It’s Memorial Day Weekend, and I am away from my home, but, thinking of all those who gave of themselves to protect our nation.
A word of warning, there is much reference made to TV this week. Extensive Googling might be needed. Send me an e-mail and I’ll provide footnotes.
How To Become Quirky Enough for TV
I’m claiming credit for the current trend of single-gal comedies that every TV network has decided is the “must-have” show type. Because, I am single. And, I am funny.
I am funny, right?
I had expected that, after launching this new writing project that I’d instantly be chosen to be the standard-barer for the single women who don’t spend their entire lives shopping or having lunch at the trendiest restaurants. I would be riding my new-found popularity straight into TV deals, untold riches, and, possibly, sainthood.
But while the era of the “quirky, single-lady” has clearly arrived, not one of them is me. I mean, I’m not just quirky, I’ve got the ability to tell it’s raining outside without having to ask my Siri. This implies a basic “look out the window right behind you” logic that “The New Girl” apparently lacks.
Though, maybe it’s not that she’s lacking logic. Maybe her “quirkiness” is actually some sort of mental illness, and I’m being insensitive to her and all the mentally ill, and advocates for the mentally ill are now going to be sending me angry e-mails. I’m sorry I didn’t know she was mentally ill.
While I ponder her mental illness, I realize that I’m *actually* wondering if I’m jealous because I don’t have a documented mental illness. Maybe a touch more mental instability will make me “pleasantly off-kilter” enough to become famous and have a TV show.
It gets worse. Now I’m wondering if being jealous of a probably imagined mental illness gives me that little extra push into primetime.
Unfortunately, now I’m not only “quirky,” I’m mean, because I made fun of the mentally ill. I’ve now become the untrustworthy “B in Apt. 23.” At first this thought horrified me, because I don’t want to be a shameless, swindling con artist without morals. But, she also knows James Van Der Beek, so, maybe she’s not all bad.
I think I need to ignore the shows of this season and look to next season, where the “single-funny-female” offerings include “The Mindy Project,” and Mindy’s a doctor.
Great. Now I’m just feeling inadequate. I was willing to overlook the glaringly obvious fact that the single women in all of these shows happen to also be, well, “persons who fit Hollywood’s current standards of beauty,” much more closely than I do. I had just figured that when the time came for me to have my own TV show, we’d hire someone like Lisa Simpson to play me, and I’d just hang out in the writer’s room with incredibly witty people, and not have to appear in front of the camera. I think of this as a “win-win,” proposition, and I’m very comfortable with being yellow.
Wait a minute. Maybe an inferiority complex is *exactly* what I need. That little touch of crazy, without being mean, might be my golden ticket. I think I’ll take tomorrow off, and wait for the phone to start ringing.
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