In Praise Of TV's Sore Winners

If you listen to even one episode of this site's official podcast, there is one fact about me that you will come away knowing for sure: I take games very seriously. I like to have fun; I like to test my brain in order to (theoretically) postpone senility for a couple more weeks or months; and obviously, I really like to win. Fortunately for me, TV pretty much can't stop showing me back to myself, and I love it.

The insufferable, uptight, Type A nightmare (hi!) is a sitcom staple for good reason: most sitcom stakes are, in the grand scheme of all TV, pretty low, and a rules-sticklering fussbudget can be counted on to have an outsized reaction to any and all setbacks, from hangnails to speeding tickets. Putting such characters in any sort of competitive setting is guaranteed to yield comedy as they inevitably take the whole thing way too seriously and ruin everyone's night. One of the first things we learned about Monica in the début season of Friends — back when she was the only normal character — was that in what had come to be known as "the Pictionary incident," she got so angry that she threw a plate; this detail helped her character to evolve from the still, boring pole around which the actual comedic action revolved to a weirdo in her own right.

The creators of Will & Grace, just a few years later, obviously learned this lesson well: rather than let their total wacko characters Karen and Jack suck up all the show's air, they made their more conventional titular characters game devotees from the start. One of the best S1 episodes, in fact, revolves entirely around the fact that their best couple friends, Rob and Ellen, don't want to have game nights with them anymore because Grace is way too aggressive; when will corroborates this constructive criticism, Grace is initially furious, but then overcorrects, smilingly shrugging it off when she starts losing at bowling, Rob and Ellen's game. She's so sanguine, in fact, that Will finally can't take it anymore, and tells her to quit fucking around — which she does, but only after Will admits that he's just as competitive as she is. Cut to: Grace destroying the pins, and Rob and Ellen's confidence.

Games are so important to Will and Grace that, after she gets married and moves to Brooklyn and she and Will seem to be out of sync, she's convinced that she'll be able to reconnect with him if they throw a classic game night with all their friends — which, after a few hiccups, turns out to be true. And though Will and Grace are usually the victors at all their game nights, Rob and Ellen and Joe and Larry get theirs back when Will makes the mistake of inviting his new geriatric friend (Richard Chamberlain!) to game night. (Word to the wise: don't try to play games with old people, ever. They're too slow, and when you try to speed them up, they just get frustrated and quit. Ask my mom, who won't play games with me anymore.) (Just kidding.) (Except not really.)

Games — like all of life's pursuits in which there can be a winner and a loser — are also extremely important to Happy Endings's Jane Kerkovich-Williams, which is why when Penny dares to suggest that she and her fiancé Pete, whom she's only known for four months, know themselves as well as Jane and her husband Brad do, it's determined that the matter will be settled at a game night. Though there is one undisputed champion among sitcom game nights (and I will get to it anon), "She Got Game Night" is a close second.

If I have a knock on this episode...I mean, obviously it's not the matching tracksuits, because I think Dave and I need to get those in order to inspire in our opponents the right kind of terror, and it's not the montage set to "You're The Best," a song well known to me because it plays every time I win a season of Extra Hot Great game time WHICH HAS HAPPENED A LOT. It's that winning all the evening's games — to Jane's horror and rage — just convinces Penny that her and Pete's knowing trivia about one another isn't enough, and that she shouldn't marry him after all. Winning should only make you realize that you're a winner.

Finally: "The One With The Embryos." Our Roger Cormier has already done a deep dive into this episode that, and I say this without hyperbole, left me awestruck. But everything about the episode — or, at least, about the only plotline worth remembering (sorry, embryos) is perfect. It's built completely on what we have learned about the characters over three and a half seasons — even Ross, who doesn't play but figures out how to be involved and even the most important one there in some respects; even Phoebe, who doesn't play and would have only slowed things down if she had — and it shows the whole range of home game night approaches, from Rachel's nervy panicking to Joey's nonchalance to the eye of the tiger exhibited by Chandler and Monica. Most importantly, Friends knew all the way back then what the producers of actual game shows seem to have forgotten since then: more questions means more better.

If I might just close out Game Show Week with the lesson all these sitcom characters have taught us, it's this: if you aren't prepared to go into your next game night with the take-no-prisoners attitude of a young Grace Adler or Jane Kerkovich-Williams or Monica Geller (or Chandler Bing, I GUESS), then maybe you'd be better off throwing a game night sitcom episodes marathon instead, and DEFINITELY don't bring that weak shit to MY HOUSE.