Unsolved Mysteries

If you are interested in story, I encourage you to visit TV Tropes. It's a fascinating site to get lost in for hours and hours, and covers so much more than just television. I try to use terminology from this website in everyday speech. I'm hoping these terms will cross over into our cultural vocabulary. Terms like: Butt Monkey.

The Butt Monkey, as defined by TV Tropes, is the character that is always the butt of the joke - jokes made by other characters, or jokes played on the Butt Monkey by the writers. This is your Meg Griffin from Family Guy, your Sweet Dee from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and your Mason from Dead Like Me. I'd like to talk about one of my favorite Butt Monkeys - Jerry from Parks and Recreation.


The writers at Parks and Rec have gotten a lot of comedy mileage out of beating up on Jerry. His coworkers all hate and ridicule him. What makes it so funny is that there is no reason why. When the gang from It's Always Sunny rag on Sweet Dee, we understand it. Because she's an obnoxious bitch. But Jerry is set up as just a nice, normal, happy guy. He's not really offensive in any way.

Or at least that's how it used to be, until they pulled on the dangling thread and the mystery of Jerry was unraveled. You may have seen the episode I'm referring to. The writers decided it was time to do a Jerry episode, an episode that was all about Jerry making a fool of himself. The Jerry ridicule gets so bad that his coworkers decide not to make fun of him anymore. By the end of the episode they are back to their old ways and the status quo is restored. Or is it?

There are several problems with this admittedly very funny episode. First of all, the episode turns Jerry into a complete buffoon. In the past, Jerry has embarrassed himself, but usually in ordinary ways, like when he accidentally says "murinal" instead of "mural". The joke is that the other characters are unnecessarily cruel to Jerry. In this episode, Jerry becomes such a clown that it's now obvious why the others make fun of him.

Another thing that was so great about Jerry as Butt Monkey was that it was never acknowledged. It appeared that everyone in the office had independently decided to mock and loathe Jerry. This episode made it seem like a joke they all shared, especially when they all decide to start being nice to Jerry.

But the biggest crime of this episode is over-exposure. There's never more than one or two Jerry jokes in an episode. They're like a little treat sprinkled here and there. After a full episode of dumping on Jerry, the joke feels played out.

It's always trouble when an episodic work solves one of it's essential mysteries. It's like when Fran and Mr. Sheffield got together on The Nanny. It's like when we found out Wolverine's origin story in the X-Men comics. Sometimes you need to just leave it alone.

Thank God we didn't see Wilson's whole face until the series finale of Home Improvement.