When Sitcom Sincerity Attacks

The Eighties were by and large a lamentable decade, but our nostalgia-junkie nation just keeps reviving its greatest (worst) hits, like tapered jeans, boy bands, and the Very Special Episode. The last was a sitcom staple, when the half-hour would make a hard right turn from the usual Yuks "R" Us into topical issues like child molestation, substance abuse, and eating disorders … only with laugh track included.

Six months ago, the Alamo Drafthouse's Zack Carlson collaborated with L.A.'s Cinefamily to put together a show that riffed on Eighties sitcoms' awkward attempts at the serious stuff. He said it was a deeply bizarre but enthralling experience, watching an audience prepped for an ironic good time suddenly be "blindsided by tragedy."

Carlson has programmed another go-round for next week – "this one is even more intense," he said – wherein spousal battery, fatal diseases, and the Challenger disaster are all tapped for Very Special purposes. "In a way, it was almost opportunism, current event opportunism on the part of these sitcom writers," said Carlson. "They ripped [topics] out of the headlines and funneled them through Punky Brewster. I think it's important to document it."

Feb. 16's Another "Very Special" Episode program will feature three full-length sitcoms – Mr. Belvedere's handling of child AIDS ("probably the least sitcom-appropriate topic ever"), the Diff'rent Strokes episode about daughter Kimberly's bulimia ("It gets pretty gratuitous – you're actually hearing Kimberly vomit"), and an episode of Designing Women that "deals with severe domestic abuse coupled with blackface – the blackface is used as comic relief to elevate the domestic abuse, which is even more offensive."

The program also includes a 25-minute montage of Very Special moments – "drug freak-outs and emotional breakdowns," Carlson promises – but one of those moments transcends for Carlson the awkwardness or sniggering attitude we bring to watching those oh-so-earnest shows now.

"I don't know if you remember Bull from Night Court. He wasn't much of a ladies' man on the show. In the third season, he meets this woman and falls truly in love with her, and in the last five minutes of the show he finds out she's a prostitute. ... It's tragic for both of them. It's really amazing.

"People talk about movies like Blue Valentine and shit, but I tell you, Richard Moll's performance in Night Court is the real deal."

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Another "Very Special" Episode takes place Wednesday, Feb. 16, 7pm at the Alamo Ritz.