GABE DURHAM / 2 FICTIONS
DECADE AT BERNIE’S
The best comedies aren’t funny if they happen. Imagine an hourlong prestige TV version of Weekend at Bernie’s, an 80s farce about two guys propping up the dead body of a man named Bernie.
This time, the story is played as a straight tragedy. The two men, Larry and Richard, must animate the same corpse on a yacht, then a dinner party, then at a golf tournament, then at a private school play, then on a ski trip, then at a board meeting, then on a cross-country fight, then at a funeral, then at a nude resort, then, briefly, in space—episode after episode, scenario after scenario.
The composer keeps getting notes on his score: Too vibrant. Remember, a man is dead.
By episode ten, Bernie’s decay is an issue: the smell of rot, the need for makeup. Soon Bernie is no longer portrayed by a person at all. And yet the whole town still goes along with it, everyone but a lone detective who suspects that something’s wrong, though he can’t for the life of him figure out what.
Larry and Richard, poor pale wretches, take to drinking. Their families are torn apart by the wives’ and kids’ jealousy of this new friend Bernie. Ashamed of the deception, of the weekly desecration of a corpse, the men get sloppier, hoping to get caught: prison is better than this. But they don’t.
The show debuts on cable to confused reviews and modest ratings, and then suddenly takes off in its second year once the first season is streaming. It’s the kind of show everyone watches but mostly doesn’t discuss, except in the rare instance at a work gathering where one cautiously references the show and one by one every person in the conversation admits they watch it too.
Now that the show is a hit, Larry and Richard’s deception stretches on for years, close call after close call. Subplots arise and dissolve as fans lose interest the moment Bernie leaves the frame.
The two leads actors’ lives mirror those of their characters. One faces battery charges after assaulting the eleventh man at the Starbucks who asked him, “Where’s Bernie?” The actors nearly walk away only to have salaries doubled, then doubled again. They call their deal the golden coffin.
In the season 4 finale, the detective tailing Larry and Richard finally confronts them in an underground parking lot: “Bernie’s nothing but a fuckin corpse.”
“You’re wrong,” they say, exhausted. “He’s alive.”
“Oh yeah?” the detective replies. “Hey, Bern. Say something.”
One of the two guys shoots him in the head: “No, you say something.”
They didn’t mean for Bernie to die but Bernie made them killers.
I can’t tell you where to stow all this metaphoric resonance. Maybe we are all the two guys and the corpse is America. Maybe we are all the corpse and the two guys are God. Maybe the corpse is God the two guys are the Church. Maybe we are all the corpse and the two guys are time.
All I know is that we’ve got another dead body to play with. The show is now about propping up two, then three, then six bodies until by Season 11 it’s a town of Bernies, literally no one left but Bernies, and the two men, no longer hounded, perform the charade only for one another.
Only then, when the show begins to drown in the accidental avant-garde of an overextended premise, does the indifference of the viewing public finally pick Bernie’s bones dry.
The series finale ends with a churchful of Bernies propped up in the pews, and the two guys, starved, exhausted, long having forgotten their own names, prop one another up in the front row, put on some sunglasses, and wait to die.
THE SHADOW OF A HERO
A dirty trick: the overlong movie you just finished watching reveals itself to be the Director’s Cut. The shorter original is always better, and the trailer is better than that, and best of all is the teaser trailer: give me a title and a little music and the shadow of a hero and turn my mind loose. The unseen film is the one that will save you.
Gabe Durham is the author of three books, including a novel in monologues, Fun Camp (Publishing Genius, 2013). His writings have appeared in the TLR, Barrelhouse, Hobart, Puerto Del Sol, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles where he runs Boss Fight Books.