Australian
Screen

Clip description

Kath (Jane Turner) despairs over finding the money to pay for a pumpkin-style coach for her wedding. Kim (Gina Riley) is unsympathetic – she’s busy trying to 'crack onto the net’ and enlists help from Brett (Peter Rowsthorn).

Curator’s notes

This sequence sets up the central 'problem’ of this episode – Kath’s money troubles – as well as its other main story strand – Kim’s discovery of the internet. In the tradition of sitcom and sketch comedy, Riley and Turner use these situations to draw out their character’s stock traits. Kath’s fussiness and drama and Kim’s lack of sympathy and self-involvement are recognisable by this point in the series as typical behaviour. As audience members, we can enjoy both the recognition and the variation we find in each new situation.

We see key shades in Riley and Turner’s comedic palette here: mixed metaphors and muddled vocabulary as Kim tries to 'crack onto the net’; deadpan humour regarding taste as Kath considers the merits of her new boots versus a pumpkin-style coach and Kim talks pina coladas in the chat rooms; and earnest but errant cultural references ('Is Cinderella stupid?’). According to Riley, one of the challenges is striking the balance between too 'big’ and too subtle, the risk with the latter being that an audience member who doesn’t tap into the detail may wonder where the jokes are. Nonetheless, she is often amazed at the fleeting details her audience will pick up on and she and Turner aim to write so that the audience can find something funny in almost every line.

We do also sometimes see more classic 'gags’ that set up a joke then follow it through, as when Brett invites Kim to chat with him but then has nothing to say.