Dispatches From Jerry's Impossible Hallway

At the end of a long day, sometimes there's nothing better for comfort food than revisiting an old favorite sitcom or discovering a new one. In an age in which these shows can be conjured on demand and streamed one after the other, they can be as cozy as a warm throw blanket on a cold night. Familiar faces and situations greet you on the screen, making you laugh even though you've seen the episode before and know the punchline already. So ubiquitous is this form of media, and so universal in its influence since its first inception on radio programming nearly a century ago, that the weirdness of the format often flies under the radar. So it is with weirdness- sometimes the absolute weirdest stuff is woven into the very mundane. And so it is that we turn our gaze, through the lens of our strange spectacles, toward the television screen as a familiar theme song plays- snacks at the ready, we settle in for dispatches from Jerry's Impossible Hallway.

The format of the situation comedy, or sitcom, lends itself very easily to the blandest forms of banality. All that is required is a cast of characters who the audience expects to see carried over from one episode to the next, with consistent and predictable personalities. While many shows come and go quickly, failing to hit the mark with audiences, others become the stuff of legend. The most popular shows are celebrated decades after the airing of the final episode, influencing everything from language to cultural norms. In a previous post, I alluded to the subliminal effects of The Simpsons on myself and others of my general age group- in particular, that of Homer Simpson as a sort of archetypal everyman. Homer-isms have a way of seeping in, which may in part explain the dumbening of our society broadly- the childlike oafishness of the character stands as an exaggerated exemplar of all of us at our most foolish, emotive, lazy, and, well, American. Controversial at the time, Homer and contemporary TV dad Al Bundy of Married... With Children seemed to the more conservative viewers to be corrupting influences on the media landscape. The depiction of a "dysfunctional family" was jarring to those who preferred their TV dads and their respective families to be squeaky-clean projections of the ideal household, while at the same time more realistic and appealing to other viewers. The outward presentation of the idealized TV family is of course a façade, but is no less intoxicating for the viewer who falls under the spell of scripted familiar characters and live studio audiences. When the ugliness of real life intrudes, such as with the revelations about Bill Cosby's sex crimes, a real crisis ensues. Fans can no longer see Dr. Huxtable the same way ever again- a feeling of betrayal pervades, as though the fictional character and actor were known personally and found to be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

In the current era, media such as sitcoms is consumed in a different way, but the archetypal nature of the characters still finds its expression. Long before I had ever watched a single episode of Parks and Recreation, I was familiar with the character of Ron Swanson (pictured above) based almost entirely on memes and animated GIFs used on social media. Nick Offerman's character on the show, it seemed to me at the time, had a noticeable impact around the culture of food- particularly when it came to bacon. Suddenly it seemed to me that bacon was having a renaissance, and I couldn't help but feel like the fictional character from a wildly popular sitcom had a hand in it. Whether this is true, it's hard to say- but the memeification of these cartoonish representations of people and their foibles, quirks, and catch-phrases does have a noticeable effect on the public consciousness. These effects range from dietary choices, as in the Swanson example, to more profound and impactful social changes brought about by utilizing the bigoted characterization of Archie Bunker in All in the Family. In a subtle way, they become avatars of aspects of humanity, which invariably cycle back into a feedback loop creating the world in which we live.

There is an allure to the world in which the sitcom characters live, which we only glimpse through that missing fourth wall most of the time- but upon reflection, often it doesn't add up. Another product of the internet and social media age which impacts our collective understanding of the sitcom phenomena is the endless minutiae and conjecture from fans with too much time on their hands. Forums are littered with "fan theories" about shows, sometimes connecting one program to another; other times viewers dedicate time to pointing out continuity errors and problems with the set design. Such is the case with Jerry's hallway in the show Seinfeld- according to people who have clearly put a lot of effort into proving it, Jerry's hallway can't exist as it is shown based on how his kitchen is shaped. The door through which Kramer slides into the apartment, unannounced, thus becomes a portal to a non-Euclidean realm of warped dimensions. The city of New York in the Seinfeld-verse is populated by an odd assortment of memorable and wacky characters- Soup Nazis, close-talkers and hard-nosed library detectives. Some of them, like the aforementioned Kramer and Crazy Joe Davola* are based on real people- and of course, Jerry is playing a fictionalized version of himself.  George is an exaggerated version of series co-creator Larry David, who went on to play a fictionalized version of himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm. The feedback loop for the characters, amplified through our collective embrace of their enduring qualities, subtly erases lines between the fictions and the factual basis- not just of the people involved, but their beliefs, their settings, and their attitudes. Like that missing fourth wall which allows the camera and studio audience a glimpse into the sitcom universe, the liminal bleedover from the soundstage to our living rooms reconfigures our perception of reality, however subtly. More than 20 years after the final episode of Seinfeld aired, people still reference George's father's invented holiday Festivus when it comes around- and who is to say whether it will stay a joking observation, or whether it will one day be recognized as a legitimate holiday? At the time of this writing, Curb Your Enthusiasm is ending its run with David releasing a tongue-in-cheek farewell to the version of himself that appeared on the show, saying he's looking forward to "shedding" the malignant persona. "And so, 'Larry David' I bid you farewell. Your misanthropy will not be missed." He says he can now be reached at Doctors Without Borders where he will presumably be doing humanitarian work.

*RIP to Peter Crombie, who played Crazy Joe Davola. He passed away in January of 2024 at the age of 71. For those keeping up with the clown theme on this blog, his passing seems significant.

Jerry's 1990s New York and the mysterious architecture of his apartment building serve to illustrate the weird logic of sitcom universes, which follow rules specific to ratings, fan reactions, and continuity more than any type of "canon". For a "Show about nothing", it certainly had a lot going on. For any sitcom though, and for storytelling more generally, one must employ a willing suspension of disbelief. This becomes easier when the show is funny and well-liked, but even the best shows face this kind of scrutiny in today's world of online communities. When one starts thinking in terms of multiple universes, as physicists suggest might be the case, one wonders if these sitcom worlds could actually exist in an alternate reality. Conversely, if you're of the belief we all live within a holographic, artificial world, how would we know whether we were just characters on a screen with laugh tracks added on, playing out our lives for the amusement of some supercomputer? The Marvel series WandaVision plays with this concept, illustrating how unnerving such a reality might be from an outside perspective. Using her memories of sitcoms she saw as a child, she has a traumatic break from sanity- and uses her powers to construct the idealized sitcom world around her, effectively trapping an entire town within it. 

Thinking of any particular show as its own insular universe is one thing, but others take it further- insinuating that through a network of crossover appearances, many of the sitcoms and dramas on TV all occur in the same universe. What's more, they all stem from an extended daydream from an autistic child in the series St Elsewhere. This "Grand Unification Theory" of TV, known as the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, was originally advanced by writer Dwayne McDuffie as a way to illustrate the absurdity in insisting on continuity and canon within both TV shows and comic books. The final episode of St Elsewhere, a medical drama based in Boston, reveals the whole series to have been a daydream from a patient with autism. Thus, the reductio ad absurdum argument goes, all connected shows must also have only been a daydream, extending off of the one in the series. The list includes Cheers, The X-Files, Homocide: Life on the Streets, The Bob Newhart Show, and even The Simpsons and The Critic. The hypothesis has taken on a life of its own, despite its original premise rejecting an insistence on continuity between franchises. He writes that cross-overs are fun, but obsessing over making sense of it all is silly.

Silly though it may be, it's fun to think about how these shows could overlap. Richard Belzer's iconic detective character, John Munch, has crossed over to more shows than any other. It's amusing to think of him as some cross-dimensional detective, almost MiB-like in his affect. Munch as a character shared similarities with the actor who played him; Belzer's signature comedic delivery and mildly paranoid worldview were worked into the scripts. Munch was everywhere for a time, it seemed- and the conspiracy laden lines he delivered in character were echoes of the real Belz who would release books on such subjects- a further amplification of resonant feedback looping.

Sometimes, it's not the characters that crossover and imply a shared universe but the props and products used. An example of this is Morley Cigarettes, notably the favored brand of the enigmatic, shadowy villain of The X-Files. Morleys have a history as a fictional brand, created to avoid advertising conflicts in the early 1900s for use as props on film. The Morley-verse thus encompasses The X-Files as well as The Dick van Dyke Show, The Walking Dead, The Twilight Zone, and movies such as Psycho. Detective John Munch would of course have at least visited this universe, as he appeared in character in one episode of The X-Files. One hopes that he fared ok in the zombie apocalypse which was to come...

These fictional worlds, however you want to look at them, offer a perspective of the era in which they are produced just as they inform and influence the culture which consumes them. Going back to the earliest days of really successful sitcom programming for television, there are some surprisingly spooky origins to it all. I Love Lucy stands as one of the greatest shows of all time, and Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz built a media empire off of it. It began, Ball has said in interviews, with her friend Carole Lombard coming to her in a dream and telling her to get into television rather than movies. Lombard had died in a plane crash in 1942- and regardless of what one believes about the supernatural, it's wild to think that such a huge piece of television history was at least partly inspired by something of a ghost. Ball also traces her family history back to women who were accused during the Salem Witch Trials. It is notable that iconic series such as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible directly owe their existence to Desilu Productions, but in terms of influence and setting of standards in TV programming much more of what we've consumed in the history of sitcoms rests with those early episodes of her show.

Likewise, The Honeymooners was a landmark show which similarly influenced generations of shows that followed. Jackie Gleason, who starred as Ralph Kramden, was very much interested in all manner of weird topics. He was especially interested in UFOs, and allegedly accompanied then-sitting President Richard Nixon to view retrieved alien bodies and craft specimens. He appeared on talk shows to discuss Flying Saucers, and had an immense library of books on the paranormal which are now archived at the University of Miami, in Florida. He even had a custom built house built in New York shaped like a flying saucer.

Of course, aliens are no stranger to the sitcom multiverse. My Favorite Martian, ALF, Third Rock From the Sun, and Mork and Mindy are all examples of sitcoms with lovable alien characters. Mork and Mindy was a spinoff of an alien themed episode of Happy Days, and even shows like The Golden Girls have episodes that at least reference UFO phenomena. The 1960s in particular had other weird subjects featured, in such shows as Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, which in their own way introduced and normalized magic to audiences. The Addams Family brought to life the characters from comic strips by Charles Addams, which in turn inspired the repurposing of Universal monsters for the show The Munsters. These shows proved that even the spooky, kooky, and ooky among us can be loved by audiences, and perhaps they hinted at some of the weird origins of the medium. The enduring popularity of these shows in their recent adaptations prove that it's a message that still resonates, and continues to expand.

Regardless of the type of show, the era in which it first aired, or how you consume it, for many of us the sitcom is a form of escapism. Like the theme song to Cheers says, "You want to be where you can see / our troubles are all the same / you wanna go where everybody knows your name". Whether that's a basement bar under a restaurant in Boston or the idyllic town of Mayberry, whether it's in a paper sales office in Scranton or in an apartment in New York, we find comfort in these soundstage environs as much as we do on the couch from which we view them. Wouldn't you like to get away?

  

 

 

The Fox and the Faculty X Files

There can be no doubt that Fox Broadcasting Company has had a massive impact on culture, especially in the United States. While broadly this has been of a political nature, in their divisive news programming, the sitcoms and dramas produced in the early 1990s had a different but no less groundbreaking impact. The Simpsons, now the longest running program of its kind, is so ubiquitous that it has a sort of subliminal presence- Homer, occupying an archetype of the dopey American everyman, looms so large in the public psyche that one can't help but think the show has had unmeasured effects on the world. I am sure that I am not alone in finding that references to the show sometimes slip out almost unconsciously in conversation; and, further, the wide appeal of the show and its long run has been noted for its seeming ability to predict future events. While the simple explanation is that after decades of programs, the sheer volume of plots and gags would by statistical chance mirror future events, its no less cromulent to suppose that perhaps the writers managed to tap into a psychic pipeline in crafting the episodes. This very dichotomy is at the heart of the focus of today's meditation- Fox's own Fox Mulder, and his partner Dana Scully, the lead pair of FBI agents in The X-Files.

At the time of this writing, The X-Files is celebrating 30 years since its debut. While I'm certain that many who are interested in weird subjects like UFOs, ghostly phenomena, monsters, and conspiracies were profoundly effected or inspired by the show, it also brought a lot of these ideas to audiences who may not otherwise have interacted with them. In line with the aforementioned effects of both The Simpsons and Fox's news programming, whether these effects were good overall is really a matter of perspective. Still, there have been studies which have made a case for such things as The Scully Effect - the idea that by virtue of her presence in popular fiction, Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully inspired young women to pursue careers in the fields of science. Ever the level-headed skeptic, Scully always balanced Mulder's reckless abandon in pursuit of the most bizarre case files the FBI could offer. One can't help but to feel sympathy for Scully, who long suffers at the whims of a partner who valued discovery of hidden truths over all else. The dynamic is perhaps best captured in a scene from the episode "Quagmire" (Season 3, Episode 22) in which the pair (along with Scully's short lived pup, Queequeg), go in search of a lake monster called Big Blue. Stranded in the dark, out in the lake at night, Scully compares Mulder's monomanaical obsession with truth-seeking to that of Ahab's in Moby Dick. Everything, she says, "takes on a warped significance" to suit Mulder and justify his actions. Mulder quips immediately by asking her is she's coming onto him.

She is correct, as is often the case on the show. If Fox Mulder is a hero, he's a tragic one; and much like Captain Ahab he would rather stab at the mysteries of life from Hell's heart in his dying breath than simply live with it. Just look at the body count in any given episode, and how many of those deaths are collateral damage to his efforts. Look at his lack of a social life, which eventually becomes mirrored by the same in Scully's life. Mulder was an obsessive paranoiac, but the difference between him and the average tinfoil hat researcher is that the government paid him to be that way. This is not to say Mulder didn't have his admirable qualities; of course he did, and as much as Homer Simpson came to symbolize the everyman Mulder came to be an avatar for truth seekers and DIY researchers of all walks of life. The irony seems to be that in choosing him as a role model, real-life pursuers of the Truth-that-is-out-there miss the subtle cautionary tale inherent in the story. The history of Ufology in particular includes many examples of those who have discarded their lives - whether intentionally or otherwise - under the pretense of revealing the Truth to the public. Many today in the Disclosure movement would do well to heed the warnings offered by Mulder's example, but, as is often the case, he is instead idolized as an example to follow. The path that Mulder's flashlight illuminates is one that leads to madness; one should, instead, seek the yin and yang of both lead characters together, rather than one or the other.

Speaking personally, one particular episode that embiggened my consciousness in the same subliminal way Simpsons references occasionally manifest in my speech is "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" (Season 3, episode 4). The episode is written by Darin Morgan, who wrote all of my favorite episodes of the show. These include "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", which is perhaps the single best fictional presentation of high strangeness and the difficulty inherent in making a cohesive story appear from it; "Humbug", which centers on circus and carnival characters; and, when the series returned for a brief run, the two best episodes "Mulder and Scully Meet the Weremonster" and "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat". In addition, he appeared on the show in "Small Potatoes", and played the Flukeworm Man in the episode "The Host". 

If all of that isn't enough, he also helped to write the aforementioned Ahab dialog in "Quagmire", although he didn't write the main episode. Morgan has a way of tapping directly into the quintessence of the great mysteries, by way of well-crafted stories in which Mulder and Scully are forced to contend with the purely absurd. Often funny and always charming, his contributions in the form of "Monster of the Week" episodes utilized that very humor and charisma to convey the nature of anomalies in a way that few dramatic interpretations can ever hope to achieve. 

Such is undoubtedly the case with "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". Peter Boyle guest stars as the titular character, an insurance salesman who is worn down by life and feels he is cursed with psychic abilities. Mulder is able to sense this about him, and Bruckman reluctantly agrees to aid he and Scully in the investigation into murders of fortune tellers in his native Saint Paul, Minnesota. His main ability seems to be knowing precisely the manner and time of a person's death, well before it happens- so of course, he sells life insurance. He seemingly predicts Mulder's death with an off-hand comment about auto-erotic asphyxiation, and famously tells Scully that she doesn't die. The part of the episode that impacted me, and my worldview, went largely forgotten for years and was only discovered when I revisited the series long after originally seeing it. 

Bruckman explains how he developed his abilities, more or less by accident, after hearing about the death of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. He explains that in 1959 he had a ticket to see the three rock and roll legends play what would have been their next stop, had their plane the American Pie not crashed. He was particularly excited to see the Big Bopper, known for his song "Chantilly Lace"- and found out later that the only reason the Big Bopper got a seat on the plane to begin with was that he had flipped a coin with someone else for it. (In real life, this did happen, only it was Buddy Holly who had flipped the coin to win a seat on the plane. We can forgive Morgan for this inaccuracy though!) Bruckman became obsessed with the coin flip, and realized that all of life is composed of little moments that lead to something so small as a coin flip- which could mean the difference between life and death for even so great a personage as the Big Bopper. His obsession with causality, and imagining the myriad factors and variables which manifest in everything that can be said to happen, eventually led him to accurately determine when someone would die- and how. "I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it's true!" he says, "I was a bigger fan of the Big Bopper than I was of Buddy Holly."

I never necessarily considered myself to be psychic, but I have long believed that all human beings (and all life forms, for that matter) have some degree of sensory perception that is as yet not understood by modern science. Some are naturally more adept at accessing the information, while for others it takes dedicated practice- but each of us has some germ of omniscience within us. Colin Wilson calls this idea "Faculty X", in his excellent book The Occult: A History, which I always recommend to people who are only beginning to explore occult ideas. He supposes that ancient man, unfettered by the distractions and conveniences of modern life, would have had innate extrasensory perceptions that enabled him to survive in a chaotic and dangerous world. Some remnant of that still exists, and there are many schools of thought about how one harnesses this awareness. I felt pretty clever for years, thinking I had just stumbled on the idea that simply by considering causality I might have some inkling of future events. It was never easy for me to explain, which was fine because I rarely had anyone sympathetic to whom I could explain it- but the nature of Time, whibbly and wobbly as it is, is merely illusory. We experience it in a linear way because otherwise, our minds would break. By perceiving all that is happening now- by really paying attention and noting what's going on in your immediate environment, in meditative silence, one just might be able to perceive what has happened and what will occur. Further, by considering why everything you perceive at any given moment is occurring, you glimpse a bit of the machinery, which trains the mind to anticipate how that same machinery will operate moving forward.

As I type this now, in my living room with my small dog curled up next to me on the couch, I can see outside that the storm is winding down to a light drizzle. Birds are chirping in the distance. My wife has gone out shopping, which inspired me to start typing this. All of these present affairs are intimately interrelated. Had it not stormed today, my wife would have insisted on going to the flea market- or, perhaps, would have preferred to go shopping further away- but since she doesn't like driving in the rain, she stayed closer to home. Had we gone to the flea market, I wouldn't be writing this right now- and if I wrote it later, it would undoubtedly be a very different meditation indeed. These are small examples of immediate awareness of the NOW, which is a window into the WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN- and, quite possibly, also a window into WHAT WILL BE.

The preceding paragraph is an homage to Wilson. When I first read The Occult, I found myself getting irritated as his asides about his personal life. In explaining Faculty X, he would often say "As I sit at my typewriter in my home in Cornwall..." and for some reason I just found it tiresome. One day while reading it I became sleepy and went for a nap. I fast fell into a dream, in which I opened a door and suddenly all that I could recognize as my own dreaming was gone- I found myself in a small room, built of stone with large windows letting soft light in. It was large enough for a few benches, on which sat Colin Wilson. He smiled, and shrugged, and as though answering a question I hadn't asked said "It's about honesty, isn't it? Are you being honest, that's the main question. Everything else depends on that." I woke up mystified. I wasn't sure at the time that I even knew what Wilson looked like- my copies of his books didn't have author photos. I eventually remembered an obituary of his in an issue of Fortean Times, and dug it up- and there he was, older than the Wilson of my dream but recognizable. A few google searches later found photos that looked much more like the man in the dream. 

Ever since then, I have always endeavored to be honest with myself first and foremost, and honest in my approach to writing in particular. This sounds easy, as most of us like to think we're naturally honest people- but when you really examine it, you realize that there are little lies you tell yourself all of the time. Confronting these demons, as it were, and banishing them, also helps to promote Faculty X. This digression and admission of potentially psychic activity is oddly difficult for me to express. It sounds crazy. In the interest of being honest, however, it felt natural to include it- and for the record, I'm a bigger fan of Buddy Holly than I am of the Big Bopper.

It was wild then, for me, years after digesting a great episode of such an iconic series of The X-Files, to realize that so much of my way of looking at the world was inspired by the fictional character of Clyde Bruckman. (The real life Bruckman, as it happens, is a tragic character in the history of old Hollywood. The name stuck in my memory because I recognized it from the credits of old Laurel and Hardy or Three Stooges films... This is a running theme in The X-Files, which I will have to write about another day. The writers seemed to love referencing old comedies.) One wonders, had I not seen that episode when it first aired how different my life would be. If one does wonder that, than one has caught on to the idea of causality that I'm describing, that I learned through Darin Morgan's writing.

These themes weave themselves through the so-called "Monster of the Week" episodes in a way that is only apparent to the real nerds who pay attention to such things. The episode "Monday" (Season 6, episode 14) is a Groundhog Day-esque time loop tale, wherein events that come to pass largely due to lasting effects from the temporal jiggery-pokery that occur in "Dreamland" (2 part story, episodes 4 and 5 of the 6th season) cause Mulder to continually end up at a bank while it is being robbed, and repeatedly die in an explosion. Since Bruckman's insights might have saved Mulder's life in that episode, it seems by virtue of the fact that future events were disrupted a ripple effect had a lasting influence later in the series. Also, the dog called Queequeg was introduced in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"- and done away with in "Quagmire". The dog's name is what inspired the Ahab comparison in that episode.

In 30 years the legacy of Mulder and Scully, and other characters like the Lone Gunmen and the sinister Cigarette Smoking Man have loomed large in our public consciousness when it comes to anomalies, and in particular to UFOs. To this day, when news stations cover a UFO story, they can't help but insert the theme song, much to the chagrin of dedicated and serious researchers. I hope that future generations continue to discover the show, and perhaps with hindsight glean some of the subtler lessons the show had to teach. A major Truth that is out there for any of us to catch is that being serious all of the time does not necessarily bring one closer to their goal. Perhaps the quote to end with would be the line Leonard Nimoy gives, at the start of the X-Files / Simpsons crossover episode, "The Springfield Files": 

"...and by 'true', we mean 'false'. It's all lies. But the lies are told in an entertaining fashion, and in the end, isn't that the real truth?

The answer is no."