Anti-workout propaganda

[avram]

So I was working out this afternoon (weighed 282 this morning), stretchin’ out my thigh muscles on the hip abductor, which I had to wait for four other people to get finished with first, most popular damn machine in the joint, and a scene from an old episode of M*A*S*H floated up into my head.

I don’t remember what the main plot was, and I’ve been unable to find it by googling, but there was a sub-plot in which Radar was thinking about taking up weightlifting, and Hawkeye and BJ (or maybe Trapper) talk him out of it! What the fuck was up with that? Doctors telling a patient not to bother exercising?

When I was a kid, I figured being in good shape was just something some people were and some weren’t, like height or skin color. I wasn’t in shape, but it was OK because I was smart (I thought), which was (I figured) more important. If I’d really been smart, I wouldn’t have bought into that essentialist smart-or-athletic paradigm.

Anyway, I can imagine a bunch of out-of-shape writers sitting around, having bought into that same paradigm, trying to pass on the idea that being in good shape isn’t really important, that working out is the equivalent of putting on a false face, trying to be “something you’re not”.

And speaking of trying to be something you’re not, has anyone else noticed how very well-suited that particular sitcom vice is to its medium? Sitcoms are all about stasis — there’s a setup, and each week something happens to threaten the status quo, and at the end of the episode everything’s back the way it was. If a character actually changes, the success of the show is imperiled.

Comments

[kiya]

Huh.

That sort of gels for me a conceptualization of the major difference between a sitcom and a soap opera. . . .

[avram]

Well, also soap operas are generally dramas, not comedies. But yeah, that comparison really highlights the big difference between the two forms.

I realized after I wrote that entry that some of the very best sitcoms break that status-quo rule. I just watched an episode of King of the Hill, a show where characters have indeed changed and grown. Sports Night is another sitcom which has had characters change, and plot developments which took several episodes to resolve.

[kiya]

Hm. As a generalization, yeah. On the other hand, I consider both Buffy and Farscape to be soap operas, and they both have their moments of utter hilariousness (more in Buffy, I think). (Now I'm wondering if this is a generalizable difference between genre and non-genre soaps.)

I think The Cosby Show did character development and such, but I have a certain amount of suspicion that that may be because it ran forever and that therefore dealing with the kids growing up was a necessity. I'm not really a good one to comment on sitcoms, though; I don't think I've found one consistently funny since Night Court; while I've heard good stuff about Sports Night I've never seen it . . . .

[redbird]

I wonder if this is connected with stereotypes of weightlifting, rather than exercise per se.

[avram]

Perhaps. But they may also have seen weightlifting as an archetype of exercise. I don't remember whether the episode was made before the jogging fad started.