And while revealing weakness is a hallmark of so much great comedy, this position does make you wonder about counterexamples.
"This new venture represents a formidable opportunity to establish ourselves as a leading supplier of not only half-hour comedies, a position we currently enjoy, but as a potent force in quality long-form television," Dean Valentine, executive vice president for Walt Disney Television, said in a statement.
To me, the problem with this perspective is that it strangely skips right over the fact that "Girls" is a raw, dirty comedy, not a position piece or an op-ed.
They began building the team that would use short cuts, obscure funding proposals and pilots to move Radio 4's comedy to its position as breeding ground for mainstream telly talent.
CBS has ordered full seasons of "The Crazy Ones," "Mom" and "The Millers". "We're proud of CBS's leadership position in comedy and excited to build on it with the back nine pick-ups of these three new comedies," Nina Tassler, president of CBS Entertainment," said in a statement.
In her coverage of the 1996 presidential election for the cable network Comedy Central, she was positioned as a conservative foil to lifelong Democrat Al Franken.
Mr. Bell, the most promising new talent in political comedy in many years, positions himself against network-anchor-style caution in the title of his series, "Totally Biased," a sharp, if still ragged, topical talk show that returns next Thursday.
It's directed with witty speed by Will Gluck, who never lets its emotionally unattached sex partners make huffing and chuffing heavy weather of their bedroom scenes; rather, they play sex as comedy, full of awkward positions, embarrassing requests, and surprisingly revealing vulnerabilities.
I was reminded of the Yes Men, a comedy duo known for positioning themselves as the subjects of their criticism (by lying their way into TV newsrooms for instance), in order to make plausible-sounding claims in interviews and speeches, and thus forcing the offending organization to formally retract the false claims.
