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<\/p>\nKatie Dippold knows better than anyone that her show Widow\u2019s Bay is \u201ctonally tricky, and it could go off the rails very quickly.\u201d Every single episode of the 10-episode first season, which ended last night on a shocking cliffhanger (good thing the show has already been renewed for a second season), is an example of that tightrope walk of tone. But to me there\u2019s no better way to see it in action than in the third episode, \u201cThe Inaugural Swim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthew Rhys\u2019 Tom Loftis is the mayor of a small, fictional New England island community \u2014 which he thinks could be the next Martha\u2019s Vineyard if it weren\u2019t for all the weird happenings and mysterious deaths. By the third episode, Tom has pretty much come to agree with the island\u2019s old-timers (most notably Stephen Root\u2019s Wyck) that Widow\u2019s Bay is cursed, which is why he\u2019s terrified but not surprised when the legendary sea hag comes to his house one night. He\u2019s frozen in fear as she crawls toward him, her stringy hair and black fingernails looking exactly as scary as they would in any horror movie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Except in Widow\u2019s Bay, Tom\u2019s face of fear is also undeniably funny, even more so when he reclines his chair so the Hag goes crashing into a corner.<\/p>\n
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The Cardiff, Wales-born Rhys, an Emmy winner for The Americans, swears that in scenes like this one, he\u2019s just following the advice of Hiro Murai, who directed four episodes of Widow\u2019s Bay, including the sea hag one. \u201cThere is no tone,\u201d Rhys says Murai told him. \u201cYou just play it for real.\u201d<\/p>\n
Specifically for the sea hag sequence, Dippold says they really went for it. \u201cI wanted that to be truly scary, because I think the comedy for that should come from Matthew reacting the way he does. But he just can\u2019t help being funny because he\u2019s a naturally funny person. It\u2019s in the human reactions that the comedy comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n
The world of Widow\u2019s Bay includes things like sea hags, a slow-walking serial killer called The Boogeyman, a cursed book that leads Kate O\u2019Flynn\u2019s dogged public servant, Patricia, to turn a party into a pagan murder ritual and a blanket of fog that kills. But it also includes some of the funniest jokes on television this year, all of which are born from the specific oddball tone of the show and make almost no sense out of context. Maybe this clip from the second episode, when Tom challenges himself to spend the night in an allegedly haunted hotel suite, can give you an idea:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dippold, the screenwriter behind Paul Feig comedies The Heat and 2016\u2019s Ghostbusters, has had the idea for Widow\u2019s Bay since she first wrote it as a spec script to get hired as a writer on Parks & Recreation \u2014 but it actually goes back even further than that. As a child, she tells me, \u201cwe would go to this haunted house on the boardwalk in Long Branch, New Jersey. I love that feeling of being giddy, and that anticipation of getting scared. You\u2019re gonna cover your eyes, and you\u2019re gonna scream, but then you\u2019re gonna laugh. That\u2019s what I wanted the audience to feel going into the show.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rhys says Dippold shared that story of the haunted house with him during their early conversations about the show, and he relished the freedom it gave him to play Tom as essentially a haunted-house visitor, along for the ride.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are at the behest of something you cannot see or affect or reason with,\u201d Rhys tells me. \u201dThat to me is the ultimate horror story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scary Comedy<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another way to describe the tone of Widow\u2019s Bay, which I have actually used to sell a few people on the show: imagine the absurdly funny town hall meeting scenes on Parks & Recreation, or the huge murals in that show\u2019s city hall office that blithely portray horrifying violence. Now make it all a little bit haunted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If that sounds too weird to make it on to television, that\u2019s what Dippold, 46, assumed, too. When she decided to pitch the show, \u201cI just wanted to take a big creative swing, and I had heard enough negative things that I wasn\u2019t scared of hearing any more negative things.\u201d Having watched the industry become increasingly fear-based, she was all but certain the show wouldn\u2019t even sell.<\/p>\n
But then it did \u2014 and with a full series order from Apple. Dippold quickly moved to assemble a writers room and execute the exact risky tone she imagined. \u201cIn the writing, it was knowing to be brutal about cutting jokes that would undercut the tension,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe risk is that taking out those jokes might make people feel uneasy and not understand what the hell they\u2019re watching. But I believe you\u2019re rewarded by actually being scared and tense \u2014 and because that\u2019s what I would want.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Widow\u2019s Bay, the comedy and the scares<\/a> often come from the same place, and no character encapsulates that better than Rhys\u2019 Tom Loftis. As the hapless manager of an office full of oddballs, all played by great character actors like Emmy winner Jeff Hiller and Dale Dickey, Tom has got a bit of Michael Scott\u2019s DNA from The Office, a show Rhys calls \u201cthe zenith of what comedy is.\u201d But Tom is also enduring far scarier stuff than most of us could probably handle, and Rhys thinks he deserves more credit for it.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m always telling everyone, \u2018He is much braver than you think,\u2019\u201d Rhys, 51, tells me, sounding just a little defensive of this fictional mayor he\u2019s brought to life. \u201cEveryone\u2019s like, \u2018Tom\u2019s a coward,\u2019 but he actually goes through a lot.\u201d But because he\u2019s Tom, sometimes what he\u2019s going through \u2014 like this moment at sea that went viral<\/a> \u2014 is just a little bit ridiculous, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n That clip comes from the show\u2019s seventh episode, \u201cSeasickness,\u201d in which Tom and Wyck head out in the ocean to try and dispose of the reanimated corpse of the island\u2019s founder and hopefully end the curse once and for all. (The corpse is played by Hamish Linklater and is also funny, trust me). Many Widow\u2019s Bay episodes riff on specific classic horror stories, from The Shining in the hotel episode to a Halloween riff in which Patricia evades a masked killer. \u201cSeasickness\u201d is the Jaws episode right down to Stephen Root telling a tragic story that sounds a whole lot like the famous U.S.S. Indianapolis<\/a> scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rhys, a \u201cmassive Jaws fan,\u201d says he and Dippold talked about the Spielberg film from the very beginning. He even asked the costume department to make Tom a jacket with anchors<\/a> on it. (\u201cToo far\u201d was the costume designer\u2019s response.) But \u201cSeasickness\u201d was not exactly his Jaws dream come true.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating because I don\u2019t get to be Quint!\u201d Rhys tells me. \u201cStephen Root gets to be Quint. I was like, \u2018Am I Brody in this? I don\u2019t want to be Brody.\u2019 And they\u2019re like, \u2018Well, you are.\u2019 I don\u2019t look like Roy Scheider! I don\u2019t get to look that cool.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If Dippold or anyone else working on Widow\u2019s Bay season two is reading, for the record, Tom Loftis would look great in these glasses<\/a>.<\/p>\n Balancing Acts<\/p>\n To be honest, I\u2019m not sure anything on television is pulling off a tonal balance as impressive as Widow\u2019s Bay, which is both the scariest and funniest thing on television and makes doing both look insanely easy. But we\u2019re living in what might be a golden age of comedies pushing the boundaries of what their tones can be, and Widow\u2019s Bay is at least in very good company.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this season, I talked with Dan Levy<\/a> about his new Netflix comedy Big Mistakes, in which two siblings get tangled up with Russian gangsters but also can\u2019t stop squabbling with their boyfriends, their mom and each other. \u201cWhat if I told you a story that was just as funny as it is thrilling?\u201d was the question Levy asked himself when he started the show, allowing him to craft a family story that is miles from Schitt\u2019s Creek, but just as rewarding.\u00a0<\/p>\n Also tangled up in criminal mischief, but no less funny for it, is Sterlin Harjo\u2019s FX series The Lowdown, starring Ethan Hawke as a Tulsa-based journalist breaking open a major local conspiracy. The tension ratchets up often on The Lowdown, as it does on the Peacock Cold War spy comedy series Ponies<\/a>, in which Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson play two women who form an unbreakable bond even when they\u2019re being tracked by the KGB.\u00a0<\/p>\n But you still can\u2019t talk about comedies that blur tonal lines without talking about FX\u2019s The Bear, which returns for its fifth and final season in just a few days and is in this year\u2019s Emmy race for its fourth. With Jeremy Allen White\u2019s Carmy continuing to deal with his demons and everyone in the kitchen stressed out all the time, the show frequently makes time for one-off grace notes like the Ayo Edebiri-centric episode \u201cWorms,\u201d or even finding physical comedy in the chaos of running a restaurant. Argue all you want about whether it\u2019s a comedy, but The Bear is still distinct this many years into its run, and will leave an empty spot in television when it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n
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