We Aren’t Prophets, We’re Just Comedy Writers

I have seen the future. It’s happening now (no, I’m not talking about the end of the world). I’m talking about Aydan Nix: the recently uncovered third Hadid sister. I’ve seen the future because I was a writer on The Other Two and the unveiling of a mysterious third Hadid was a plot point in the second season…which aired four years ago. And this isn’t the first time the writing team behind The Other Two successfully predicted the future. I joined the room for the third season when we (as a comedy coven) created Globby, the first gay goo glob to be featured in a Disney animated film. Two years later, Elemental introduced us to “Lake”—Disney’s first non-binary character which happened to be… a sort of humanoid body of translucent blue lake water. In The Other Two we sent one of our main characters on a quick space flight with a billionaire, years before Katy Perry sang, “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” to floating space debris on Bezos’ big boy spaceship.

But we aren’t the only show to predict the future (unfortunately). The Simpsons is widely regarded in comedy circles as The Great Oracle. They’ve correctly predicted elections and inventions: the Siegfried & Roy Tiger Attack and OceanGate. They even guessed Holmstrom and Feringa would win a Nobel Prize six years before it happened! I don’t even know who Holmstrom and Feringa are! And the comedy future-sight doesn’t just stop there, the 30 Rock writers have also made successful predictions…we have them to thank for MILF Manor. 

Our ancestors looked toward Nostradamus to peek behind the curtain that holds our destiny, now to see the future we look toward the staff writers of Veep. It is true that comedy writers have a knack for anticipating the future. So allow me to pull back that mysterious curtain, and try to explain why comedy writers are accurately predicting where the threads are stitched in the tapestry of our human destiny: Matt Groening is from the year 3426 and has an excellent memory. That, and predicting the future is quite literally part of the job. 

Television takes a wildly long time to make—it was over a year from when our season three writer’s room wrapped to the first episode hitting HBO Max (or Max, or HBO+, or HBO Mega,  or HBO Whatever New Name They’re Meeting About Right Now)—so creating good television requires a bit of forecasting. With that gap between conception to airing, it was important that we were eyeing what would be relevant by the time the season premiered. That’s especially true in shows that directly parody pop culture—like The Other Two, 30 Rock, and Hacks. I wish we had some sort of time-traveling tech in order to make our lives easier, not just because I would love to know if Jen Shah gets out of prison early for “good behavior”, but because trends are always shifting. Looking at you, barrel jeans. We crafted arcs for The Other Two by pouring over the latest tabloids, exposés, and trending media. We spent hours zeroing in culture and asking, “Will people still care about this when it hits our TV screens in a year?” The way the media treats people at a certain level of celebrity, a level of celebrity like for example the Hadid sisters, will always be relevant. The way corporations cram safe sexless one-line gay characters to give the appearance of moving the needle will always be relevant. That time I accidentally called a server at Lilia “Mom”, and more importantly, the way she responded “yes?” will always be relevant. There is an honesty to comedy that speaks directly to the culture—we can get away with a deep cut of truth if it gets a laugh. And sometimes that laugh leads to real tangible action: Hannibal Buress reignited the conversation around Bill Cosby’s vile assaults on women with a single viral joke. Sometimes the prophetic comedy powers rely on creating your own relevance. Nathan Fielder filmed season two of The Rehearsal before planes started falling from the sky, and his work only continued that conversation, bringing him all the way to what’s left of Wolf Blitzer. 

But relevancy is only one half of the comedy writer’s recipe for predicting the future. The balance for successful satire is maintaining possibility without too much predictability. Surprise is vital to comedy: it’s what gets the biggest laugh. In order to avoid being brought to the guillotine UCB keeps in the basement, comedy writers have to wade through the easy joke to reach comedy gold. When you trap a group of comedy writers in a room together, and make them spend fifteen-plus weeks of eight-hour days coming up with the oxymoron that is a “relevant surprise”…occasionally they unravel the future. Because isn’t the future really just a series of lightly predictable surprises? And isn’t comedy just a punch-up of our future? 

Ultimately, comedy writing isn’t magic, but desperation. It’s sleepless nights tossing and turning wondering if anybody will still be having discourse about Girls in five years (they are!), or if anyone will remember the Met Gala Cockroach from 2023 (they don’t!) or if anyone will care about Jojo Siwa in three years (maybe?). It’s that anxious drum of “Will anyone really care about any of this?” that makes us comedy writers whip out our crystal balls and try to gaze as far as we can. I would love nothing more than to be an ancient Greek prophetess sharing a single eye with two of my best baddies in some chic little sea-cave, but the truth is, I’m just a gay guy in Brooklyn who refreshes Deadline like it’s my job…because it is.