Are 'Ya Havin' A Laugh? Not Any Longer

During the month of December, while the Writer's Guild of America remained on strike and most new television programming ceased, an original HBO television series import aired its final episode.

The show Extras, which was Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant's follow up series to The Office, aired a special 90 minute final episode on December 16th. Extras aired for two seasons, like the BBC version of The Office.

But that final episode of Extras was one of the truly great, single television episodes of all time.

And with that series completed, the doughboy, comic actor Gervais and his freaky tall, writing partner Merchant, have evolved the situation comedy into a mixture of pathos and commentary, really never seen with American sitcoms.

I'm not saying Extras was funnier and more clever than Seinfeld or more groundbreaking than All In The Family. What I am saying is that Extras borrowed themes from those great sitcoms and turned situations into awkward displays of human questioning and decency that sometimes made the series seem more like a terribly funny, realistic documentary of a struggling actor's life rather than a situation comedy.

Yeah, that's it. Extras had a very humanistic theme while incorporating situations straight out of Curb Your Enthusiasm's most awkward episodes. Gervais' cartoonish sitcom character within the sitcom itself, (the old show within a show premise that Seinfeld pioneered), allowed Gervais commentary on the travesty of a sitcom that was making him famous playing a baffoon. Kind of like a man commenting on the filming of his own demise by slow poison. Except it was funny. Not like a man dying from poison at all, really.

'Ya havin' a laugh?' was the pathetic catch phrase of Gervais' pathetic character on his show within a show. Unfortunately, it sort of sticks with you and you end up asking that question of people in real life who don't have any damn idea what you're talking about.

But while viewing the make-believe of Gervais and his alter-ego Andy Millman, you certainly were 'havin' a laugh.' Just sorry it's over.