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Much scripted content in recent years, especially on American television, has become “genreless” or “genre-confused.” The yearly squabble over what category Orange is the New Black (2013) and Girls (2012) should be in at the Emmy’s is indicative of this trend. The recent rise of the dramedy accompanies this confusion. Many of the newest and most talked about shows fall into this category such as Bored to Death (2009), Glee (2009), Shameless (2011) as well as one of the shows on HBO’s new summer line up: The Brink (2015). But dramedies didn’t pop up just a few years ago. One of the first and probably most well known dramedies of all time was M*A*S*H (1972) and since then dramedies, despite there not being all that many of them historically compared to other genres, have been some of the most successful television shows of all time. Moonlighting (1985), Scrubs (2001), Six Feet Under (2001), Weeds (2005), and Desperate Housewives (2004) are all prime examples. All of them were very critically acclaimed, Scrubs and Desperate Housewives both lasted for 8 season, Six Feet Under was one of the shows that gave HBO the TV throne is sits on today, Moonlighting launched Bruce Willis’ career, and the series finale of M*A*S*H was the the most watched finales ever, so it would make sense that The Brink would want to follow in these footsteps, and yet, it doesn’t seem to be.

In an interview with IndieWire show creater and head writer Roberto Benabib (Weeds, Ally McBeal) said he “credited the initial inspiration for ‘Brink’ to visiting a museum exhibit devoted to the films of Stanley Kubrick, including “Dr. Strangelove, And How I Learned to Love the Bomb (1964).” “We realized that there wasn’t a lot like it at the present point..” Yet, unlike Dr. Strangelove, Benabib explains, “The Brink is far more grounded than “Strangelove” which had a broad “Mad Magazine”-esque quality to its comedy” and the show is very much “based in the real world.” Benabib aptly notes that few dark comedies like Dr. Strangelove have been made, or at least noticed, in recent years. Indeed, nor has the dark comedy genre notably been represented in television. Some could argue the last great film of the genre was Fargo in 1996, or perhaps more recently In Bruges (2008) if you could argue that’s a dark comedy at all. Either way, The Brink does not seem to fit neatly into the dramedy genre despite the Kubrick influences. To determine whether The Brink is dark comedy or not, we first must pose the question “what qualifies as dark comedy.”

When looking at dramedy (a genre often confused for being dark comedy) we see elements of both drama and comedy within the same work. Merriem-Webster, Wikipedia, and Dictionary.com generally define dramedy as content having both dramatic and comedic elements or a comedy having dramatic moments and vice versa. The term “dark comedy,” on the other hand, is not combined with the word drama and thus contains only comedy. Dark comedies are so often confused for dramedies because their subject matter is so dark (rape, murder, nuclear fallout, etc) that people wouldn’t expect there to a pure comedy about such a topic. Dark comedy differs from obscene comedy in that the topics discussed in obscene comedy are often sex, nudity, shit or other bodily fluids and the humor of that brand of comedy usually comes from shock, revulsion, and the general intention to offend people. Whereas with dark comedy the actual comedy of it is often subtle and uses irony as well aspects of fatalism such as the occurence of certain events being inevitable and unable to prevent (ie: Dr. Strangelove ending in nuclear fallout despite most of the character’s efforts to stop that from happening).

So is The Brink a dark comedy? Well when we first meet Tim Robbins’ character (the secretary of state) he is tied to a bed while having sex with an asian prostitute. The comedic subtlety of that scene is clearly no where to be found, but that just might be HBO flexing its ability show whatever it wants on TV. Later in the episode when Tim Robbins is in the situation room he tries to convince the President to not bomb Pakistan’s alleged nuclear warhead sites as to avoid World War III. Tim Robbins then turns to his secretary (Maribeth Monroe) and tells her to get him “hair of the dog.” She then reminds him that there’s no alcohol allowed in the situation room to which Tim Robbins respsonds “do you think LBJ faught Vietnam in this room sober” to which his secretary again reminds him “yeah we lost that one remember.” A lot of The Brink’s comedy is the characters simply commenting on their situation which is very much in the style of dramedy. This may stem from the fact that Benabib was also largely influenced by M*A*S*H when writing the show and also stated in his Indiewire interview that “The Brink is far more grounded than “Strangelove” which had a broad “Mad Magazine”-esque quality to its comedy” and that the show is very much “based in the real world.” But at the same time there is some good subtle satirical dark humor like when Jack Black’s character (low level embassy officer) and Aasif Mandvi’s character are walking through Islamabad smoking weed after they narrowoly escaped a violent riot and Mandvi asks Black “why are you here?” to which Black responds “Cause when every other pricks from my class at Dartmouth went off to Wall Street to suck every nickel from the poor and middle class I didn’t want to be one of them. As hard as it may be for you to fathom I want to make a difference.”

It seems that The Brink is a dark comedy trying to be a dramedy which is no doubt partially due to the rising trend of dramedies on TV as well as the cause for a lot of its poor initial reviews. The Brink is a show that is struggling to find its voice becasue it is caught between two genres. If The Brink would stick to the dark comedy that it seems to be rooted in it could be a truly interesting and unique show.

There also may be a reason why dark comedy is rarely seen on television. Arguably, Louie represents the only show, albeit current one, that actually utilizes dark comedy. However, Louie isn’t a linear show; what happens in previous Louie episodes rarely affect subsequent events. The stakes of the comedy in Louie are also quite low most of the time. However, the stakes in The Brink, much like its title, climb quite high (nuclear fallout being the main one). Further, the show is linear so if the world ends so does The Brink. Thus, for this reason, The Brink is not following in the footsteps of Dr. Strangelove’s inevitable annihilation and instead is following the trend of the TV dramedy.