NBC's Same Old Thursday Night- Done Right?

NBC's Thursday night lineup has been devoted to the situation comedy since The Cosby Show in the 80's. Today, the style may have changed- real settings instead of a studio with an audience- but the lineup is still devoted to the half-hour comedy.

The current NBC Thursday night lineup has several comedies that play with traditional sitcom gender roles. Where in the past, women in sitcoms played the "straight" role to a funny male lead, Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock both feature strong female lead characters who aren't afraid to be ridiculous and often absurdly funny. On the other hand, Community and The Office feature more traditional sitcom gender roles, with the women often playing the scowling voice of reason to the lovable loser male characters' antics.

Along with the shows themselves, the commercial breaks present an interesting area to look for gender. It seems that each show has been determined to have a specific audience, and the commercials are programmed accordingly. One doesn't need to dig too deeply to see the patterns.

I took a look at each of these shows on Thursday, April 21st. Let's take a look at each show and some of the commercials it was packaged with:

Community

Community revolves around an ensemble cast of seven main characters of different ages and ethnicities taking classes at the fictional Greendale Community College. Each episode is based on a class the group is taking, and frequently involves group hijinks that revolve around one of the characters' backstories. The show that aired on April 21st was a "clip show" featuring highlights from the season to date. The clips featured typical humor for the show, involving high school type antics, punctuated by sexual innuendo.

The show seems to unquestioningly dive into Orientalist tropes in its portrayals of sexuality. The central white characters engage in humorous but resolutely heterosexual relationships, but the people of color in the cast are either shown as neutered (the nerdy Indian Abed), sexual but never in a relationship (the black jock Troy), or asexual (the black matronly figure, Shirley). The one time that the audience knows Shirley has engaged in sex, she becomes pregnant, possibly by one of the minor characters, a sociopathic Chinese-American named Chang. Meanwhile, a homosexual relationship between Abed and Troy is frequently hinted at, but only for laughs.

The advertisements aired during the show seemed to be aimed at a college-aged males. There were ads for the upcoming movies Thor (incorporating Dr. Pepper as well) and the latest Fast and the Furious installment, as well as a Verizon ad that involved an exploding rocket. There was also this strange but violent ad for a Dodge Ram pickup truck:



This particular ad did not air at any other point in the evening, and taken with the others I mentioned gives us a hint of the audience they're trying to reach advertising-wise during Community; younger white males with hypermasculine fantasies. Whether this has to do with the show or the time slot would require further research, but pairing these ads with a show about adults in a prolonged adolescence would seem to make sense.

The Paul Reiser Show

The April 21st episode was only the second week that The Paul Reiser Show was on the air, and as a result there isn't much history or backstory to judge it by. The premise would be familiar to those who have watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. Reiser plays a likeable failed actor named Paul with an attractive wife, a kid, male friends and a big house suffers through mundane, but humorous problems. In this particular episode, he has a cat trapped inside his irrigation system, picks up the wrong kid for a play date and offends a fellow actor by referring to him as not funny.

As a show that mainly revolves around men, Paul's friends do fall into a few different stereotypical depictions of masculinity. There's Brad, the oblivious and henpecked upper class WASP male. Jonathan is a neurotic Jew with a more neurotic son, while Habib has a heavy accent and, handily for this episode, specializes in cat wrangling. The only unmarried character of the group is Fernando, who plays the cool black bartender who is sensitive about the fact that he is named after an Abba song (he doesn't want to be seen as gay, of course!).

The show involves middle class men who have relatively young kids, and the advertising reflects that. There was an ad for gardening tips from the Home Depot that was very carefullly gender neutral. There was again a Verizon ad, but this time one that featured a dad giving his little girl a smartphone to play with, which she turns into a lemonade empire. The car commercials were also deliberately aimed at this audience, including this on that tries to sell men on the idea of owning a minivan:



Once again, we are presented with a stunted adolescence theme in both the show and advertising, this time involving supposedly more mature men than in Community. The show seems content to deal in stereotypes, without really exploring them or laughing at them- it's more like it's laughing with them. To be honest, this was a difficult show to watch; it wasn't terribly funny, and presented nothing more than the same old, same old characters.

The Office

In contrast to The Paul Reiser Show, The Office has consistently made fun of and turned stereotypes around during its seven seasons on the air. Michael, the leader of this ensemble cast of small-city Pennsylvania paper sellers, is a naive buffoon who often errs on the side of offensiveness and must be constantly kept in check by his co-workers. The show's writers tend to take liberties with the fact that the audience knows this about Michael, and in this particular episode, Michael presents office-wide "Dundie" awards to the workers he deems "The hottest in the office" and "The cutest redhead", as well as the "Kind of a bitch award". What could be seen as sexist behavior gets chalked up to his lovable naivete, ad his co-workers play along. The show is presenting his behavior in such a way that instead of being acceptable, it is something to make fun of.

The Office, with its audience of young office dwellers, attracts advertising that reflects that. An American Express commercial presents its card as "social currency", and there are several commercials for small, fuel-efficient cars, such as the Nissan Leaf. Perhaps most representative of the audience NBC expects for The Office is the couple depicted in this Subaru commercial:

Young, attractive and eco-friendly, the Subaru couple is the epitome of who NBC expects to watch The Office. None of the advertisements are too feminine or too masculine (with the exception of a Degree antiperspirant commercial.), with the implication being that the show's viewers are unwilling to participate in the crass sexism or orientalism of other program's commercials.

Parks and Recreation/ 30 Rock

While Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock are certainly interesting on their own terms, for our purposes, they're also interesting when viewed together. Amy Poehler of Parks and Recreation and Tina Fey of 30 Rock performed together for years on Saturday Night Live, so it perhaps shouldn't be a surprise that their shows both present strong female characters whose jobs involve leadership roles. Poehler plays the leader of a rag-tag group of local government employees, while Fey is the leader of a rag-tag bunch of sketch comedy show writers and actors. Both characters put their love for their jobs above all else, resulting in an awkwardness in their personal lives that is one of the main sources of comedy for both shows. At the same time, Poehler and Fey's characters are always the heroes of the show, a rarity for the sitcom genre.

Strong female characters increase the draw that these shows might have for female viewers, and the commercials reflect advertiser's desire to reach that market. Parks featured an ad for the upcoming romantic comedy Something Borrowed and a TV commercial that asserts that your television can save your relationship. It even includes this supposedly empowering ad for makeup:



Later on, 30 Rock featured a commercial for Hershey's Bliss, a candy specifically marketed to women, as well as commercials for clothing stores Marshall's and JC Penney. There was also this commercial for ticket broker Stubhub, specifically aimed at women:



There's a clear message to be found in these ads- even if you find empowerment in the TV show you're watching, there will be plenty of consumerist messages to pull you back in once the show is over.

Conclusion

It was fascinating to view these shows through the lens of gender. Some reinforced old fashioned notions of masculinity and femininity, while others poked some holes in the old ideas. Adding the commercials to the mix gave me a clear notion of who the target audience for each show was, and what messages the advertisers were trying to get across.Overall, it's clear that traditional ideas still dominate this corner of network television.