TMC
12-08-2016, 02:04 PM
http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/brooklyn-nine-nine-teasers/
Brooklyn Nine-Nine opened Tuesday’s episode on this simple, silly note:
wKkX6lWu_7w
This was the latest winner from a show that’s been on a roll with both its overall episodes and with its teaser scenes, which are sometimes referred to in the TV business as cold opens, because they come before the opening credits, and thus before the audience has been properly warmed up to watch the show.
While some comedies use their cold opens to set up the plot of the episode that follows, Brooklyn generally uses them as standalone comedy sketches, continuing a tradition that goes back to when the show’s creators Mike Schur and Dan Goor worked together on Parks and Recreation, and before that when Schur was a novice sitcom writer on The Office apprenticing under Greg Daniels.
I was impressed enough by the recent run of Brooklyn cold opens to reach out to Schur — who’s also a big fan of Cheers, one of the first sitcoms notable for beginning episodes this way, and whose writing career began on Saturday Night Live, which often puts its most important sketch of the night before the credits — to ask about his history with and philosophy about the device, and to look at a few examples from his series. (Though Goor is now the primary Brooklyn showrunner while Schur works on The Good Place, Schur’s still creatively in the loop, and in fact wrote up his answers to my questions while on break from directing an upcoming Brooklyn episode.)
Brooklyn Nine-Nine opened Tuesday’s episode on this simple, silly note:
wKkX6lWu_7w
This was the latest winner from a show that’s been on a roll with both its overall episodes and with its teaser scenes, which are sometimes referred to in the TV business as cold opens, because they come before the opening credits, and thus before the audience has been properly warmed up to watch the show.
While some comedies use their cold opens to set up the plot of the episode that follows, Brooklyn generally uses them as standalone comedy sketches, continuing a tradition that goes back to when the show’s creators Mike Schur and Dan Goor worked together on Parks and Recreation, and before that when Schur was a novice sitcom writer on The Office apprenticing under Greg Daniels.
I was impressed enough by the recent run of Brooklyn cold opens to reach out to Schur — who’s also a big fan of Cheers, one of the first sitcoms notable for beginning episodes this way, and whose writing career began on Saturday Night Live, which often puts its most important sketch of the night before the credits — to ask about his history with and philosophy about the device, and to look at a few examples from his series. (Though Goor is now the primary Brooklyn showrunner while Schur works on The Good Place, Schur’s still creatively in the loop, and in fact wrote up his answers to my questions while on break from directing an upcoming Brooklyn episode.)