BOOK DATA Philip Scepanski, Tragedy Plus Time: National Trauma and Television Comedy. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021. $50 hardcover. 280 pages.
Season 8 of Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) included an episode in which Monica and Chandler, en route to their honeymoon, are detained by TSA agents after Chandler mocks a TSA sign forbidding jokes about bombs. By the time the episode aired on October 11, 2001, however, the scene had been excised, its humor nullified in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The scene’s later resurrection as bonus material for a DVD box set—and, inevitably, on video and social-media platforms—reflects the sort of time-sensitive relationship between comedy and context that Philip Scepanski explores in Tragedy Plus Time: National Trauma and Television Comedy. The book’s title refers to the period of latency that follows a tragedy before comedy is “allowed”—or feels comfortable enough—to address the ensuing trauma, and potentially redefine...
University of California Press