There is one thing that fascinates me about improv and that is how it is portrayed in Television and Film. This is becoming more and more apparent in recent years because the comedy art form is sort of in fashion. There are some interesting topics that we can gain from these ways they are displayed so every so often we are going to look at different scenes from different shows and films.

Even though this is a website that loves to praise improv and show it in the best light possible, I also think that it is incredibly important to highlight where improv is also being depicted in a negative form in the world of Media. I have been following this for a long time and there are many articles on here that you can trace to see the developments of how these reactions constantly change.

There was a time a couple of years ago where improv really came into fashion, a lot of American streaming networks jumped on the improv train and created a lot of formats where improv was the main star – some were really good, others seem to sadly hit the mark. I have noticed this a lot in American comedies and shows, I think this is due to the fact that in their country there is a huge saturation that it has sort of led to a lot of negative one liners in shows to make points.

I have also stated before when I have discussed shows such as You and Modern Family, that improv tends to be used as an easy one liner for negative reasons as it can be an ‘easy target’. Well today we add another one to the list that uses improv to promote a negative point.

I am a fan of Brooklyn 99 but never had a chance to watch it the whole way through until recently. Throughout the show there is no mention of Improv until we get to the seventh season.

*A few spoilers beyond this point*

In episode seven, which is called Ding Ding, Captain Holt holds a funeral for his rival who has passed on and she has demanded that he organises it. The narrative plays out and it ends up being revealed that the funeral was a fake one as he knew that his rival was setting out to cause him agrow at work and ruin his career. There is more to it then this but the main factor that we are going to focus on is the ‘fake’ funeral.

When it is revealed that it is a fake funeral the man that is hired to sabotage it says ‘you hired actors?’ when he asks who all the mourners are. Captain Holt responds to the question with ‘worse, I hired improvisers and they did it for exposure!’

I know that America has been saturated with improv for a lot longer then the United Kingdom but it does get frustating the way that it is looked down on as a common joke, something that is an easy target for jokes. When I first watched this episode and I heard this line, my ears pricked up and I thought, here we go again.

When you look into when this season first premiered it was in 2020 and if you look at other television shows this is around the same time that a lot of other shows were slating improv. This usually happens when things get incredibly ‘on trend’ it becomes a bit of a joke, which is fine but the toxic approach to improv in a lot of media is shocking. I think it is because improv can not really transfer very well through the medium of filming so it can look a bit weird so it’s an easy target.