The Cutprice Guignol

It’s been an alternately entertaining and soul-crushing day. I spent nine hours writing an essay, during which I dropped the complete works of Shakespeare on my face, nearly shattered my nose in the process, shortly afterwards became the first person to use the phrase “ow ow ow ow ow ow FUCKERS”, and had far too good a time twirling around on my desk chair, eating Skittles, and trying to stem the nasal bleeding with a discarded pair of pyjama bottoms. Taste the rainbow? Taste the mixture of my own phlegm and blood, more like.

Speaking of things that have been alternately entertaining and soul-crushing, I marathoned US sitcom 2 Broke Girls today. Aside from the fact that it stars my wife, Kat Dennings (Those eyes! Those lips! Those breasts! Those child-bearing hips!), I keep coming back to this upstart show. The premise is simple; sassy waitress Max (Dennings) takes in the newly poverty-stricken Caroline Channing, a shrill blonde pencil turned shrill blonde pencil, played by almost offensively less attractive Beth Behrs, and they resolve to start a cupcake business (disappointingly, not a euphemism for Kat selling her chebs on the street). The chemistry between the two leads is undeniable; a genius match of Behr’s superb physical comedy and Denning’s grimly amusing asides about her sex, drugs and childhood (summation: it was rubbish but it’s okay because she’s hot) that more or less carries the show. The supporting characters, namely the other employees at the diner where they both work and mad Polish Sophie played by a triumphantly crass Jennifer Coolidge, spend a good three-quarters of their screentime making foul sex jokes, drinking, being pedantic and managing to be both head-scratchingly racist and moderately bearable. Finally, somebody I can relate too.

And those are the good parts done with. It was “created by”  Micheal Patrick King who did Sex and the Shitty, and his “GO THE FUCKING SISTERHOOD!” stamp has been crapped indiscriminately all over the show. Now, I’m not a woman who buys into the whole “all girls together” shtick; frankly, I’m suspicious of anyone who thinks we should have some sort of instant connection and mutual respect because we both have labia. Menstruation has never nor will ever be the basis of any great friendship, as there are just as many women I’d like to shank as there are men. You get my respect by being sound, not by having breasts. Though that doesn’t hurt.

And that’s where 2 Broke Girls comes to bits. At the end of every episode, there’s a seemingly required scene where the stellar writing is undone by a presumably mad-with-power Caligula Patrick King cramming in an exchange where Dennings and Behr are essentially forced to platonically rub up on each other to justify their “friendship”. Their dynamic isn’t that of other odd-couple stylings on TV, like Chandler and Joey or another example. The couple that continues to rove into my minds eye is Basil and Sybil Fawlty; that sniping, unlikely, bitter marriage of two ambitious but stifled bastards. If they played to that dynamic, maybe it would work, but as long as they continue forcing the pair to emotionally finger each other (as if the relationship wasn’t sapphic enough) the whole thing smacks of wide-eyed innocence that it simply can’t carry off.

On a side note, wouldn’t mind a go on Jennifer Coolidge either.