Here’s my commentary for the latest round of Sketchwar, which had the theme “Time Travel.”<\/p>\n
This time around we again had seven entries. (Aiee!) I think I need to reformat my commentaries a bit for legibility, and shorten them a bit so that I can actually finish them.<\/p>\n
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“Blastoff”<\/a><\/strong> So, without any cavalcade of one-liners, I pretty much have to judge “Blastoff” by the rules of scene-writing — and honestly, I find it a bit wanting. Granted, it’s great that you have two conflicting and distinct characters in this two-hander. The problem is that their conflict is static: there’s this holding pattern of “Sid asks a question,” “Bradley delivers exposition,” “Bradley says something exasperated about how stupid Sid is.” It doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere, it feels a bit mean-spirited, and eventually it starts to feel like a cheat for info-dumping exposition.<\/p>\n I don’t know how to fix this. The concept might work; maybe the sketch needs to be closer to the action? Maybe there’s a funnier sketch that actually takes place during the time-travel-trip? I’m not sure.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n “I\u2019m rich, bitch!”<\/a><\/strong> What I liked best: this sketch is a perfect example of exactly how long a comedy sketch can be not-funny. We get this drawn-out transaction between Woodrow and Phil, and by the time we’re saying, “Um… something had better happen now,” we get the “Hotdamn!” speech.<\/p>\n Then, at the point when we’re expecting the scene with a drawn-out beginning to have a drawn-out end, we get a punchline and a blackout.<\/p>\n The prose is a little too detailed, but apart from that, I have no useful advice. Funny, funny stuff.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n “Fight for the Future”<\/a><\/strong> Ah, well. One can’t win them all.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n “The Day Before Yesterday!!!”<\/a><\/strong> With this one, I wanted to see the concept pushed even further. I assume the conceit here is that Jamie has just been sent two days in the past — not that big a deal — but Jamie (and Levar) treat it as a melodramatic tragedy. When I saw that concept show up, I wanted to see bigger and bigger overreactions from Jamie. By the end, I really wanted to see him take some life-threatening action to jump himself forward two days.<\/p>\n I could kind of see that kind of an arc already there — I guess I just wanted it to be clearer and bolder.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n “Clusterfuck: An Existential Time Travel Crisis”<\/a><\/strong> It *is* a bit of a shaggy-dog story —\u00a0it reads like a brainstorming list of “things we could do with a roomful of time travellers” instead of a scene — but the bickering Terminators and the random batches of socks are gold. ((Side note: the sock-dump might be funnier if Reese *didn’t* describe the event ahead of time.)) The lack of a real narrative means it’s hard to give it a proper ending, so we get that random, “rocks fall everyone dies” ending.<\/p>\n So: kind of shambolic, but there are funny bits in there. Well-played!<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n
\nAh, it looks like someone else has succumbed to the allure of ‘scenes instead of sketches’. As far as I can tell, the only real jokes here are that (1) the guy’s trying to retrieve a baseball and (2) he gets hit in the head by the baseball. Apart from that, you’re doing a more-or-less straight scene of a scientist clashing with his dim-witted assistant.<\/p>\n
\nOkay, looks like Ken is king of the blackout sketches now.<\/p>\n
\nThis one, I was less impressed with. I get the basic idea — guy pretends to be (essentially) Kyle Reese in order to get laid — though I didn’t understand the “stop fucking with the future!” punchline. (And again, the prose needs pruning.)<\/p>\n
\nDefinitely good job nailing the tone. I don’t think you needed that “crap special effects” premise, because the prose and dialog gets it across just fine.<\/p>\n
\nGreat concept!<\/p>\n