just---please.

-I don't know anybody her age.-" Was that

comical? tragic? or both? Answering that

question requires context. Comedy and

tragedy have always had an interesting

relationship. Although the words comedy

and tragedy have polar opposite

connotations, they are in no way mutually

exclusive.

"Now that I've got a little bit of a career

going, the Jews want me to stay in my weight

and it might be unhealthy." Numerous prominent

philosophers have taken interest in this

phenomenon. Many refer to this confusing

relationship as the incongruity. Søren

Kierkegaard regarded as the father of

existentialism referred to it as the

contradiction.

Although Kierkegaard is most widely

known as a great philosopher, on closer

inspection many believe he was a great

comic. In Søren Kierkegaard journal

writings he laid out a comedic theory

that suggested what makes something

comical is a violation of our

expectations. Kierkegaard believed this

violation was also at the core of the

tragic. He explained this using a story

of a baker whose starving mother was

asking him for foo d. A tragic story that

was ironically funny because the mother

of a Baker would be starving and

begging in the first place.

This sort of dark ironic humor lost

itself in the United States to the birth

of sitcoms in the late 1940s. With the

introduction of the laugh track, early

sitcoms were able to take advantage of a

psychological phenomenon called

informational social influence.

It's a phenomenon observed in both

humans and our primate cousins where

individuals assume the actions of others

to reflect the correct socially accepted

behavior. In other words gag humor became

the norm because we thought we were

supposed to find it

funny--causing American television to

avoid anything of substance for the next

20 or so years. Recently, a new form of

laugh track free TV comedy has emerged,

the sadcom.

Louis CK was influential in setting the

foundation for this trend in comedy

television. CK's show Louie captures the

reality of being a single father with

two young daughters and the craziness of

it all.

Although there are funny moments there's

no canned laughter to signal what to laugh at

and much of the show is very real and

sometimes disconcerting. "When you're with

me and then you're with your mom and you

talk about when you were with me. -You want us

to lie to mom about Pamela..-"

CK explore this format further with his

show Horace and Pete, which is actually listed

as a drama. The show constantly walks the

line between comic and tragic-attempting

to violate expectations of comedy at

every turn. "The jokes that are in it are very

funny -yeah they're alright- but mostly it's like

Cheers

if everyone there was depressed. -That's

right-." Take the opening scene for example,

where an obvious tension lingers in the

air between Louis CK's character Horus and

Steve Buscemi who plays Pete. This scene can

be humorous if I had a laugh track but

without it

it seems dark and unsettling. "I just don't know why

you left a big pile of rags right there. -I had to

close and yeah, so there's a pile of rags

that I left and i'll clean it up before we

open. How's this a mystery?- Pete the

place is always perfect every time you close,

so I thought you must have a reason. -So I

didn't.- okay." "I just don't know why you

left a big pile of rags right there. -I had to

close and yeah, so there's a pile of rags

that I left and i'll clean it up before we

open. How's this a mystery?- Pete the

place is always perfect every time you close, so I thought you must have a reason. -So I didn't. Okay."

CK set the trend and other comedians have followed his lead.

There's Tig Notaros

autobiographical sadcom, One Mississippi.

The premise being the death of her

mother. A sadcom Louis CK produced. "Just going to

go ahead and disconnect the respirator.

Any questions? -About death?-" Or Jill Salloways,

Transparent. A story about a family

unraveling from a lack of communication

the premise being the discovery that the

family patriarch is transgender. "Hi girls."

And my favorite, Baskets, a show created by

Zach Galifianakis, Louie CK, and Jonathan

Krisel-that follows the life and

struggles of an aspiring clown. The big

dreams of the lead character chip could be

replaced with any larger-than-life

aspirations. The most close to home for

Louis CK and Zach Galifianakis, the process

of becoming a comedian. It does a great job

of capturing the obscurity and pain that

comes with chasing a dream but it also

imparts the rich intrinsic rewards that

come with the journey and all the little

victories along the way. " How many bathrooms

do you guys have her. -Three.- I'm gonna need two of them."

So in many ways sadcoms make tragedy

more manegable. Comedy, the constantly

evolving art form that it is-acts as a

social, cultural, and even self mediator.

In a nation disillusioned and

suffocated by expectations-maybe in

part because of the distortions of

reality films and television have ceaselessly

provided us-sadcomes provide a nice

dose of reality. Putting forth the idea

that life isn't perfect and maybe it

never should be. "This is love-missing her

because she's gone, wanting to die.

You're so lucky, you're like a walking

poem. Would you rather be some kind of a

fantasy? some kind of a Disney ride?

is that what you want??"