The slacker, that devotee of laziness and beer pong, is poised for change.
The familiar depiction of the young, usually white, deadbeat male, intent on getting through life without exerting effort, is undergoing a bit of an evolution.
Somebody tell Charlie Sheen.
It’s not as radical as all that. TV slackers will never buckle down, sober up and become strivers. What would be the fun in that? TV would be a lot more boring without prolific drinkers like Norm of “Cheers,” or broke hangers-on, like Turtle of “Entourage,” or those all- around failures like Gob of “Arrested Development.”
Don’t expect them to stop coasting whenever they can. But today’s slackers are broadening, stretching, even occasionally trying something new.
Today’s work-averse stoner dudes have morphed slightly to cover a fuller, more refined spectrum of screw-ups, drop-outs and beer-soaked nonconformists. Call it progress.
One of TV’s earliest tropes, dating to Maynard G. Krebs (“The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”), the slacker has been around since the laugh track.
From the partying surgeon Hawkeye Pierce of “M*A*S*H” to the dry-docked ex-husband Bobby Cobb on “Cougartown,” TV has celebrated characters who’ve perfected their sloppiness, often dedicating themselves to hedonistic abandon. Now, with “Two and a Half Men” on hiatus, the slacker-boy concept (not to mention a certain drug addled slacker himself) may need tweaking. Time for a reimagining.
Next fall, at least a few of TV’s more prominent slackers will be female. Boozy, irresponsible young women, the next iteration of “Sex and the City” but not so lavishly dressed, will represent a growing segment of the underachieving public.
Don’t credit Charlie Sheen’s implosion for this new twist. The pilots for fall 2011 were written well before Sheen’s massive multimedia meltdown, but they correctly anticipated a moment. The timing is right to move on, if temporarily, from the slacker guys.
Slacker girls to the rescue. “Are You There, Vodka?” a new comedy based on the book by late-night talker and standup Chelsea Handler, is on tap for NBC this fall. Handler won’t appear in the show, but the racy, funny, obnoxious tone of her book is the starting point.
“Two Broke Girls” (we’re encouraged to subconsciously think of it as “Two and a Half Broke Girls”) is another slacker-girl comedy. This one’s for CBS from Michael Patrick King (“Sex and the City”). Kat Dennings (“Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist”) and Beth Behrs play waitresses in a Brooklyn diner. The premise: two broke babes, one expensive city.
Academics argue over which came first, the tough economy resulting in high unemployment and a surge in slacker kids, or the constant media images promoting prolonged adolescence.
2008 best seller “Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,” by Michael Kimmel, pinpointed the type and, taking the easy way out, blamed the media.
The prevalence of so many entertainment options is the cause of the boom in real-life slackers, Kimmel declared in “Guyland.” He pinned it on video games, TV shows and movies.
Producers, writers and entertainment industry executives aren’t buying it. The pop culture reflects only emotionally stunted guys as it sees them in life, they say. Blame it on the recession. It’s the economy, (stupid), which means no jobs, more video games, downward mobility. It’s a feedback loop.
Either way, the “Peter Pan syndrome,” a term coined in the 1980s, needs an update. Sociologists call them “kidults” and “thresholders,” terms that are at least more appropriately gender neutral for the 2010s. Whatever the label, they have been epitomized by such movies as “Pineapple Express,” “Paul” and the “Hangover” movies, and TV shows like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Two current series that put a fresh spin on slacker ideals are “Portlandia” and “Raising Hope,” both of which suggest there’s more to the formula than smoking pot and avoiding gainful employment.
Fred Armisen’s “Portlandia” on IFC depicts life in the laid-back, crunchy granola vegan town “where young people go to retire.” Sleeping until 11 and maybe putting in a couple of hours as a barista is considered the norm.
Greg Garcia’s “Raising Hope” on Fox (returning Tuesday) follows an aimless young man forced to help rear an unintended child — after a one-night stand with a since-executed serial killer. He’s not just stuck in a dead-end job with no aspirations; he’s learning about diapers. That’s a new wrinkle on Garcia’s previous ethically challenged deadbeats on “My Name Is Earl.”
Perhaps the old-style, unkempt do-nothing is no longer so funny, given the country’s 9.2 percent unemployment rate.
As the economic recovery limps along, and as the genre becomes more defined, the pop culture is identifying tiers of modern slackerdom. Examples range from the hopelessly impaired (see “Workaholics,” about a trio of inept telemarketers on Comedy Central), to the creatively underemployed (like Joel McHale’s character, a former lawyer busted back to community college on “Community”), and the too- smart for their own good anti- social geeks (the brainiacs of “The Big Bang Theory”). The “Big Bang” boys are brilliant when it comes to science but clueless about human interaction. For them, the virtual World of Warcraft beats a night with a girlfriend every time.
For next season, expect more superhero action serials than shows built around lost boys. A glance at the list of potential TV pilots for Fall 2011 reveals Wonder Woman moving in where the Zach Galifianakas, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow-type characters used to rule.
It’s too much to hope the stereotype of the unmotivated 20-something man-child would slip gracefully to the periphery of pop culture. The Peter Pan, “Failure to Launch,” “Entourage” concept may be tired, but the idea endures. Every time you walk into a big-box store and see vacant-looking name- tagged employees milling about, you wonder how many of them have seen “Clerks.”
On TV as in life, slackerdom is spreading out across demographics. It’s not just for 20-somethings any more. Who doesn’t know a middle-aged American who’s been downsized, laid off or bought out?
There’s terrible pain in that reality. Much funnier is TV’s take: Scruffy former jock Bobby Cobb on “Cougartown,” a middle-aged, insolvent and divorced goof-off, loves his son, Travis, a college student, who displays greater maturity than he does.
Of course the stunted and those who play stunted are laughing all the way to the bank: Charlie Sheen continues to disintegrate on the Web, on the road, everywhere but on “Two and a Half Men,” which is (ahem) on “hiatus,” pending litigation. (CBS says it’s up to producer Chuck Lorre whether he wants to proceed with a different type of show and whether Warner Bros. wants to produce it. Beyond that, it will be evaluated like any other show in development.)
Elsewhere in the popular culture, there are promising signs of growth. Colorado’s “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, masters of post-adolescent regression, are now the toast of Broadway. They know slacker culture, they know how to make it funny, and they’re among the hardest working guys in the industry.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
