'The Larry Sanders Show' has faded from memory a little over the years. You can still watch it on HBO, but a lot of the landscape of television that gave birth to and motivated it has changed so much that, unless you are old enough to have lived through it, you might not be able to fully connect with it. Which is too bad, because the show was so ground breaking and brilliant on so many levels.
Entertainment today is so different that really it's barely recognizable from two and a half decades ago. Shows still air at night, but ever fewer people watch them when they air, preferring to record them for viewing days later or catching them on streaming services. Often, younger viewers don't even watch at all but instead divide their entertainment among the new crop of smaller-scale celebrities on Youtube and Instagram and what not. But once upon a time a significant percentage of the country watched a handful of men every night before they went to bed, and the competition between networks for eyeballs was a huge deal with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
And behind it all were the men and women who put together a full hour of entertainment five nights a week. Before my time, people didn't seem to wonder much about any of them, even the stars. Johnny Carson was just considered something akin to a family friend you invited in every night. But when I was young tabloids were starting to become a thing; people wanted to know about the private lives of celebrities. This show picked up on that trend and gave us a voyeurs look at how the sausage was made. The networks, the egos, the meeting of the rich and powerful with the every day folk, it was all on display here, and it was amazing.
This episode is a great example of why the show was so good, in my opinion. It revolves primarily around a fight between Larry, the fictional shows host, and his show sidekick Hank, an Ed McMahon type. On Carson, Ed was kind of a mockable figure in a way. His job was to laugh at all of Carson's jokes, agree with anything he said, and get out of the way when he wasn't needed. In short, his job was to make sure Carson looked good, even if it was at his own expense. Of course, people on the show might not have put it that way, but I think it's fair to say that was the perception.
But these are human beings, so of course occasionally this dynamic is going to be strained. And when Larry catches Hank nodding off during a show because he was so tired from all of his promotional side gigs, something else Hank shared in common with McMahon, he criticizes Hank about his catch phrase ("Hey now...") and a battle erupts which sends ripples throughout the employees of the show, many of whom already mocked Hank on a regular basis.
What sets the show apart is how this plays out. Hank is such an odd duck, such a constant source of eye rolling by other people on the show, that it's easy to start thinking of him as this buffoon. But every once in a while he reveals this depth of character and reveals that he knows how he is perceived, but accepts it because he knows how it helps Larry and the show. But his willingness to accept this disparagement stops when it crosses a line that really only he and Larry understand, when it goes past what Larry needs to do the show and drifts into counter-productive.
Even Arthur (Rip Torn), the no-nonsense producer of the show that spends so much time keeping Larry happy and shielding him from the frustration of managing staff like Hank, and therefore has more reason than most to be exasperated with Hank, knows instinctively to shut Larry down when he crosses a line with Hank, warning Larry that he doesn't have so many friends that he can afford to just toss them aside.
This display of the subtle and complex dynamics of friendship, power, and ego is part of what made the show so great. It would be so easy to write these characters as two dimensional, but the show is better than that. It puts their quirks, neurosis, and humanity on display for us to watch, and it's remarkably entertaining.
Entertainment today is so different that really it's barely recognizable from two and a half decades ago. Shows still air at night, but ever fewer people watch them when they air, preferring to record them for viewing days later or catching them on streaming services. Often, younger viewers don't even watch at all but instead divide their entertainment among the new crop of smaller-scale celebrities on Youtube and Instagram and what not. But once upon a time a significant percentage of the country watched a handful of men every night before they went to bed, and the competition between networks for eyeballs was a huge deal with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.
And behind it all were the men and women who put together a full hour of entertainment five nights a week. Before my time, people didn't seem to wonder much about any of them, even the stars. Johnny Carson was just considered something akin to a family friend you invited in every night. But when I was young tabloids were starting to become a thing; people wanted to know about the private lives of celebrities. This show picked up on that trend and gave us a voyeurs look at how the sausage was made. The networks, the egos, the meeting of the rich and powerful with the every day folk, it was all on display here, and it was amazing.
This episode is a great example of why the show was so good, in my opinion. It revolves primarily around a fight between Larry, the fictional shows host, and his show sidekick Hank, an Ed McMahon type. On Carson, Ed was kind of a mockable figure in a way. His job was to laugh at all of Carson's jokes, agree with anything he said, and get out of the way when he wasn't needed. In short, his job was to make sure Carson looked good, even if it was at his own expense. Of course, people on the show might not have put it that way, but I think it's fair to say that was the perception.
But these are human beings, so of course occasionally this dynamic is going to be strained. And when Larry catches Hank nodding off during a show because he was so tired from all of his promotional side gigs, something else Hank shared in common with McMahon, he criticizes Hank about his catch phrase ("Hey now...") and a battle erupts which sends ripples throughout the employees of the show, many of whom already mocked Hank on a regular basis.
What sets the show apart is how this plays out. Hank is such an odd duck, such a constant source of eye rolling by other people on the show, that it's easy to start thinking of him as this buffoon. But every once in a while he reveals this depth of character and reveals that he knows how he is perceived, but accepts it because he knows how it helps Larry and the show. But his willingness to accept this disparagement stops when it crosses a line that really only he and Larry understand, when it goes past what Larry needs to do the show and drifts into counter-productive.
Even Arthur (Rip Torn), the no-nonsense producer of the show that spends so much time keeping Larry happy and shielding him from the frustration of managing staff like Hank, and therefore has more reason than most to be exasperated with Hank, knows instinctively to shut Larry down when he crosses a line with Hank, warning Larry that he doesn't have so many friends that he can afford to just toss them aside.
This display of the subtle and complex dynamics of friendship, power, and ego is part of what made the show so great. It would be so easy to write these characters as two dimensional, but the show is better than that. It puts their quirks, neurosis, and humanity on display for us to watch, and it's remarkably entertaining.
