“黑暗会吞没一切”，死亡成为当今美剧主题

编剧兼制片人莉兹·费尔德曼曾经为艾伦·德杰尼勒斯、奥斯卡颁奖典礼以及包括《破产姐妹》（Two Broke Girls）在内的众多情景喜剧编剧，拥有好莱坞最令人羡慕的喜剧事业之一。然而，她迄今为止最受评论界好评的作品《麻木不仁》（Dead to Me）也是她最压抑的电视剧之一（甚至是有史以来最压抑的剧集之一），这说明了什么？

“我们生活在非常黑暗的时期，很难不去想这种可能性——终有一天，黑暗会吞没一切。”费尔德曼说，她为Netflix写的这部暗黑喜剧聚焦珍（克里斯蒂娜·艾伯盖特）和朱迪（琳达·卡德里尼）之间的友谊，珍是一位悲伤的母亲，有两个孩子，朱迪却刚好是杀死珍丈夫的凶手。“死亡是最普世的主题。如果你达到了某个年龄，肯定经历过丧亲之痛。”费尔德曼说。她把自己不孕的挣扎和表兄突然去世的悲伤融入了这部剧。“作为一名作家，我必须把这些故事讲出来。”

在去年的黄金时段艾美奖上，亚马逊充满阳光的复古风格喜剧《了不起的麦瑟尔夫人》（The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel）获得了喜剧类最佳剧集奖（有人说，部分原因是多年大热剧《副总统》没有参选）。之后的九个月里，关于死亡、来世、悲伤的电视剧数量已经达到了临界值。亚马逊的《永远》（Forever）、Netflix的《轮回排队》（Russian Doll）、美国全国广播公司（NBC）的《好地方》（The Good Place）等喜剧以不同版本的来世为主题，而Netflix的《麻木不仁》、《柯明斯基理论》（The Kominsky Method）和瑞奇·热维斯的《身后事》（After Life）则构成了悲伤三部曲，忧郁主题原本只是偶尔使用一次，用于搭建“极特殊的剧集”，现在却成为了整部剧作的故事主干。

除了美国广播公司（ABC）的一小时怪诞喜剧《灵指神探》（Pushing Daisies）和HBO电视台开创性却从未获得艾美奖的殡仪家庭剧《六尺之下》（Six Feet Under）之外，电视剧行业一直都惧怕死亡。美国国家公共电台（NPR）的电视评论家埃里克·德根斯说：“长期以来，人们一直认为观众不愿去想和死亡有关的事。”但现在，大环境由流媒体公司主导，他们瞄准的是特定的观众群体。以死亡为主题的故事所带来的表演机会鼓励了编剧，尤其是半小时剧集的编剧，他们把这类主题用作驱动笔下剧集的戏剧引擎。”

对于艾美奖的投票者来说，黑色喜剧的吸引力并不新鲜。多年来，在艾美奖的喜剧竞赛中，投票者都很欢迎那些突破体裁类型的参赛剧目。早在1987年，《洛杉矶时报》（Los Angeles Times）的作者霍华德·罗森伯格就注意到了一种他称之为“创伤剧”的趋势。那年，迈克尔·J·福克斯凭借在NBC的电视剧《亲情纽带》（Family Ties）中开创性的剧集获得最佳喜剧片男演员，他在里面扮演一个因为朋友的去世而十分伤痛的角色。之后几十年,数十部偏戏剧类的喜剧和喜剧表演都曾折桂，包括FX的《亚特兰大》（Atlanta），《护士当家》（Nurse Jackie）里的伊迪·法尔科（她在2010年艾美奖上因为Showtime系列捧回奖杯时，宣称“我一点也不搞笑！”），《透明家庭》（Transparent）里的杰弗里·坦伯尔（他现在一身麻烦）和凭借在HBO的《巴里》（Barry）里扮演有名无实的刺客在去年夺得艾美奖的比尔·黑德。

但今年，投票者要考虑的显然是一系列存在主义主题更加突出的电视剧。部分原因是编剧迈克尔广受好评的慢热剧集《好地方》（该剧第一季于2016年播出，计划于今年秋天结局）为更多喜剧奠定了基础，正如戴根斯所说，这些剧目用死亡和悲伤探索“道德，以及在极度怪诞的环境中，如何定义谁是好人。”

《轮回排队》的联合主创、主演娜塔莎·里昂说，她的主角纳迪亚·沃尔沃科夫在试图解开自己死亡之谜的过程中，一次又一次地死去，最后开始寻找一个存在的理由。“这部剧讲的更多的不是生与死，而是介于生死之间的模糊地带。”里昂说大屠杀幸存者维克多·弗兰克的《活出生命的意义》（Man’s Search for Meaning）启发了编剧们，“我们想让纳迪亚踏上一段旅程，去寻找参与生活的理由。”

阿米森说，像《轮回排队》和《好地方》一样，他的电视剧《永远》也把来世作为喜剧的主题，但却把这个概念发挥到了一种意想不到的理性高度。该剧由《公园与游憩》（Parks and Recreation）的艾伦·杨和马特·哈伯德创作。“有情侣告诉我，这部剧让他们两个人进行了有意义的对话，比如‘直到死亡把我们分开’到底是什么意思？”阿密森说，“我认为这些电视剧之所以能够引起人们的共鸣，因为它们讲的真的是人类的生活状态、人类的坚持，甚至是乐观主义。”

艾美奖的投票者们是否准备在6月24日把票投给今年的这波“心理创伤剧”？结果将在7月16日公布提名时揭晓。但截至发稿时，预测网站Gold Derby上19个评论记者专家几乎全部预测《轮回排队》、《好地方》和《柯明斯基理论》（也有一些喜欢本年度最新的竞争者《麻木不仁》）将击败本类型剧集的领头羊：HBO的三连冠《副总统》（这是该剧最后一年参加竞赛了）。

费尔德曼说，不管她的剧集能否入围，粉丝们对Netflix 在6月3日续订《麻木不仁》第二季的反应，都标志着该剧的主线与观众情感体验之间的关系出现了变化。

“是的，这是一部关于死亡和失去的电视剧，但同时也是一部关于友谊和宽慰的电视剧，正是友谊和宽慰让我们度过了那些难关。”她说，“希望观众能够感同身受，希望这也是他们愿意继续观看的原因。”（财富中文网）

译者：Agatha

Having written for Ellen DeGeneres, the Oscars telecast and numerous sitcoms including Two Broke Girls, writer-producer Liz Feldman has one of Hollywood’s most enviable comedy careers. So what does it say about the genre that her most critically-acclaimed creation to date, Dead to Me, also is one of the most depressing shows, maybe ever?

“We’re living in very dark times, and it’s hard to not think about the eventuality of that darkness overcoming everything,” says Feldman, whose pitch-black Netflix comedy centers on the friendship between Jen, a grieving mother of two (Christina Applegate) and Judy (Linda Cardellini), who happens to be the woman who killed the former’s husband. “Death is the most universal theme there is. If you’re a human of a certain age, you’ve experienced loss,” says Feldman, who channeled her personal fertility struggles and grief over the sudden death of her cousin into the series. “As a writer, I had to get these stories out of me.”

In the nine months since last year’s Primetime Emmy Awards, when Amazon’s sunny, retro comedy The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won Best Comedy Series (aided, some say, by perennial favorite Veep’s absence from the race), shows about dying, the after-life, and grief have reached critical mass. From comedies like Amazon’s Forever, Netflix’s Russian Doll, and NBC’s The Good Place, which center on versions of the afterlife, to Netflix’s grief-themed trifecta Dead to Me, The Kominsky Method, and Ricky Gervais’ After Life, morose themes once employed as a “very special episode” one-offs are now backbones of the storytelling.

Outside of a few series—ABC’s whimsical one-hour comedy Pushing Daisies and HBO’s groundbreaking but never Emmy-winning mortuary-family-drama Six Feet Under, for two—TV has feared the reaper. “There’s long been a sense that viewers don’t want to think about death,” says NPR’s TV critic Eric Deggans. “But now we’re in a landscape dominated by streaming companies who crave specific audiences. The acting opportunities that come with death-focused storylines have energized writers, especially of half-hour series, to make these themes their series’ dramatic engines.”

The appeal of darkness-tinged comedy isn’t new to Emmy voters, who have long embraced genre-defying entrants in the comedy race. Los Angeles Times writer Howard Rosenberg noted the trend toward what he called “traumadies” as early as 1987, when Michael J. Fox won Best Actor in a Comedy for a groundbreaking episode of NBC’s Family Ties where his character grieved a friend’s death. And in the decades since, dozens of drama-leaning comedies and performances have taken home gold in the comedy categories, including FX’s Atlanta, Nurse Jackie star Edie Falco (who, upon accepting her Emmy in 2010 for the Showtime series, proclaimed, “I’m not funny!”), embattled Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor, and last year’s winner Bill Hader, who scored gold for playing the titular assassin in HBO’s Barry.

But this year, voters have a decidedly more existential-themed crop of series to consider. This is thanks in some part to creator Michael Shur’s critically-acclaimed, slow-burn hit The Good Place—which premiered in 2016 and is slated to expire this fall—having paved the way for more comedies that Deggans says use death and grief as a means to explore “ethics and what it means to be a good person in super-absurd environments.”

Russian Doll co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne says her protagonist Nadia Vulvokov, who perishes over and over (and over) again while trying to solve the mystery of her death, ultimately is looking for a reason to exist. “The show isn’t so much about life or death, but the murky space in between,” says Lyonne, who cites Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning as writers-room inspiration. “We wanted to put Nadia on a journey toward finding a reason to become a participating member of life.”

Armisen says that like Russian Doll and The Good Place, his series Forever, created by Parks and Recreation alums Alan Yang and Matt Hubbard, also takes the afterlife-as-comedy-premise to an unexpectedly grounded place. “I’ve had couples tell me the show has brought up healthy conversations for them, like what does ‘Til death do us part’ really mean?’” says Armisen. “I think these shows have resonated with people because they’re really about the human condition, perseverance and even optimism.”

Whether Academy voters are ready to cast their ballots on June 24 for this year’s wave of “traumadies” will be revealed when nominees are announced July 16. But as of press time, nearly all 19 critic-journalist pundits featured on awards-prediction site Gold Derby predicted Russian Doll, The Good Place, and The Kominsky Method (with a few also favoring the season’s freshest contender, Dead to Me) will take on the category’s frontrunner in its final year of eligibility: HBO’s three-time winner Veep.

Regardless of whether her series lands on the ballot, Feldman says fan response to Dead to Me, which Netflix renewed for a second season on June 3, signals an evolution in the relationship between a show’s logline and a viewer’s emotional experience.

“Yes it’s a show about death and loss, but it’s also about the friendship and comfort that get us through those things,” she says. “Hopefully that’s what people have connected with, and what will make them want to keep watching.”