I was once involved in writing and performing a sketch about a pair of nerds stuck at a trekkie convention. They got locked out of a room, and in order to open the door they decided to use the wave motion gun. The characters in the sketch repeated their choice several times. The Wave Motion Gun. The wave motion gun? The WAAAVE MOTION GUN!!!

Every other night or so that we performed the show, we could hear someone in the back of the room laugh hysterically at this reference. If you were a fan of the 1970s anime import Star Blazers, you’re probably laughing right now, too. But the rest of you are about ready to stop reading this post.  This kind of joke is an example of what Jane Espenson calls a “two-percenter.” The idea is that the joke references something that only about two percent of the audience is likely to recognize. The joy of creating such a joke is that those few people who understand the joke think it’s reeeeeal hilarious.

The problem with this kind of writing is that 98% of one’s audience ISN’T laughing.

While I am guilty in this one particular case of a very obscure reference, in general I’m not a fan of jokes that need to be explained. If I watch an episode of The Simpsons, and the music shifts to something that is obviously a reference to some 1960s movie I don’t recognize, I not only don’t laugh, but I also start to feel alienated.

I’ve discovered recently that My Name Is Earl uses an approach that allows them to have their inside joke and share it, too. They build another joke ON TOP of the more obscure joke. The subtle joke underneath is there, for those who get it, but it’s never the main joke. Most of the time these little ones will speed right past you. Only as I watch episodes for the second, now third time (in prepping to write a spec) do I catch some of the self-referential humor placed in the episodes. To the credit of the Earl writing staff, none of these inside jokes hold the place of a real punchline. If they live in the script where a joke should be, some other, broader joke will serve that purpose, allowing the two-percenter to wink at those who know the show really well.

It’s like they’ve mastered the hundred-and-two percenter.

I’ve posted previously about how most of the times Catalina speaks Spanish, the translation is a message directly for the audience. But whether you understand or not, there’s always a joke nearby, like Joy responding with, “Sorry, I don’t speak Maid.”

While those are impressive, the ones I like are the subtle recalls to earlier episodes.  In one, Randy searches for “treasure” in the storm drain, but finds only several doll heads floating by. In a later episode, we meet an orphan girl who was forced to live in a storm drain, who kept losing her doll’s heads. The joke was that her life was horrible; we didn’t need to remember the connection to laugh at the orphan girl’s lines.  Another example involves Earl pointing out that Joy had never been naked in front of both him AND Darnell, but then Darnell fills him in on the fact that there was one Thanksgiving when Darnell had been hiding in the closet while Earl and Joy had sex.  In a later episode, a flashback of a Thanksgiving showed us the event described previously.

My favorite was in the two-part Mexico episode. Previously, in “Larceny of a Kitty Cat,” Randy gets involved with a cat lady played by Amy Sedaris. We learn about his character that Randy has a habit of pretending to be someone he’s not in order to win the hearts of women. When the relationship inevitably goes bad, he finds a boom box and mopes, listening to Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time” over and over again. Later that season, when Randy travels to Mexico in hopes of rescuing and winning the heart of Catalina, he thinks he has failed. We find him crying in front of a Mexican musician who sings a Spanish version of “Time After Time.” Only die-hard fans with good memories would make the connection, but if you do it’s really funny that he’s once again moping to his favorite depression song. Still, you didn’t need that two-percenter in order to enjoy the moment. The real laugh was Randy’s attempt to sing along with the Mexican minstrel. Not understanding the words, Randy sings, “Spanish and Spanish and Spa-aa-nish!” Hilarious. One joke for everyone, a second one for the astute.

I will be looking for opportunities to create such jokes in my spec script.

Now, for the two-percent of you who understood my Star Blazers references (Who’m I kidding?  It’s got to be less than two percent…) here’s a picture of Derek Wildstar.