![]() Comedy fans are well aware of seminal moments in Store history like the Leno-led 1979 strike that finally got performers a token payment, but a more general audience likely isn’t. ![]() There are other crucial moments in the evolution of comedy - Del Close’s improv gurudom the proliferation of a more naturalistic “alt” style stand-up in the ’90s at New York venues like Luna Lounge - but the Store remains the only venue hallowed enough for an adjacent party house to merit its own oral history. But I’m Dying Up Here, the 2009 William Knoedelseder book the show is based on, is a straight cultural history of that very establishment, and the show is compelling when it pursues that sociological tack. I’m Dying Up Here is not technically about legendary Los Angeles club the Comedy Store in the 1970s. That historical bent doesn’t make for great television, but I’m Dying Up Here’s approach suggests that Peak Comedy TV is entering a more ambitious phase: one where creators start to stretch their legs, pursue different genres, and try out new punch lines. In conversation with other series, though, it’s a foundational myth - an earnest attempt to explain and justify the phenomenon it’s furthering. On its own, I’m Dying Up Here is a clumsy hagiography that deliberately (and counterproductively) shortchanges specificity for breadth, character study for bird’s-eye-view history. Where Peak Comedy TV is about people who just happen to be comedians, I’m Dying Up Here aims to be about comedy, with a secondary focus on the people who helped move it forward. ” Executive produced by Jim Carrey, I’m Dying Up Here offers its own version of the comedy show: It’s a thinly fictionalized ensemble drama rather than a thinly fictionalized personal dramedy, an hourlong period piece instead of a half-hour contemporary vignette, and an origin story in place of an individual narrative. On Sunday, Showtime threw its hat into the Peak Comedy TV ring with I’m Dying Up Here, the logical progression in the genre from “dramedy about comedian” to “prestige drama about comedy. Shows like Maron, Baskets, Take My Wife, Difficult People, One Mississippi, BoJack Horseman, and Crashing all tell the same kind of story about the same kind of comic, with a little bit of room for variation on the margins. But the shows all feel strikingly similar, subbing in another formula: angst plus cringe comedy plus visual flourish. This second wave is more accommodating of stylistic tweaks, incorporating the influence of quirky improv temples like UCB and uncompromising auteurs like Louis C.K. The shows ( Seinfeld, It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, and not-about-a-comedian-but-headlined-by-one shows like Roseanne) followed a simple template: soundstage plus laugh track plus star. The autobiographical sitcom has been a small-screen fixture since the first comedy boom of the 1980s and 1990s, when stand-up clubs proliferated around the country and networks gave out development deals like candy. Cash-rich distributors (Netflix, Amazon) in television and low-barrier entry points (podcasts, Twitter) in comedy have come together to form an ever-expanding Venn diagram: Peak Comedy TV. ![]() The only profession it’s possible to learn more about from the confines of your living room is “New York City homicide detective.” That’s because we’re in a time of both Peak TV and Peak Comedy. They even know what it’s like to have a pushy agent or manager who just doesn’t get you. They know what it’s like to pitch jokes for someone else’s movie. ![]() The average television viewer knows how awful a drunk and hostile comedy club audience can be. ![]()
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