaving at the end of the month and good riddance.
One Battle After Another — is Paul Thomas Anderson the best car chase guy working right now? So much energy in his camera, an early one involves a minivan careening through LA and it is the shit. But the one toward the end of the movie is even better, on an open road of hills and blasted land that creates a hypnotic and increasingly tense rhythm. There is a ton of motion in this three-hour movie, from the radical bombings at the beginning to the frantic escape of much of the middle when Sean Penn and the full might of the U.S. military come for Leonardo DiCaprio’s stoned ass, it is both funny (DiCaprio as always is a hoot comedically and him yelling at people rules) and frightening, because Penn uses what is essentially a giant ICE raid as an excuse to hunt Leo and his daughter (who may be Penn’s daughter), there are a lot of people caught in the crossfire. But they have Benicio Del Toro on their side and he is the bassline of the movie, a Modelo-drinking version of Peter Sarsgaard’s character in Night Moves, the guy who made his choice for the revolution a long time ago and is doing what needs to be done, it is awe-inspiring to see him at work. There is so much going on here and the last scene has a needledrop that is heartening and heartwarming and maybe those at the expense of truthful, it feels very much of a piece with Bill And Ted Face The Music in terms of Gen X guys looking for someone else to fight for the future and hoping they’ve made that fight possible. Is that a promise or a wish? Anderson does partially answer this with a moment of ownage toward the end, someone drafted into battle taking the knowledge they were given and acting accordingly. “You win some, you lose some,” del Toro says, the movie itself is a win.
Hell yes, gonna try and see One Battle this week. Both DiCaprio and Gosling are annoying because they are very good-looking men who happen to be hilariously, laugh out loud funny to the extent that they might be better at comedy than drama.
Battle is very much not optional for you! And there is a lot to chew on, revolution-wise (I did not even touch on the racial and sexual dynamics here). But yeah, DiCaprio is so good as a dope (although not without depths), it was fascinating to see how in some ways his character is not too far away from his dud in Don’t Look Up but he’s more frustrated/losery here instead of passive/dipshitty there and that makes all the difference.
Also crucial to Rick Dalton! He is frustrated and sad and drunk but not a dud, the tv scene demonstrates his talent when he isn’t crying in front of the Mexicans.
Yes, bingo! There is a lot of Dalton here, a capable guy swamped by his insecurities and substances. Also, someone who really wanted to get into it could use these two movies to look at how DiCaprio, he of the Pussy Posse, does his best work with young women playing his (surrogate) daughters.
Yellowjackets
Getting further into this – I’ve got the unique (for me) situation of watching this with someone who has already seen it, so they react (and force themselves not to react) to my reaction, like my guesses about where the plot is going. Without spoiling, there’s a strong extent to which they manage to wrong-foot viewers, like how the fact that they definitely ate someone is deliberately left hanging and then violently revealed both later and earlier than you’d expect; the climax of the first season is deliberately built around a specific death that you anticipated but plays out different than you’d think.
If I have some skepticism – and it’s only slight, because I’m very much enjoying the show – it’s that the story is heavy on action but suspiciously light on consequence; one character ends up in a situation where I thought they would have to kill their way out because there was no other way, and then they shockingly did, and I’m hoping it’s not treated as inconsequential (still too early to tell). That said, the situation is escalating well, with Shauna managing the dizzying task for revealing how crazy she is in both timelines simultaneously, getting into a full-on Breaking Bad thing in the present timeline.
I think that, if there’s a theme, it’s in how the adult characters really aren’t that different from their younger selves; as the first season goes on, the young actresses manage to interpolate the adults’s performances into their own in impressive ways. My boyfriend suggested that trauma tends to arrest one’s development, but while this is a show that’s definitely about trauma, I actually think it’s suggesting there are qualities to these women that were with them and would have played out regardless of what happened to them; Lottie strikes me as the one who could have turned out very differently without the plane crash, but the others all have these qualities emerging. More to come.
American Movie – Mark Borchardt’s recurring role in Joe Pera Talks With You made me want to revisit this and it’s still a great example of that kind of quirky lo-fi character-study documentary that I love so much. Borchardt is such an interesting subject, incredibly passionate about filmmaking but also desperately bad at financial and time management and prone to self-destructive impulses, yet he always seems to have the full support of his collaborators. Also Mike Schank was a legend, obviously. The scene where he steps up to the mic to deliver ADR screams is genuinely incredible.
Live Music – multi-venue city festival full of (mostly) bands I’d never heard of, I did some late homework and picked out a few likely winners and one of them (Shaking Hand) were really good, doing that kind of 90s post-rock sound that I associate with bands like June of 44 and Rodan I guess? I couldn’t work out quite who they sounded like but it’s a genre that I’ve not heard a new band take on in a while. Jane Weaver was good too despite being unwell (she took a mid-set break to leave the stage and vomit! and came back! what a pro!), I’ve wanted to see her for a while and her synth-heavy dream-pop sounded good in the festival’s biggest venue.
Seinfeld, “The Tape” and “The Nose Job” – keeping up the high standards without feeling like real stand-out episodes. George briefly developing a crush on Elaine in “The Tape” was very funny though, he’s such a disaster of a human being and I love it. Also it’s amusing to me that Kramer losing and regaining his beloved jacket is the closest thing to an ongoing plot arc that the series seems to have at this point.
Woo live music! Alexander clicked with the character once he realized he was simply Larry David, which is hilarious to me. (Alexander: “I don’t feel anyone would do this.” Larry: “What do you mean? I did!”)
Haha, excellent!
Just realised I also watched “The Alternate Side” this weekend and George is wonderfully desperate there too, although Kramer’s accidental movie career kinda stole that one for me.
Everyone being genuinely awed by Mike’s ADR screams is such a great moment. Love this movie so much, and I’m so sad Mike Schank is gone now.
Also, I’ve seen Coven, and it really does show Mark’s not inconsiderable talent: it has real style and atmosphere, and it’s pretty effective and striking, despite its obvious low-budget/amateurish qualities.
I tracked it down after I first saw the doc and yeah, it has some really striking images even if it’s a little clumsy in (many) places. I picked the disc up for this rewatch since it wasn’t streaming anywhere and Coven is included as an extra so may have to give it another go some spooky autumn evening.
Woooo live music! Wooooo Mike Schank! A metal guy to the core.
Half of a Philly Fringe Fest performance of a Twilight Zone-themed Circus/Sideshow, and damned if I wish I had more positive words about something that seems made for me. It took place in a very non-vanilla venue in North Philly, the concept is cool, and I was with a good friend. Here’s the rub: the show was twenty minutes late on a very sunny day, so the whole crowd stood outside for a long time, and then once we got inside, we had a…baffling Emcee. Imagine, if you will, a man in a long black wig, g-string, and skull makeup, one who perhaps has an ambiguous gender identity. Now imagine they are calling themselves Rod Serling and they screech the entire time, through a bad microphone, like Beetlejuice if he listened to tons of Guns n’ Roses. There’s a funny idea here – what if cool, cigarette-smoking, largely straight Rod Serling was queer and had a horrible voice? – but only for two minutes and this was a 75 minute show. With the performers running behind, there was more of the Emcee than the performers, and the ones we saw were doing burlesque. My friend* couldn’t take it, and really neither could I, so we ended up leaving early. Maybe next time we’ll find a funnier, less screechy Emcee hosting a circus, somewhere…in the Twilight Zone.
*She’s also asexual, so a devil drag king stripping to show beautiful breasts and butt did nothing for her, which was an amusing contrast to my happy face.
Aw, the way I lit up at the first part of this comment only to have my expression slowly collapse at the rest of it would’ve merited the “No Face Journeys” sign from The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. The people demand better Twilight Zone-themed circuses!
But woo, live drag kings!
“like Beetlejuice if he listened to tons of Guns n’ Roses” is a horrifically evocative phrase. Awful!
Described it earlier as “if he listened to death metal” but the shrieks and upturned phonetics were very Axl Rose in the end.
What did we play?
Not a proper game, but I did another Screen Drafts rip-off phone call with a friend of mine where we drafted the top 15 Clint Eastwood movies (starring and/or directed by), and it was incredibly fun. An unexpected veto moved The Gauntlet unduly high, I got to mount a spirited defense of The Beguiled, Unforgiven was lock at #1, and a good time was had by all.
That does sound fun. I feel like I’d have to make a case for High Plains Drifter being very high even though parts of it are hard to justify.
High Plains Drifter wound up at number ten on our collective list! I think if we’d been able to really hash it out in advance, we both would have had it even higher.
Hollow Knight: Silksong – exploring the citadel and various other areas that have become accessible as I’ve gained new skills in Act 2. For some reason I’m far more patient with the brutal platforming sections than the brutal boss fights, so I’ve gotten deep into some tough areas but also I’m building up a backlog of bosses I can’t quite be bothered to fully take on. Getting the double-jump about 40 hours into the game felt funny to me.
Silksong – Finally 100%-ed the whole thing, including Act 3, in just over 60 hours! Then I almost immediately started a second playthrough. This time I got to Act 2 in about 8 hours. I’m definitely a lot better than when I started, and I’ve gotten better at learning how the bosses actually work and, in particular, that I gotta be a lot more patient with the boss fights than I was in Hollow Knight. Avoiding hits and waiting for the right window of opportunity pays off a lot more than a more aggressive approach.
Year of the Month update!
Here’s a primer on some of the movies, albums, books and TV we’ll be covering for 1973 in October!
TBD: Patrick Mio Llaguno – The Long Goodbye
Oct. 14th: Bridgett Taylor: Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road
Oct. 15th: Lauren James: Working
Oct. 16th: John Bruni: Shotgun Willie/Sweet Revenge
Oct. 22nd: Lauren James: The Wicker Man
Oct. 20th: Sam Scott: Janos Vitek
Oct. 29th: Lauren James: Don’t Look Now
And this November, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 2018!
Nov. 10th: Bridgett Taylor: Aquaman
Nov. 24th: Sam Scott: Ice Cream Man
I’ll do Shotgun Willie/Sweet Revenge for Oct. 16.
“If anything, with this premise you have to do everything possible to avoid chaos – the characters have to do everything they can to avoid having to eat each other, or depose the Captain, or split the ship in half.”
When you put it this way, “Let’s make Battlestar: Galactica a comedy!” does seem pretty nuts. I think it could be done, but maybe as a film and not a TV show — that kind of escalating chaos avoidance has to have an end point, or be done at a non-survival level (thinking of bureaucratic comedies like Parks and Rec and Dreamland/Utopia here).
Well, “let’s make Battlestar Galactica a comedy” usually doesn’t work for most people…but it could work for us.