 |
| A promotional still advertising NBC’s The Good Place, created by Michael Schur |
Michael Schur is an American writer, producer, and occasional actor from
Ann Arbor, Michigan, who, after graduating from Harvard, went on to become a
writer at NBC’s Saturday Night Live from 1998 to 2004. From there, Schur continued on to become a
writer and producer on the cult-classic American adaptation of The Office, where
some fans may recognize him as Dwight’s cousin Mose. Since then he’s gone on to
co-create fan favorites Parks and
Recreation (2009-2015), Brooklyn
Nine-Nine (2013-present), and, most recently, The Good Place (2016-present).
 |
Michael Schur on the set of NBC’s The Good Place
The shows that he has created have received great acclaim over the last several years, earning large swaths of viewers and their own places in popular culture. The reason? Schur’s “big C” Creativity. By thinking out of the box and subverting the typical tropes and stereotypes of the genre, he’s managed to take the stagnating and expected sit-com of the late 20th and early 21st century and turn it on its head. Where sit-coms of the 1990s like Seinfeld relied heavily on cynicism to get laughs, Schur focuses on the more optimistic side of comedy with characters like Leslie Knope and Jake Peralta, who genuinely care. He laments the persistence of toxic masculinity in show business and isn’t hesitant to reveal his opinion, believing the phenomenon to be a barrier to creativity. He steers as far away as he can from jokes at the expense of minority groups and instead features those groups in non-stereotypical positions, often positions of power. He even portrays healthy, lasting, communicative relationships between his characters, something almost unheard of in todays TV landscape. (link) This kind of comedy has always been deemed “too politically correct be funny,” but Schur’s success is clearly showing that it can be done, and may even be part of the secret to his success and the waves he’s making in the TV industry. As The New York Times put it “his rise to network power has corresponded with a new tone in prime-time comedy, an era of good-hearted humanistic warmth.” (link)
A photo of Michael Schur overlaid on three of the most
popular characters he has created, from left to right, Eleanor Shellstrop
(Kristin Bell, The Good Place), Capt.
Raymond Holt (Andre Braugher, Brooklyn
Nine-Nine), and Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation)
 |
His newest sit-com, The Good Place,
shows this Creativity more than any of his others, managing to somehow combine moral
philosophy, a subject as convoluted as it is dry, with a genre associated with
20-minute plot lines and laugh tracks. In a 2008 interview about The Office
(link), he described their main motivation on the show was to “make
sure they’re all changing.” Ten years later, it seems that motivation has stuck
with him enough to become a central premise of this new show, in which he’s
taken the idea that “people can change” to the extreme and created a show with
real substance, not just cheap laughs. He set out to “tell a new, meaningful
20-minute story” (link) and I’d say he succeeded, but I guess you’ll
have to watch to decide for yourself.
In an
interview with The New York Times (link) he is described as the kind of person
who “speaks in earnest, open paragraphs, with the clear pleasure of someone who
enjoys exploring his own brain.” He’s curious, endlessly curious, with a mind
almost like a child, always thirsty to learn more and always eager to tackle a new
creative challenge, and he’s always had opportunities to do so. After the
success of the first show he co-created, Parks
and Recreation, he had the reputation to back up his idea to create a
workplace police comedy and to almost immediately get Any Samberg, an old friend
from his Saturday Night Live days, on
board. With the success of Brooklyn
Nine-Nine, he was then offered total freedom on a new project from NBC, a
project that eventually became The Good
Place. Once he had access to network TV and plenty of connections thereafter,
his freedom to create snowballed and his inherent Creativity was given the
chance to run wild and expand.
For someone who describes himself as “a rule-follower in an industry
known for rule-breakers” (link), I’d say Michael Schur is the biggest
rule-breaker of all, or at least the one doing it with the most style and the best
attitude.
Web Page Articles
Book Sections
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the
psychology of discover and invention. New York: Harper/Collins. – Chapter 3
Gardner, H. (1993). Creating minds: An anatomy of creativity sen through the
lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Gandhi. New York:
Basic Books.
I love that you picked Michael Schur, and I absolutely adore The Good Place. I just read an article in New York Times about how important it is for a show like that to be running in a time right now. It's so important that shows like his that have dialogues on important subjects are accessible to all people of all ages.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that Michael Schur is a rule-breaker. I recently watched the cast of the Office's farewell video. In it, Rainn Wilson says explains how Greg Daniels compares American comedy to a big ship that can be pointed one degree in the right direction but not completely turned. He goes on to say that The Office turned American comedy one degree in the right direction. So even if he is not making huge 180s in comedy, he is changing it slowly and effectively. I have seen both The Office and The Good Place and both are phenomenal. They are both full of pleasant surprises that make you think and make you laugh. Such a great creative!
ReplyDeleteI love that Schur steers away from negativity and embraces diversity on his shows! Additionally, he uses his shows as platforms to call out societal problems. In doing this, Schur is using tactics that many would say don’t work in the comedy world. However, Schur proves again and again that oftentimes it’s best to ignore the critics and do what feels right to you.
ReplyDeleteI love all of Schur's shows and never realized he is the common denominator! So glad I know now and can keep a lookout for his future work.
ReplyDeleteI recently read a Vanity Fair article on Michael Schur and how his writing style on love and portraying couples consistently without adding unnecessary drama. Overall, his ability to make true feel-good comedy without making fun of its audience or the people it portrays based on their identities is extremely necessary and wonderful - the kind of escapism I love. The fact that he is able to find that perfect balance of making jokes relatable to the identity portrayed (i.e. Captain Holt's jokes in B99 from the perspective of his sexuality without making stereotypical jokes) is what all comedic shows should try to achieve, rather than rely on stereotypical/racist/etc jokes.
ReplyDelete