Human frailty can be found in all television. In Modern Family, a partitioned family works to stay together. In Mary Tyler Moore, a woman struggles to stand up for herself and what she knows is right. In One Day at a Time, an unconventional family struggles to hold it together.
Comedy in television takes both serious and also common issues and makes them funny, and it also sheds light on the darker side of people by challenging the morals of the characters.
Themes of frailty often focus on sexual behaviors, jealousy, finances, class association, and acting on whims.
In episode of The Mary Tyler Moore show, “Chuckles Bites the Dust” (season 6, episode 7) light is shown on the dark issue of death. In this episode, a fellow employee at the station, “Chuckles,” dies. The whole newsroom crew that Mary works with can’t stop laughing about it because he was a clown and they can’t help but recall his comedic acts. Mary can’t understand why everyone is being so callous about the situation. In the end, during the funeral, Mary herself begins laughing and makes a fool of herself. Humor took over her emotions at an unfortunate time.
Frasier provides many great examples of human frailty. Frasier struggles with his own vanity and desires to appear of a high class. In his attempts to do so, he often forgets to consider his father, brother, friends, and even romantic partners.
Perhaps one of the greatest examples of Frasier’s own insecurities is when he encounters his ex-wife at a resort in season 2, episode 8 and 9, “Adventures in Paradise.” Frasier takes a woman he recently met on a vacation to Bora Bora. The location they travel to is one that he and Lilith, his ex-wife, had been to in the past. Lilith, at the same time, had also taken a man she had met to the same place and time and they all cross paths.
Frasier obsesses over the presence of Lilith and her new partner and can’t stop thinking about them. He goes off the deep end and ends up trying to show up Lilith by proving he is having a better time, as if there were something to win. His actions disregard his girlfriend, and in the end Lilith wasn’t paying any attention or seeing any part of the coincidence as a competition. Eventually Frasier recognizes his faults, but not before it is too late.
This very, very lame essay has no conclusion.
