Editor's Notes
written by Ken Carlson
WKRP in Cincinnati is considered by many to be one of the finest TV series of the late 70s and early 80’s. It had a solid cast and smart writing. For those too young to remember it, compare it to The Office, minus the snarky attitude and voyeuristic camera. Its legacy has dwindled somewhat due to complications in handling its syndication because of rights issues from rock n’roll songs played on the show.
Still, it recently made its way onto DVD so if you’re a fan of the sitcom genre I suggest you to get to know this easy going program about a struggling small market AM radio station and its wacky characters.
As with any show, fans will argue which episode is the most memorable. In ‘KRP’s case, many cling to one involving the company softball game against the leading station in town, others to a remote broadcast at a stereo store that was hijacked, or perhaps a serious one where they pay their respects to those who were trampled to death at a WHO concert in the Queen city in ‘79.
One exchange from the show I recently remembered involved a class battle, a battle of age and ideas, between “the dungarees and the suits”. The station had switched its format from elevator music to rock and the holdovers in sales, news, and management were feeling marginalized. Arguments and finger pointing ensued over control of the business. The dungarees were the mostly young, charismatic cast members with new ideas. The suits were ridiculous, out-of-touch bumblers who couldn’t hold a job anywhere else. Since this is television we’re talking about, you can guess who won.
The symbolic conflict between suits and dungarees (jeans to those not familiar with other similar battles, like Sassoon v. Toughskins) is a long-standing one. Suits represent establishment. Dungarees are a sign of rebellion. Marlon Brando wore dungarees as a wild-eyed motorcycle-riding thug. He wore a suit as head of a crime syndicate.
When you interview for a job, you’re told to wear a suit to be taken seriously. You wear a suit to a court trial, wedding, or funeral. Our political leaders wear suits to show authority, unless they’re campaigning in the Midwest where they break out the dungarees to shake hands and let everyone know they’re just like everybody else; everybody else with an unquenchable thirst to control the world, but in a casual GAP/Docker’s kind of way.
It’s about packaging. Every product, every celebrity, is packaged for maximum likability. Bill Maher wears modern suits on his HBO news panel program. But on his MySpace page he wears a wicked cool black T-shirt, because it’s MySpace and MySpace is edgy, wild, and wicked cool. Excuse my use of outdated adjectives in describing how edgy, wild, and wicked cool it is, but my outlook is tainted by lack of sleep and hanging out with people who speak in complete sentences.
“Clothes say a lot about you.” “Clothes make the man.” Do clothes make the comedian? Do they make him or her funnier?
Promo ads for Dane Cook’s recent tour have him in a suit. But on his new Comedy Central special he wore ratty jeans along with a T-shirt over a long sleeve T-shirt and a side order of T-shirt to go. This shows he’s just like the other kids, his fans who come out to see him and buy his CD’s. That is if you define ‘just like the kids’ as someone who is 37 years old and has millions. Sure, the kids who skateboard outside my house are just like him, with their devil may care torn jeans, their you’re not my real dad worn T-shirts, and their portfolio matching the CEO of AIG.
Louis CK, in his concerts, usually goes with the more comfortable version of the denim ensemble, the worn sweatshirt and jeans. Maybe it’s hard to get dressed up if you’re going out to say cocksucker forty seven times. But that never stopped Ted Haggard or Larry Craig. Of course, that’s probably a different context.
You could argue that it’s inappropriate to wear a suit where no one else is. In the old days, people dressed up for a night on the town or even a jaunt to the ballpark. But you don’t see so many stove pipe hats and formal wear anymore, not at comedy clubs or anywhere else stand-up thrives this time of year, like coffee houses, crab shacks, and campgrounds. In fact, fewer people dress up for work than they used to. At some point they stopped caring about that; maybe because of higher dry cleaning bills, maybe because it’s easier to lie to everyday folks and get them to buy your wares when you’re just like them.
Don Rickles is coming east this summer. I’ve never seen him live before and I feel the need to see him while he’s still, and there’s no better way to say it, alive. He’s a national treasure, but I doubt his hockey puck jokes will have the same impact when he’s gone. I bet he’ll be wearing a suit or a tux. Of course, Rickles is from another time. He used to hang with Sinatra. You think Frank would sing for a crowd in dungarees?
Maybe it’s a sign of respect for what you do. Maybe it’s respect for the audience. George Carlin wore suits in his early days, then raised a ruckus, after changing sides in the counter culture war, over having to wear one on the first episode of SNL (agreeing on the suit over T-shirt combo). Bill Cosby played a theatre a few years back dressed like he was at the laundromat and all his decent duds were in the spin cycle. Greg Giraldo showed up for his last Comedy Central Roast dressed part pimp/part hobo. But when I spoke with Tom Papa last year, he wore a suit for his show at Gotham in New York. Gotham’s a nice room, but none of the audience members there wore suits. Papa attributed the practice to a fairly successful guy he opens for, Jerry Seinfeld.
So what am I saying? That all comics should have signature outfits like Judah Friedlander, Mort Sahl, or Lisa Lampanelli. That they should dress to the nines like Paul F Tompkins or in metal band T’s like Jim Norton. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just pondering out loud that everyone should choose what path works for them; just as WKRP’s station manager, Arthur Carlson did in the dungaree episode, Turkeys Away. On the show the suits decided to publicize a grand turkey giveaway over Thanksgiving by releasing many of them, alive, from a helicopter high above a parking lot.
Unfortunately, the suits didn’t realize turkeys would plummet to the ground like “sacks of wet cement”. The episode ended with Carlson wistfully saying, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Ken Carlson is the editor of the Comedians Magazine.
editor@thecomedians.org