Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It’s impossible to compete with nostalgia. No SNL cast will ever surpass the one from your formative years; no romance will engender as much volcanic emotion as your first love; and you’ll always have a weird, wonderful affinity for your high school’s terrible cafeteria food. Humans are imperfect, memories flawed, and our propensity to romanticize the past means that our personal history will always be viewed through a rose-colored hue.
Our reverence for the past manifests itself in different ways. Many have embraced the recent spate of reboots, while I instead choose to bemoan an endangered species of the small screen: the cozy television relic known as the hangout comedy.
The term “hangout comedy” is nebulous, a subgenre that can technically be used to describe many different shows. In its purest form, however, the hangout comedy centers on a group of friends who genuinely care for one another attempting to solve the impenetrable riddle known as “emerging adulthood.” The characters don’t work together; they’re not placed into contrived situations forcing them to interact; and they don’t share a common goal like finding a murderer or solving a mystery. It’s aimless, refreshingly low-stakes comedy centering on twenty or thirty-somethings forming a makeshift family and attempting to cobble together something resembling personal and professional happiness.
New Girl, which wraps its seventh and final season next month, inherited the hangout comedy mantle from How I Met Your Mother after the CBS series ended in 2014. With no worthy successor in sight, the finale of the Fox sitcom might signal the end of the hangout comedy era as we know it.
From 1994-2004, Friends dominated the genre. In 2005, How I Met Your Mother picked up where those notorious Central Perk loiterers left off. When its popularity began to wane, shows like Happy Endings, Cougar Town, and New Girl emerged to take its place. After New Girl, the future of the microgenre is hazy. TV comedy has never been this robust, which is what makes the dearth of options when finding the heir apparent to New Girl’s throne so perplexing. The show’s contemporaries are either winding down (Big Bang Theory), don’t fit the criteria (The Good Place is a fantasy sitcom; It’s Always Sunny is more of an acerbic workplace comedy), fall into a different genre (dramedy or a buddy/workplace/romantic comedy) or are very, very, very bad (Netflix’s Friends From College).
The ensemble hangout comedy being on the verge of extinction shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the degree of difficulty. From a purely fiscal standpoint, it’s rarely a profitable endeavor. For every Friends, there are 100 Union Squares. How I Met Your Mother ran for nine seasons. Inside Schwartz aired nine episodes. The formula is deceptively simple, but the execution is an almost impossible amalgam of moving parts. Assembling the right combination of talent and chemistry requires near-perfect precision and a whole lot of luck. Zooey Deschanel was already a star when New Girl premiered, but the sitcom grew out of its “Adorkable” phase due to the obvious charisma of its supporting cast. During the show’s run, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Lamorne Morris took turns being the breakout character du jour. Casting is integral to the success of any show, but its importance is heightened when the series is so reliant on rapport. One dud and you’re out!
New Girl’s ability to adapt and slightly pivot from its premise — dialing down the quirk, amping up the heart, and embracing the natural chemistry of the ensemble — allowed the show to organically evolve into the best version of itself.
Hangout comedies will always be a tough sell. The need to standout is paramount in an over-saturated television market. If you don’t have a big star attached or have the luxury of a built-in audience via reboot or spin-off, your show is a risky financial endeavor. What’s your hook? What does Episode 2 look like? Do you have enough story and conflict to make it to 100 episodes? Networks aren’t inclined to embrace ambiguity. I understand that high-concept, life and death stakes make for absorbing television, but don’t discount the relatable low-stakes shenanigans that allow viewers to find solace in the familiarity of friendship.
New Girl struck a chord with people because it was a comedic funhouse mirror of reality. It was a snapshot of the maddening, exhilarating time in which you prepare to battle the world with guileless abandon, where reality and aspiration intersect and propel you towards an uncertain future. It was an empathetic elixir to a bad day. Not to get all Breakfast Clubby, but everyone knows or at one point has been a Jess, Nick, Winston, Schmidt, Coach, or CeCe. Without the amorphous structure of a hangout comedy — a framework that allows comedy writers to excel while also affording actors the opportunity to explore smaller improvised moments — New Girl might not have gifted us with True American, Julius Pepperwood, pogo, Ferguson, or countless other memorable moments.
I’m going to miss New Girl. Not only because it’s the last true beacon of a forgotten subgenre, but because it was so much silly, silly, wonderful fun. Nostalgia has helped resurrect countless shows over the past two years, hopefully it can do the same for the hangout comedy.
