The early '80s were a tough time for TV comedy. Audiences had grown hipper and more sophisticated, but the networks hadn't caught up -- they were still saddled with the conventional thinking and censorship limitations of previous decades. Somehow I never saw this show when it originally aired, and 35 years later, it takes a little getting used to. A single-camera, filmed, half-hour sitcom with a laugh track is kind of a dinosaur format now. True, 'M*A*S*H' followed that format, quite successfully. And 'Happy Days' began with it, though they had to switch to a multicamera show in season 3 to avoid cancellation.
It is definitely of a different time. The pacing is slower and the jokes are a lot broader and honestly not that funny - hence the laugh track. (I maintain that 'The Simpsons' did more to accelerate the pace -- and the intelligence -- of TV humor than any other show in history). 'The Duck Factory' reminds me of another early '80s one-season wonder -- 'Square Pegs' -- in that you like the characters but you wish they had better scripts to work with.
The show grows on you if you can get past the rather dismal pilot episode. Don't get me wrong - it's a solid concept. A guy from the Midwest makes contact with someone in Hollywood, who offers him a job but then dies before he can make good on the offer. That's a great setup for a story. But caskets, hearses, eulogies, widowhood... all the detritus surrounding death -- that's hardly comedy gold. Death as a topic can be funny, but only if you stick to talking about it. If you show pallbearers carrying a casket on TV, it just reminds viewers of the last funeral they attended. Death is a subject that has to be handled with the right touch, and this series handles it with a sledgehammer.
The one thing Buddy Winkler's death SHOULD be able to do is create some much-needed audience sympathy toward the supporting characters. They've just lost their boss, which means they've all been given the gift of undeserved misfortune (the easiest way to create a sympathetic character). But no one is sad Buddy has died, so they come across as crass and cynical and the opportunity is squandered.
Then we have the starry-eyed dreamer who moves from middle America to Hollywood and discovers how seedy it actually is. That's so accurate that it's now a cliché, and, to be fair, it was a cliché back in 1984 too. It's funny because it's true, right? Except that it's not really that funny. Jim Carrey's character, Skip Tarkenton, quickly learns that Buddy Winkler was a tightfisted jerk who abused his power.
Here the writers fail on two fronts. Can stinginess be funny? Of course! Jack Benny made a career out of it. How? By taking it to the extreme and making it ridiculous. That doesn't happen here. Instead we see Jack Gilford's character dutifully depositing a coin in a can every time he gets a drink of water from the cooler. That doesn't even attempt the heights scaled by Benny's legendary tightwad character. That just feels like real life, which is what we turn on sitcoms to escape from.
Okay, so what about the late boss's other flaw? Can abuse of power be funny? Sure. But again, this is something better spoken of than shown. Had things relaxed enough by 1984 that TV could depict an office with a private room featuring a big round waterbed and mirrors on the ceiling? Yes. Was it daring for the time? Probably. Is it funny to watch? Not really. (Honestly, the funniest thing on this show -- to me -- is the name of Buddy Winkler's typical Southern California faux mission-style house: 'Casa Contento.' That strikes just the right note of klutzy bourgeoise gentrification.)
Speaking of funny, what is it with Hollywood's tendency to want to cast the funniest people in drab leading roles? Jim Carrey plays a naive new boss from Canada, à la Dave Foley on 'News Radio.' His job here, like Dave's, is to be the straight man trying to corral all the crazies. But Dave Foley's Dave Nelson character was also a world-class smartass, and Carrey has to settle for just being earnest and likable when, as we now know, he's crazier than all of his castmates put together. With a little recasting, this show could have worked. Keep Jim Carrey, but make him a side character; a Latka; a Kramer; a Jean Ralphio; and just get out of his way.
Julie Payne has the thankless job of playing a humorless Frank Burns-type, but instead of a boss you love to hate, she's just annoying. Jack Gilford is lovable as always as the studio's one animator (this manpower shortage may help explain why the studio is in trouble). Don Messick -- who knew he was so short? -- is underutilized. He seems to be trying out a different voice in every scene, or maybe his own voice just sounds odd to me because I associate it with so many of the cartoons I grew up with. Teresa Ganzel's voice is similarly jarring - she gets stuck doing a caricature of a Gracie-Allen-like dumb blonde, but since it's the '80s and they can get away with it, they try to make her sexy too and throw in a backstory involving a previous gig as a topless ice skater, but that doesn't really feel right. Sexiness isn't really Teresa Ganzel's strength. If anything she's more of an innocent than Jim Carrey's Skip character, so her character seems especially artificial.
The problem with a show about people creating a fictional show (like '30 Rock'), is that, as you get to see the little bits and pieces of the show they're working on, it always seems like something no one would ever actually watch. All the effort goes into making the program we're watching, and the project the characters are working on always feels like kind of an afterthought. I suppose good ideas are too hard to come by and nobody in Hollywood wants to waste an actual good idea on a 'dummy show.' So you end up having to try to root for a bunch of people who are working on something that's ultimately not very interesting.
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