Spaulding wrote:
But it's not really that different. Both explain jokes or the point of the story, which I think was WZ's main objection to it.
it's a different execution. i'll give you an example from "the wonder years", and an example from "modern family".
in the episode "square dance" of "the wonder years", there's the pivotal scene where the kids are gathered in gym class and the coach tells them that they're going to be studing a new course, square dancing. all the kids groan and the look on kevin's face is just pure disappointment. then the narrator chimes in, "Square dancing? What, in case we accidentally crash land in the Ozarks?" Immediately following that, a rush of girls come in, and everybody's expression changes.
in the episode "unplugged" of "modern family", there's a scene where cam and mitchell are looking for a preschool for lily. they go to try to get her into a school called billingsley, the "harvard of preschools" by showing off their cultural diversity...that they're gay and she's asian. however, the following couple is a disabled lesbian couple with a black adopted child. immediately following that sight gag, it switches to the confessional scene where they explain the situation.
all that happens with the narration is that it adds a notch of humor by adding a quip. the way it's said, compounded by kevin's expression, is funny. is it necessary? probably not...but it's a good line.
with the sight gag in "modern family", all the confession is doing is explaining the joke that's already there. while in "the wonder years", it's adding to the joke. and actually, if that line were used by one of the characters *in* the scene, it wouldn't have worked as well because it just isn't believable that a kid would've come up with a line like that. so in the MF example, it's taking away from the humor rather than enhancing it.
it's really more of a distraction to cut between scenes like that. comedy is about rythem. with narration, there is never a break in the flow. narration can sometimes be intrusive, too, though, if it's not necessary. but the confessional sequences don't really need to be in the shows...especially when it doesn't make sense like in MF and MJF. at least in "the office", there's a bit of humor in the fact that these guys think they're "on" when they're just office workers being filmed for a documentary.
and in "the office", a lot of times the confessionals did work because the joke in the confessional scene wasn't necessarily always part of the joke going on in the regular scene.
if that makes sense...
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