"Even when people are rich and successful on TV shows, there's always some trouble - you have to poke holes in them, throw them out of a job, put a pie in the face"
About this Quote
Rich, successful, perfectly lit people are boring television. Drew Carey’s line is a comedian’s blunt admission of what sitcoms quietly run on: humiliation as narrative fuel. The “trouble” he’s pointing to isn’t just conflict in the screenwriting sense; it’s the deliberate puncturing of fantasy. If characters are allowed to simply enjoy their money, romance, or status, the show stops moving. So TV has to “poke holes” in them - not because the world is cruel, but because the audience needs a pressure release, a reminder that privilege still comes with pratfalls.
The phrasing is telling. Carey doesn’t say writers “challenge” characters; they “throw them out of a job” and “put a pie in the face.” That’s workplace precarity and slapstick, side by side: two classic American anxieties packaged as comedy. Even in glossy sitcom universes, employment is fragile, dignity is negotiable, and punishment arrives fast and publicly. The pie is a joke, but it’s also a moral correction, a way of equalizing the powerful and reassuring viewers that nobody gets to coast.
Context matters: Carey came up through stand-up and the 90s sitcom boom, then became a game-show host, a front-row seat to TV’s transactional optimism. His remark reads like a behind-the-curtain truth from someone who knows the machine: television sells aspiration, then immediately makes aspiration pay a toll in embarrassment. We don’t just watch people succeed; we watch success get destabilized, because that’s where the laughs - and the human scale - live.
The phrasing is telling. Carey doesn’t say writers “challenge” characters; they “throw them out of a job” and “put a pie in the face.” That’s workplace precarity and slapstick, side by side: two classic American anxieties packaged as comedy. Even in glossy sitcom universes, employment is fragile, dignity is negotiable, and punishment arrives fast and publicly. The pie is a joke, but it’s also a moral correction, a way of equalizing the powerful and reassuring viewers that nobody gets to coast.
Context matters: Carey came up through stand-up and the 90s sitcom boom, then became a game-show host, a front-row seat to TV’s transactional optimism. His remark reads like a behind-the-curtain truth from someone who knows the machine: television sells aspiration, then immediately makes aspiration pay a toll in embarrassment. We don’t just watch people succeed; we watch success get destabilized, because that’s where the laughs - and the human scale - live.
Quote Details
| Topic | Funny |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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