something i like about iasip is that it hardly ever gives us the satisfaction of seeing on-screen genuine softness or pain from the characters, but unlike other comedies that have also withheld that emotional satisfaction (seinfeld for example), it gives the audience several hints that that kind of softness or pain does exist in these characters’ lives, it just either happens off screen or it happens on screen but is never explicitly underlined as such or it doesn’t happen but you know it’s felt.
for example, on any other sitcom, mac would have had a heartfelt talk with someone about his feelings for dennis after coming out of the closet. there would be a scene after he dreams about kissing dennis where we see him process the meaning of it. there would be a scene after mac gives him the RPG where there’s some kind of underlining of what just happened, something that tells the audience “yes, this is a love scene, interpret it as such” (like, think about early-”the office” jim & pam scenes). dennis’s double life would have had some kind of confrontation about them both being weird about their relationship. you know?
i mean, dee and charlie slept together three seasons ago and they have never once talked about it on screen. i haven’t seen every single tv comedy ever, but i am willing to bet that that is unheard of in sitcoms.
of course, none of the characters can communicate with each other effectively. so we will probably never get any of the above in the way that’s completely soft and sweet—even the RPG scene is played just a wee bit tongue-in-cheek, and the sweetness is undercut by the fact that the gift is a fucking rocket launcher. literally the only scene in the entire series that is actually played complete genuine emotion, i think, when dennis says goodbye to brian jr. it took 12 seasons to get there.
in some ways, it’s frustrating because despite these being bad people, you somehow want to see them care about each other. it’s also kind of comforting to know that you can watch a tv show where there are no really bad emotions. you don’t have to watch it and risk sympathizing with emotions that actually really hurt, like grief. you never have to worry that the show is going to make you sad.
but also, the fact that these characters never really say how they feel, either because they refuse to or because they’re not even aware of the emotion, they haven’t even explored it—that almost makes the iasip characters more true-to-life than any other sitcom, or even tv show in general. in real life, people rarely know what they’re feeling. they’re inconsistent and hypocritical. they’re in constant denial. they don’t talk to each other about stuff that really matters because it’s scary to make yourself that vulnerable.
in a way, in that scene in the gang tends bar, dennis admitting that he has feelings is basically the show admitting that it has pretended for a long time not to have feelings, but it does have feelings, of course it has feelings, it has big feelings. you just never see them because it is so hard for these characters (and people in general) to let them show.
and so we get subtle stuff: mac touching dennis’s shoulder in the gang escapes, learning that charlie and dee smoke together in hero or hate crime, mac and dee both having valentine’s–centric issues with dennis and charlie respectively in the gang tends bar but not being given any space to talk about them, you get the whole thing with dennis ripping up luther’s letters in the gang goes to hell…and even smaller things, like dennis smiling at mac’s laminated waterpark wristband, or the promo with the gang hanging out and trying on Frank’s glasses, or how often the gang likes to harmonize together, or charlie implicitly trusting mac’s ocular patdown skills…it’s like…tiny little nuggets of them trying to be close to each other, despite the impossibility of ever achieving true closeness. and maybe it’s just where i am in my life, but that—knowing that complete intimacy is impossible but continuing to strive for anyway—that seems to me to be a huge part of being human.
