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We Laughed, and Then It Hurt · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: This week we've been looking back at some of the television shows that,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: whether we realized it or not, may have taught us something about being human.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday we talked about what happens when those people,
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: those people, stop being a category and become one particular person.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Today I want to talk about another trick.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Another trick that television used on us.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It made us laugh.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Then, while we were relaxed, it hurt us.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not in a bad way, but in an honest way.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: A sitcom could spend 20 minutes making us comfortable.
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  SPEAKER_00: We knew the characters.
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  SPEAKER_00: We knew their rhythms.
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  SPEAKER_00: We knew when the joke was coming.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then suddenly, the laugh track was gone.
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  SPEAKER_00: Or at least it felt like it was.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we were looking Grief, fear, poverty, something that did not fit neatly inside of a joke.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that mattered because humor lowers our defenses.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we laugh with somebody, we get closer to them, right?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then when something happens to that person, it no longer feels quite so distant.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the clearest examples for me was Good Times.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's also one of my great-grandmother's favorite programs.
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  SPEAKER_00: That show could be very funny.
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  SPEAKER_00: J.J. could walk into a room and change the entire energy of the scene.
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  SPEAKER_00: There was a warmth in that family even when there was not much money.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then James Evans died.
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  SPEAKER_00: The show changed immediately.
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  SPEAKER_00: Florida tried to stay strong.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everybody around her was worried because she did not seem to be grieving the way
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  SPEAKER_00: that they expected.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then came that moment when the strength finally broke.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you remember the scene, you know exactly what I mean.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Florida is alone.
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  SPEAKER_00: She starts thinking about James.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then it comes out.
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  SPEAKER_00: The grief she had been holding back finally has somewhere to go.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, this is not a sitcom family.
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  SPEAKER_00: It is a woman who has lost her husband.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you had been laughing with Florida and James for years,
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  SPEAKER_00: you felt something different than you would have felt watching two strangers.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because you knew them now.
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  SPEAKER_00: At least television hadn't And made you feel like you did.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that is the power of story.
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  SPEAKER_00: It gave grief a face.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it did something else too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Good Times spent years letting viewers live for half an hour at a time with a family
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  SPEAKER_00: that was dealing with poverty.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not as a statistic and not as a headline.
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  SPEAKER_01: As people.
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  SPEAKER_00: They worried about the rent.
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  SPEAKER_00: They argued.
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  SPEAKER_00: They joked.
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  SPEAKER_00: They got tired of struggling.
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  SPEAKER_00: All the things that we all do.
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  SPEAKER_00: The comedy kept the show from becoming a lecture.
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  SPEAKER_00: But underneath the jokes was something real.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could laugh with a family and still notice what life was asking them to carry.
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  SPEAKER_00: That creates empathy in a way that numbers often can't.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were shows like MASH.
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  SPEAKER_00: If ever there was a show built around laughter as survival, guys, that was it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hawkeye joked constantly.
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  SPEAKER_00: He made fun of the army.
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  SPEAKER_00: He mocked authority.
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  SPEAKER_00: He flirted.
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  SPEAKER_00: He drank.
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  SPEAKER_00: He turned almost everything into a joke.
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  SPEAKER_00: And for years that made sense because the alternative was to sit quietly
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  SPEAKER_00: and absorb what was happening around him.
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  SPEAKER_00: People were being brought into that operating room broken by war.
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  SPEAKER_00: Humor, humor was not simply entertainment for Hawkeye.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was, it was armor.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's understandable, isn't it?
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  SPEAKER_00: And the show let us see that armor crack.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the final episode, Hawkeye is in a psychiatric hospital.
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  SPEAKER_00: The man who always had a joke can no longer joke his way around what he has experienced.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Sidney Freedman, his psychiatrist, keeps pushing him toward a memory he does not want to face.
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  SPEAKER_00: At first Hawkeye tells the story wrong.
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  SPEAKER_00: His mind changes the details because the truth is too painful.
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  SPEAKER_00: Eventually he remembers.
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  SPEAKER_00: A woman on a bus had a crying baby.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enemy soldiers were nearby.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everyone had to remain silent.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hawkeye told her to keep that child quiet.
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  SPEAKER_00: She did.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the baby died.
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  SPEAKER_00: That memory broke something in him.
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  SPEAKER_00: The series finale begins with Hawkeye hospitalized and gradually confronting
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  SPEAKER_00: that trauma with Sidney.
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  SPEAKER_00: That was not the Hawkeye that we thought we knew.
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  SPEAKER_00: Except, guys, it really was.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was the same man.
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  SPEAKER_00: The jokes had always been sitting on top of something.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the show, well, it let us see underneath.
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  SPEAKER_00: That changed the way I understood funny people.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the person making everyone laugh is not the person with the easiest life.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think we've learned that from a lot of comedians.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes humor is how somebody stays standing.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think television taught us that too.
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  SPEAKER_00: It taught us not to assume That the face someone shows us is their complete story.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then there was a show like Bernie Miller.
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  SPEAKER_00: That show may be one of the best examples of comedy,
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  SPEAKER_00: quietly putting difficult human questions right on the desk in front of us.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Almost everything that you can imagine happened in that police squad room.
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  SPEAKER_00: People came through the door with strange problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: The detectives made jokes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then, before you knew it,
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  SPEAKER_00: the show was dealing with something that people were genuinely struggling to talk
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  SPEAKER_00: about.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the episode Inquisition,
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  SPEAKER_00: an investigator comes into the precinct trying to identify a gay police officer
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  SPEAKER_00: who had written an anonymous letter.
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  SPEAKER_00: The investigator sees a scandal.
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  SPEAKER_00: Barney basically sees a police officer.
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  SPEAKER_00: That distinction tells you almost everything.
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  SPEAKER_00: This aired in 1979, guys,
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  SPEAKER_00: at a time when openly gay people faced enormous stigma,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it let viewers sit inside that conversation without turning it into a speech.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: That was done in all in the family, too.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is what good comedy can do.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always announce that it's teaching you something.
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  SPEAKER_00: It lets you laugh long enough to care about the people.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then it asks you to stay when the subject becomes uncomfortable.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that's one reason that these shows stayed with me.
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  SPEAKER_00: They didn't separate the funny parts of people from the painful parts.
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  SPEAKER_00: They let both exist.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: Florida could be funny and devastated.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hawkeye could be hilarious and traumatized.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Barney's precinct could be absurd and still deal with very real prejudice.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those contradictions felt very true.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: We laugh at funerals sometimes.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: We make jokes in hospital waiting rooms.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: We say something ridiculous in the middle of a terrible week,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: and suddenly everybody is laughing harder than the joke deserves.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not disrespect.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, a lot of times, that is survival.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe comedy understands something about empathy that serious lecturers often miss.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you want me to care about somebody, let me spend time with them.
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  SPEAKER_00: Let me laugh with them first.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once I have laughed with somebody, I've already crossed a small distance.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then if that person hurts, their pain has somewhere to land within me.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that happened to a lot of us watching those shows.
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  SPEAKER_00: We invited these characters into our living rooms every week.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then the writers Used that relationship.
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  SPEAKER_00: They showed us something difficult through somebody that we already knew.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is very different from being told what we should care about.
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  SPEAKER_00: We had already started caring.
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  SPEAKER_00: That may be one of the most powerful forms of storytelling that there is.
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  SPEAKER_00: And looking back now, I think it influenced the way that I see people.
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  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I know it did.
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  SPEAKER_00: When somebody's funny, I don't assume that they're fine.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: When someone seems strong, I try to remember that that strength can be carrying something else.
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  SPEAKER_00: When a person is difficult, I try to stay curious about what may be underneath.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because every hidden story excuses what they do because it doesn't,
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  SPEAKER_00: but because people usually make more sense When we see more of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's what those television shows kept doing.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: They showed us more.
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  SPEAKER_00: They made us laugh.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then they took the joke away for a minute and asked us to look deeper.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe at grief.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe at fear.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe at somebody that we had never been taught to understand.
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  SPEAKER_00: And because we had already been laughing with them, we stayed.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow, I want to look directly at those moments when the mask came off.
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  SPEAKER_00: The tough character, the angry character, the funny character.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly, for a few seconds, there was no performance left.
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  SPEAKER_00: Just, just vulnerability.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those may be the moments that taught us the most, don't you think?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys very, very, very much.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I need you to do, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Go out there and pass that on, okay?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: Later, Gators.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: See you tomorrow.
• 13:05
  [music]