Night Court revival

Amaris · Feb 24, 2023

Christopher said:
None of those are in bad taste, though. Dan's jokes about Vincent are in bad taste, but the show itself clearly doesn't sympathize with him. I always liked the way they handled Vincent Daniels -- he was treated with respect by the writers and by all the characters except Dan, because Dan was always the boor (except occasionally). I love the bit with Vincent and Bull comparing the insults they get from all the jerks out there. It's not making fun of them, because the humor is coming from their perspective.

The second clip is basically cartoon humor about a fantasy condition, riffing on Cecil Turtle from the old Warner Bros. cartoons, right down to the guy talking like Cecil. So it's not insensitive to anyone real. And the third clip is about Harry trying to help Bull understand gender reassignment. The only person being made fun of is Bull for being so slow on the uptake.

All three play off of people who differ from the "norm," and, quite frankly, the heart of Night Court was boorish humor ("rough and bad mannered") playing off of a weird and interesting collection of people and cases.

Huge, huge fan of Night Court. I regularly rewatch every season. Part of the massive appeal of Night Court is the broad humor, and Dan Fielding was the biggest reason for that to the point where John Larroquette had to ask the academy to stop allowing his nomination after winning Emmy awards in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1988.

Plus, as someone who is trans, I've no problem saying that some of the jokes Dan made to his trans friend were in exceptionally bad taste (it comes from the third video on the list which doesn't have that scene). Yeah, we don't sympathize with Dan now, but in the 1980s you can bet people did. "Bad taste" is often relative.

cooleddie74 · Feb 24, 2023

Four acting Emmys in a row. For a sitcom. A cartoonish one.

Think about that. That's how good and how powerful the original show was. The black sheep of NBC's Thursday night lineup was in ways its standard bearer.

Amaris · Feb 24, 2023

cooleddie74 said:
Four acting Emmys in a row. For a sitcom. A cartoonish one.

Think about that. That's how good and how powerful the original show was. The black sheep of NBC's Thursday night lineup was in ways its standard bearer.

It's a shame his own show didn't fare well at all, because it held so much promise.

hbquikcomjamesl · Feb 24, 2023

He even looks like Cecil Turtle. (Wardrobe had a lot to do with that, but also face structure.)

"Being offensive without truly being offensive." Now that's an interesting concept.

cooleddie74 · Feb 24, 2023

It was fine line to walk even in the 1980s.

Christopher · Feb 25, 2023

Amaris said:
All three play off of people who differ from the "norm,"

But not in a way that makes fun of them or plays into stereotypes of them. That's the point. A joke implying that blind people are incapable of recognizing people's voices is ignorant and insensitive, based on the ableist assumption that sight is the only sense that matters. None of the clips you showed are dismissive or ignorant in that way. Dan was dismissive and ignorant, but his bigotry and condescension were contrasted against the other characters' decency and respectful treatment of the people in question.

and, quite frankly, the heart of Night Court was boorish humor ("rough and bad mannered") playing off of a weird and interesting collection of people and cases.

There is a difference between lowbrow humor and mean-spirited humor. Dan was mean-spirited, but the writers didn't agree with him. The people that Dan mocked and insulted for their difference clearly didn't deserve it. We weren't supposed to see them as deficient, but to see Dan as deficient in decency and empathy toward them.

Huge, huge fan of Night Court. I regularly rewatch every season.

I was a huge fan too, which is why I know that it wasn't mean-spirited or built on negative stereotypes. Well, Bob & June Wheeler were a stereotype of Appalachians, but even they were treated with sympathy.

Amaris · Feb 25, 2023

Christopher said:
But not in a way that makes fun of them or plays into stereotypes of them. That's the point. A joke implying that blind people are incapable of recognizing people's voices is ignorant and insensitive, based on the ableist assumption that sight is the only sense that matters. None of the clips you showed are dismissive or ignorant in that way. Dan was dismissive and ignorant, but his bigotry and condescension were contrasted against the other characters' decency and respectful treatment of the people in question.

There is a difference between lowbrow humor and mean-spirited humor. Dan was mean-spirited, but the writers didn't agree with him. The people that Dan mocked and insulted for their difference clearly didn't deserve it. We weren't supposed to see them as deficient, but to see Dan as deficient in decency and empathy toward them.

I was a huge fan too, which is why I know that it wasn't mean-spirited or built on negative stereotypes. Well, Bob & June Wheeler were a stereotype of Appalachians, but even they were treated with sympathy.

Nah, I disagree.

cooleddie74 · Feb 25, 2023

There's even a Season 3 episode where Dan's old college buddy has transitioned to a woman and the entire episode is about how right she was to make the life choice and how wrong Dan is for not accepting her (the Bull sex change confusion clip previously posted). But he eventually does and shows he still loves his old friend and supports them.

Amaris · Feb 25, 2023

cooleddie74 said:
There's even a Season 3 episode where Dan's old college buddy has transitioned to a woman and the entire episode is about how right she was to make the life choice and how wrong Dan is for not accepting her (the Bull sex change confusion clip previously posted). But he eventually does and shows he still loves his old friend and supports them.

True ( I posted the Bull clip because I couldn't find any scenes on Youtube with Charlene and Dan), but along the way there was some very boorish behavior from Dan. It's the idea posited in the thread earlier that Night Court didn't do that kind of thing, when they most certainly did, and did it frequently. Some of the things Dan said to Charlene were painful, and she would have been well within her right to tell Dan to fuck right off, but she so wanted to get through to him, that she put up with it. The episode was rather bold in its day, but it was still a product of its time.

Regardless, my point was just that boorish humor was commonplace on Night Court. Dan was usually the culprit, but not always.

Christopher · Feb 25, 2023

Amaris said:
It's the idea posited in the thread earlier that Night Court didn't do that kind of thing, when they most certainly did, and did it frequently.

As I said, there's a difference between a character having that attitude and the writers having that attitude. Dan was boorish, but that does not mean the show agreed with his opinions, any more than the writers of All in the Family agreed with Archie Bunker or the writers of Fawlty Towers agreed with Basil Fawlty.

Amaris said:
The episode was rather bold in its day, but it was still a product of its time.

I think people often make the mistake of assuming that progress of that sort is always linear. In fact, it tends to go back and forth. I remember a lot of progressiveness about transgender issues in the '90s, but then things regressed and the fight for acceptance had to start over again. The same thing happened with gender equality earlier on, with the seventies' feminism and idealization of vulnerable, sensitive men giving way in the eighties to a conservative backlash that glorified tough guys and toxic masculinity and filled the media with sexually exploitative and misogynistic depictions of women.

So the things that people see in retrospect as unusually bold for their day were often fairly typical of the trends of the time. But those earlier progressive swings of the pendulum tend to get forgotten in the wake of the regressive backlash.

Amaris · Feb 25, 2023

Christopher said:
As I said, there's a difference between a character having that attitude and the writers having that attitude. Dan was boorish, but that does not mean the show agreed with his opinions, any more than the writers of All in the Family agreed with Archie Bunker or the writers of Fawlty Towers agreed with Basil Fawlty.

The audience laughed, and not always at Dan. Again, though, it doesn't change that the show used boorish humor.

I think people often make the mistake of assuming that progress of that sort is always linear. In fact, it tends to go back and forth. I remember a lot of progressiveness about transgender issues in the '90s, but then things regressed and the fight for acceptance had to start over again. The same thing happened with gender equality earlier on, with the seventies' feminism and idealization of vulnerable, sensitive men giving way in the eighties to a conservative backlash that glorified tough guys and toxic masculinity and filled the media with sexually exploitative and misogynistic depictions of women.

So the things that people see in retrospect as unusually bold for their day were often fairly typical of the trends of the time. But those earlier progressive swings of the pendulum tend to get forgotten in the wake of the regressive backlash.

No, I didn't make that mistake.

cooleddie74 · Feb 25, 2023

Christopher · Feb 25, 2023

Amaris said:
Again, though, it doesn't change that the show used boorish humor.

I never said it did. I said that there are different ways of using boorish humor that should not be confused with each other. One can use comedy as an excuse to be mean-spirited and indulge one's own prejudices, or one can use a fictional character's mean-spirited prejudices to underline their character flaws and contrast them against kinder, better characters. Night Court did the latter.

Amaris · Feb 25, 2023

Christopher said:
I never said it did. I said that there are different ways of using boorish humor that should not be confused with each other. One can use comedy as an excuse to be mean-spirited and indulge one's own prejudices, or one can use a fictional character's mean-spirited prejudices to underline their character flaws and contrast them against kinder, better characters. Night Court did the latter.

There was no confusion involved.

Keith1701 · Feb 25, 2023

It's great to see this series back on NBC again.

Forbin · Feb 25, 2023

So glad Christopher is here to pepper our fun discussion with such fancy words as ableist, misogynist, conservative backlash...

hbquikcomjamesl · Feb 25, 2023

And even in the original series, Dan could (like Archie Bunker) rise above his boorishness and reveal a core of decency buried beneath it. And even more so with The Next Generation.

Ar-Pharazon · Feb 25, 2023

cooleddie74 said:
It was fine line to walk even in the 1980s.

"The line"

Tallguy · Feb 25, 2023

We seem to be skipping past the fact that the woman actually could see and wasn't trying very hard to hide it. That, really, was the joke. That and the horse.

Christopher · Feb 25, 2023

Tallguy said:
We seem to be skipping past the fact that the woman actually could see and wasn't trying very hard to hide it. That, really, was the joke. That and the horse.

That's not the issue. The issue is that Olivia and Dan assumed that because she recognized Olivia, it meant she must have been able to see. It didn't occur to them -- or to the writers -- that blind people can recognize people by their voices, or perhaps by the scent of their perfume or shampoo or whatever. They just assumed that people can only be recognized by sight. Which, as I already explained, is ableist because it assumes that blind people are less capable than they really are. It's also just foolish on the part of the writers for failing to see the obvious hole in their logic.

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