In the theatrical jargon the expression slice of life indicates a type of representation very realistic of everyday experiences, with a special attention reserved to the dialogues of the characters, called to keep up the narrative even in the absence of moments of development of the plot. The applications of this concept are almost endless in the field of art, they range from theater to cinema (where examples could be made to hundreds, starting from neorealism), but also from novel to comics (in manga, the slice of life is a real genre), up to the television, where the term with which this narrative mode is usually known takes the name of sitcom. It would be quite a liar not to admit that the first thing you think about when you hear this word is the resumption of the scene inside with the unbearable laughter programmed in the background.
There are so many series (How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, Friends, Modern Family) afferent to this genre that, in the years on horseback between the 1990s and 2000, they were able to build their own slice of fans, creating an imposing mass of fandom works without anything to envy to those of canonical narrative. However, if, as it is legitimate to expect, in many of these products history seems to react sometimes on the comfortable terrain of the surreal situation, constantly reproposing gag that sound like invitations to laugh (just think of the iconic Bazinga! of the Sheldon of The Big Bang Theory), there was a series capable of giving a breath of fresh air to the philn, redefining languages, aesthetics and narrative structure. That series was called Scrubs and was created and developed by one of the most recognizable voices of television comedy between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the ’00s: Bill Lawrence. The same thing that, between Ted Lasso, Shrinking and the latest project, Rooster, has returned to make his voice heard recently and, above all, to bring a humanism all of his.
From 2001 to 2010 on the NBC for the first seven seasons, to emigrate to ABC for the last two before the return to Disney+ this year, Bill Lawrence’s series was able to combine the comic dimension with the dramatic one in a different way from the other narratives of antecedent or contemporary medical settings to it (E.R. – Doctors on the front line, Dr. House). In particular, the dream scenes born from the mind of the protagonist JD (Zach Braff) are an example of the ability of the series to move in spaces until then little explored by sitcoms, along with the effective use of music (with songs by Peter Gabriel and The Fray), wisely used to create deeply empathic atmospheres towards the characters involved.
Very often Scrubs was assumed as a symbol of transition between two decades: from the carefree 1990s to the chaotic third millennium. The series follows the growth parable of its protagonist going hand in hand with the turning events of the latest American history, from post-11 September to the disastrous financial crisis of 2008. The imaginary Sacred Heart Hospital in which the formation of JD takes place, becomes the meeting point of all the best and, at the same time, the worst of society, putting on stage the arrivism that characterizes so many working environments and the daily frustrations deriving from the shifts in the operating room. The themes addressed range from those related to the professional sphere, such as mobbing, to the most personal ones such as loneliness and marginalization, going to touch emotional strings definitely very sensitive to the spectator near the generation represented by characters like JD, Turk (Donald Faison), Elliot (Sarah Chalke) and others.
I am just this empathy and this psychological sensitivity to characterize the production of Lawrence, who, after the experience with Scrubs and with series in their own way “gemelle” like Cougar Town (2009-2015) and Ground Floor (2013-2015), throws himself, together with Jason Sudeikis, in the adventure of Ted Lasso, in which the actor interprets a former American football Premier who tries in the seeming English team.
Presented in 2020 on Apple Tv+, following the appearance of the same character in a NBC Sports television spot for the coverage of the cited championship, the series is another corollary of human emotions inserted in a complicated professional context like that of professional sports. Engraved by Presidentess (Hannah Waddingham) of a low-ranking club (AFC Richmond) to jealousy the former husband, the sympathetic coach interpreted by Sudeikis becomes the central figure for vehicular positivity and a decidedly unconventional attitude in an environment, such as that of the top-level football, dominated by the evil agonistic and the hunger for results.
Accepting the challenge of filming a very complicated sport to be staged (exceptions raised), Bill Lawrence builds together with his actor protagonist the ideal setting to be able to talk about the influence of mental health on sports activity, which is being treated continuously now with the psychological crises of Ted, now with the individual problems of the players, which, as in the case of the young attacker of the team (Phil Dunster), come out from deep and never marginalized.
Empathy is therefore the key word to describe a series like Ted Lasso, but also the next Shrinking, written by Lawrence along with Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel, is no less. Starting from the link between psychoanalyst Paul Rhoades (Harrison Ford) with Parkinson’s disease, and Dr. Jimmy Laird (the same Segel) psychologist who works in his own studio and true protagonist of the series, committed to rebuilding his life after losing his wife, he returns to investigate interpersonal relationships in the world of medicine with another dramedy narrative, where the major element, however, is assumed.
The frankness and sincerity – sometimes brutal – of the revealing moments of the series marks a further important step in the creative path of the showrunner, still remaining in mainstream territory, but always maintaining that naturalness of language that is rare goods in the contemporary serial panorama.
The presence of important names in the most recent productions of Lawrence (Ford, but also Vince Vaughn, the protagonist of the noir series from the sunny Bad Monkey) is certainly the confirmation of his first-class status in the world of American showrunners, which has solidified even more by Steve Carell’s participation in the last Rooster (HBO Max).
With the protagonist a bestseller writer (Carell) called to psychologically support the daughter (Charly Clive) who has been separated from her husband, the series, currently still in progress, is receiving swinging judgments on Metacritic (with a total score of 67), also complicit in the low degree of variation regarding the previous production of the screenwriter. Yet nothing really seems to stop Bill Lawrence, always committed to moving, more or less consciously, towards stubborn and contrary, to speak gently to an America that instead insists on screaming.
L’articolo The drama of living – Bill Lawrence from Scrubs to Rooster proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
