And so we have laid out the central cast, who are going to drive the action for the next decade or so, with only two significant characters joining during this period. This doubtless seems like a small cast, because, well, it is. But in truth it's even worse. As noted, Zed and Sam largely function as one character, and Damon is essentially just a riff on those same basic character traits. And so the strip at this point often feels like three almost identical jackasses against their dimwitted liberal foil. Zed, Sam and Damon spend most of their time whining or smugly demonstrating their own swollen egos. Jan falls into what I like to term the 'Elmer Fudd Problem'; much like Elmer Fudd, she's an obvious patsy who is only there to fail. Fudd only works, so much as he does, because Bugs Bunny is likable and witty, and Fudd at least has some theoretical power over him, even if he's completely incompetent at using it. And you see the problem here--Zed, Sam and Damon are neither of those things despite supposing to be, and while Jan is sometimes drawn as having some vague sort of authority over the others, it's never laid out, or used to create a story. Most of the time, she's simply a peer who is always wrong.
Indeed, looking at the cast dynamics, it's astonishing how they lack any real internal conflict. Zed, Sam and Damon all largely agree and get along. They have the occasional petty squabble and prank, but nothing seems to dent the group's camaraderie. Damon shows an initial interest in Sam that could clearly fuel a storyline--but it's discarded in a few strips, and from that point onwards, even when they are not officially in a relationship, Sam and Zed are in a relationship. And with that, all the cast has is grumbling and whining how stupid other people are, complaining about petty annoyances, and in essence, being awful, while the narrative supports them.
Because that's the real problem here. There's nothing wrong, in a comedy, with having your cast be awful so long as you, the writer, understand they are awful. Seinfeld... Curb Your Enthusiasm... It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia... hell, The Three Stooges all work with the understanding that the central characters are fundamentally miserable people and the authors of most of their own misfortune. But that's not what happens here. Muir depicts whiny, privileged jackasses and imagines that they are put-upon everymen. The closest thing to an actual plotline with conflict is the Damon-Jan "will they/won't they?" tango, and that is clumsily handled, unappealing, and fairly intermittent at this stage of the strip. On some level, Damon and Jan are treated as a potential couple because Sam and Zed are a couple, and Muir had two characters of what he viewed as the appropriate genders left over, and no ability to realize that, actually, pairing these characters up would be a bad idea. And that is it. The strip involves the interactions of three deeply unpleasant people who all vibe with one another, a fourth unpleasant character they all mildly clash with, and that's the emotional core of the strip. To a very limited amount of emotion.
Now, I plan on looking on the political side of the strip in the next installment, but as it touches everything, I'll have to deal with it here too. And once again, we find the same problem... there's only one real opinion in the group. Damon is supposed to be the "Conservative", and Sam and Zed are supposed to be fairly apolitical moderates... but Muir drops that fairly early. Sam and Zed wind up having virtually the same opinion as Damon, while simply holding them a bit less stridently at this point in time. Any disagreements aren't actual disagreements, they are simply variations in degree. The only person offering a different viewpoint is Jan, and she holds comical distortions of the opinions of Muir's opponents that she expresses ineptly. That the rest of the cast regularly fails to rebut them is more down to Muir's intellectual poverty than anything else.
And that's a big problem right there. Muir's cast doesn't work right from the get-go for any of the things he wants to use it for. And, well, it's only going to get worse.
