Okay, so last week’s FSW topic was “Oprah”.<\/p>\n
So I wound up writing this sketch<\/a>. I had spent days trying to think of something — *anything* — that I could do with the topic. I think the best I managed was a couple’s young daughter idolizes Oprah and causes embarrassing situations by trying to treat her parents as talk-show guests.<\/p>\n Then I visited my family for Thanksgiving and talked about the topic with my sister, who watches the show from time to time. I somehow stumbled into, “What if some guy had a big collection of Oprah porn?”<\/p>\n Katherine immediately said, “You probably should run with that.” Then we stood around the dining room trying to think of the most disturbing things one could do with that topic.<\/p>\n I’m actually quite happy with the end result. I haven’t tried to write a scene that’s “OH GOD NO”-creepy before, so that was interesting. Apparently the scene thoroughly disgusted this round’s other two entrants, which I guess means that I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. And I think I struck a nice compromise between sketch structure (funny, Funny, FUNNY!, end) and scenework (hero pursues an objective and faces complications).<\/p>\n It bugs me, though, that I didn’t get the structure quite right. The opening scene in the living room works okay — Matthew’s series of reactions amuses me — but it feels kind of tacked on. And I could have improved the reversal at the end, where I reveal that Chase’s Oprah fetish is actually a cover for his roommate fetish. I keep trying to use a sudden twist as a sketch’s button, but the twists are never clear enough, or they don’t make sense at all.<\/p>\n \nFor this round, Coyote wrote this sketch<\/a>, and Ken Robertson wrote this one<\/a>. I laughed out loud at “You watch a lot of shows on that LG HDTV refrigerator at your place?” \/ “Sometimes!”. I also laughed out loud when, at the exact moment when I thought Ken’s sketch couldn’t get any crazier, the Mayan death god Cizin appeared. Well-played, sirs.<\/p>\n (If anybody wants me to get all detailed and critiquey with their sketchwar entries, lemme know. I may not know what I’m doing w\/r\/t sketch, but I can easily blather on about sketches in an opinionated fashion.)<\/span><\/p>\n