Insta-com
Last night I watched the British premiere of "2 Broke Girls", an American sitcom which has been much talked about as being the next big thing - edgy, smart, in tune with the times. It doesn't really break the mould of the sitcom format so much as scuff against it a little. A diner, a flatshare; hell, a down-on-her-luck WASP princess suddenly appearing in an eatery is how "Friends" started. The writing is what you might call "snappy" or tight" - which is to say a torrent of extremely clever one-liners and comebacks which cumulatively suggest rooms full of college-educated people trying to out-funny each other rather than actual speech. But I enjoyed it far more than I expected, laughing out several times, and in terms of socio-economic realism it looks like Mike Leigh next to "Friends". Would certainly watch again.
The reason I bring this up is that I was interested in "2 Broke Girls" title sequence, which you can watch here. Here are a couple of screenshots:
It's a fairly standard, brief, helicopter shot of the Brooklyn Bridge. What makes it interesting is the retro film effect, which suggests (say) a tourism film about Manhattan from the 1950s. Why something so backward-looking for a sitcom which is otherwise meant to be so up-to-the-minute? then it hit me - it's an Instagram filter. Instagram applied to television! That really is cutting-edge nostalgia.
Edited 23.4.12 to add: "Would certainly watch again", and I did, when it was repeated last night. And what stuck out was something I didn't notice at all the first time around - a very intrusive laugh track.
Edited 23.4.12 to add: "Would certainly watch again", and I did, when it was repeated last night. And what stuck out was something I didn't notice at all the first time around - a very intrusive laugh track.
Labels: pop culture, television
This entry was posted by Will Wiles, on
Friday, 20 April 2012.
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