Monday, June 26, 2006

Facing the Facts

I think there was this one episode of Coach where basically Coach and the mime had hell of tension between them. Like Coach was in a really bad mood because his team had lost and the last thing he wanted to do was spend time with the damn mime, but his daughter was all: “Daddy,” (she probably called him Daddy) “you had promised that you would take Stuart to [some place] and that you’d really make an effort to get to know him!” or something. And Coach really didn’t want to do this but he is a man of his word, so he and Stuart headed out in to the woods for a camping trip or like maybe went to some other place. Then I think there was some sort of event that trapped them somewhere. Like, maybe they got trapped in a cabin and for some reason they couldn’t get to safety for a while. Maybe there was too much snow or something. Then probably they talked for a long time and began to see eye to eye on things and probably Coach ended by saying something like: “well, Stuart, if my daughter loves you, that’s good enough for me.” And then the audience made an audible “awwwwww” sound. And then Coach probably said something like: “just make you sure you don’t [do some effeminate thing you had done earlier in the episode]”. The audience probably laughed at this.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

The A.D.

Even though I remember him being basically a peripheral character, I think that occasionally the athletic director for Minnesota State would have a somewhat central role to whatever the hell was going on on Coach. I don’t remember what his name was, but I remember that he was bald and he was hell of fidgety. It was as if the guy that played the athletic director decided to base his entire acting repertoire on a terrible attempt at some sort of understated Don Knotts caricature. I don’t remember much about him, but I think he was always super-stressed out about Coach’s antics. This was sort of a weird dynamic, because it was as if there were this history of Coach always getting in to trouble and the athletic director always having to cover for him and getting totally stressed out. I think this resulted in a lot of jokes about why the athletic director was bald.

I’m somewhat unclear as to how the employee/employer hierarchies work in major university athletic departments. Is the athletic director of a school necessarily the football coach’s boss? Or is it more like an administrative supervisor role where the athletic director isn’t a boss so much as an overseer of proper procedure? I don’t really know, but in either case I don’t think the bald guy had any reason to get so stressed out all the time. If he really was Coach’s boss and Coach’s zany antics always left him all stressed, why didn’t he just fire Coach? And if he wasn’t his boss, why the hell would he put so much pressure on himself when Coach was too busy getting into hilarious situations to do his job? But then again, Coach seemed to have a fair amount of job security, so he must have at least been passably decent when it came to coaching football.

What the hell was the athletic director so worried about all the time? I think all of his scenes ended with like, some sort of nervous double-take or Coach maybe knowingly giving him a hard time right before he left Coach’s office. Then maybe he'd say something again once the door closed; you know, just like, to one-up the scared, nervous athletic director. Atta way, Coach. Show 'em who's boss.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

The Heat Bowl

There was this one episode of Coach where Coach’s team was playing in some bowl game in Texas. I think it was basically just the Alamo Bowl because I remember a bunch of stock footage shots of the Alamo, but I can’t remember what the bowl was called in the episode. Whatever it was it was some easily discernable pseudonym for the Alamo Bowl. Maybe the Antonio Bowl or something? Probably if I weren’t so conditioned to remember the Alamo Bowl this would be easier to recall.

In any case, the jokes in the episode were all about how hot it was in Texas when they were getting ready for the game. These were basically corollary jokes to the ones made in that episode about the Patriot Bowl, which were all about how cold it was. I think probably they did this because they didn’t want to alienate people that live in hot places who weren't able to relate to all the cold jokes.

I think also that all of the non-football characters (Christine, Coach’s daughter, the mime, etc.) came to the bowl game with Coach for some reason. Probably they all had a lot of personal issues to work out, which made Coach’s job that much harder considering he was supposed to be getting ready for the game. I think there were probably a lot of jokes about this as well.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

On Winning

I can’t remember if Coach’s football team (Minnesota State) was good or not. On the one hand, I remember some episodes where they went to bowl games, but on the other hand, I also remember a lot of jokes about the team being bad. This was something of an easy joke that they could work in whenever they needed. Probably there were scenes where maybe Coach and Luther had to come up with some scheme to lie to Christine for whatever reason, and Coach would be like, “okay Luther, remember…” and then give some elaborate plan as to the lie they were going to tell, and then Luther would be all “gee Hayden, maybe if you spent this much time coming up with football plays we’d win a few more games.” And then the audience would laugh.

But I guess actually that’s a pretty accurate assessment. Coach seemed to spend a lot of time getting in and out of zany situations. Why didn’t he spend more time coming up with football plays?