News > TW FEATURE: Why Flight of the Conchords Will Fail Despite Being a Pretty Funny Show
June 21, 2007
HBO aired the first episode of its new comedy series Flight of the Conchords on Sunday, although it had already released the episode on its website as well as on other sites such as , presumably to generate internet buzz. Unfortunately for the rather funny group of people behind it, the show is destined to fail. There are no fewer than four reasons why this Kiwi folk-comedy duo won’t be seeing a second season, and here they are.
- Confusing title.
The title of the show is also the name of the New Zealand-based guitar-playing comedy team comprised of Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, who play themselves. The show follows the pair as they search for their big break into the New York City music scene (it’s unclear if they are also comedians in the show, or just musicians). Do you see how long that took to explain? Television programs require short, self-explanatory titles to catch a viewer’s attention. You knew what you were getting the first time you saw a billboard advertising The Sopranos, Heroes, Entourage, Reno 911!, The Office, etc. Even a title with more than three words like Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit lets you know exactly what the score is. Flight of the Conchords is presumably a play on Concorde jets as well as the documentary Flight of the Condor, but even I’m not sure after semi-extensive research (Google).
- Low key humor.
This show is about as dry as they come. It avoids broad humor for wordplay, absurdity, and uncomfortable situations, which I personally like. The only pop culture references I caught in the entire first episode were a Lord of the Rings poster hanging in the New Zealand embassy and Jermaine mentioning that he wanted his robot costume to look like Daft Punks’. Compare this to the extremely popular Family Guy, whose writing staff is a veritable encyclopedia of popular culture and sex jokes. Not that they aren’t a very clever group too. And truthfully, Family Guy probably gets a lot more laughs per minute than Flight of the Conchords, despite the latter group’s considerable wit.
- Little to no emotional attachment to characters.
This is a problem that is sometimes inherent with such dry humor. They hardly ever smile, and completely dead-pan everything they say. Bret is particularly stone-faced, acting as the straight man for Jermaine’s dimwitted goofball antics. While I feel this chemistry can work in a sketch or in the on-stage banter at which FotC excel, a live-action series requires you to relate to someone real, which isn’t easy to do when the two main characters are depthless wooden boards.
- People don’t really like musicals any more.
Musicals were ubiquitous from the 1930s through the 60s but are now few and far between. Even the popular musicals made in the past few years have been period pieces (Chicago, Dreamgirls) firmly establishing the musical as a thing of the past, the films of Trey Parker and Matt Stone being exceptions. Flight of the Conchords’ strength is primarily their songwriting abilities (click for a short excerpt from their live set on HBO’s One Night Stand). They know how to make a love song off-beat yet catchy. But contemporary audiences seem to have a hard time getting past the whole breaking character to sing a song routine, and if audiences won’t go along with that for Flight of the Conchords, then it’s utterly hopeless for the show.
Frankly, as much as I really enjoyed the first episode, even I don’t know if this could hold my interest for more than a few episodes. The routine of two bored guys wandering about New York City, making impromptu music videos could get old rather quickly. I sincerely hope I’m wrong about this and they turn out to have some real comedic gold up their sleeves in the coming episodes, but it doesn’t look good. My advice would be to check out an episode regardless and judge for yourself. I can at least promise that it won’t be physically painful to do so.
