﻿What’s so special about the Fab Four? The four-person ensemble creates a
particular sceen magic audiences love, especially on TV.
And there in the same city where they met as girls, four NY women
entered the next phase of their lives.
On the surface, shows like Seinfeld, Girls, Sex and the City,
The Sex Lives of College Girls, Insecure and the Good Place
may not sound so similar.
But they actually have a lot in common, thanks to
being based around a group of four.
Look, you’re a nice guy but
I actually only have three friends.
I don’t need anymore. All are known for excelling at
what we’ll call the 3 C’s: character, conversation, and commentary.
Let’s unpack these.
First, it’s no coincidence that four-lead shows are the ones that
inspire all those quizzes and debates about which character
you identify with – The four-person story is the
ideal format for investigating personality, through contrasting
a memorable assortment of character types.
Can you please not say assmeat while we’re eating, leighton you’re
so repressed. Table poll is the phrase assmeat repulsive or charming
I don’t like it it’s not great thank you, ok well.”
Second, these four-person-led shows are known for their
conversation – the interesting way they process ideas, often
in a long-winded, colorful banter between the foursome
You deserve someone who wants to look in your beautiful face ladies
what if I want to feel like I have udders this woman
doesn’t care what I want.
Third, thanks to all this conversing, Fab Four shows are really good at
delivering cultural commentary and critiquing social norms of their moment.
Listen to me, the right guy is an illusion, start living your lives!
Here’s our take on what’s so special about the number 4 onscreen
and the four life paths we’re symbolically offered to choose between.
Are you a Carrie, a Samantha, a Miranda or a Charlotte?
Who’s the Kramer in your group, the Jerry, the Elaine, the George?
Susan, Bree, Lynette or Gaby? The Archie, Veronica, Betty or Jughead?
There’s a reason so many of these stories inspire personality
quizzes and identity crises.
Actually, the four-category personality test or
classification system goes back centuries.
Think: the four humors, or the four elements in the zodiac,
the four blood-type personalities, and of course, the four seasons.
Even in stories that aren’t strictly about four main characters,
we often still see four central personality types expressed symbolically:
like Harry Potter’s Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff or Slytherin, or
the four that get the most focus out of all the houses
in Game of Thrones:
Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark and Lannister.
What’s really interesting, too, is that often these four
characters fit a common pattern.
The first character type is The Narrator-Storyteller, or Melody.
They might be a writer or in the arts, so their creative form becomes a
way of expressing the show’s deeper style and perspective.
If any invention marks the decline of human civilization I think it
would have to be the snooze alarm.
This person is the social glue holding the Fab Four together,
and their role is to observe and understand the
spirit of their times.
I couldn't help but wonder... ...when did being alone become
the modern day equivalent of being a leper?
The second character is The Image-Conscious Rule-Follower.
This person is generally too hung up on markers of status
or what their life should be like
“You frame a lot of things in your life with ‘should.
and they reflect their society’s prevailing rules
and traditional images of success.
I thought this would just be an opportunity to have fun
together and prove via Instagram that we can
have fun as a group.
This is the character the show tends to be most critical of
“I have a sixth sense.” “Cheapness is not a sense.”.
But they’re also perhaps the one the show is most interested
in because they capture some of the contradictions or challenges
at the heart of the show’s topic.
“I have decided that this is the year I’m getting married.”
“Charlotte! That’s wonderful!” “Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Well, I don’t know yet!”
The third character is the Progressive or Intellectual one.
They think for themselves and have some principles that
contradict society’s norms.
While they’re typically composed and professionally successful,
every now and then they’re riled up into provoking a
public confrontation or a scene.
Maybe the dingo ate your baby.
Even in shows that are a little more on the amoral side, this
character pushes for more liberal ideals and sometimes
challenges the narrator
“how did it happen that four such smart women have nothing
to talk about but boyfriends?”
And finally, the fourth character is The Conversation Starter
This rulebreaker and boundary pusher gives the show its edge,
delivers its most memorable moments, and inspires the most conversation
about the show-- because they probably best embody the story’s
central argument or question.
“I will not be judged by you or society. I will wear whatever,
and blow whomever I want, as long as I can breathe and kneel.”
They have a lot of Id – almost the opposite of type 2,
they’re unconstrained by social rules about what they should act like.
you’re back on the drink again. Come on I’ve been drinking
since I was a child.
If we want to figure out which of these four buckets we most fit into,
sometimes it helps to focus on what each one’s major challenge or flaw is.
I’m going to miss these perks when I’m down in the bad place being
forced to wear knockoff handbags and drink tap water.
That’s what you think hell is
Classic cinema gave us the four archetypes of Dorothy,
The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion – and
defined them all by what each
worried was lacking in themselves: a brain, a heart, courage or a home.
More recently, The Good Place explores four characters who
arrive in the afterlife each having failed to realize their
potential on earth because of a particular moral weakness:
Chidi’s indecisiveness, Jason’s impulsiveness,
Tahani’s need for approval and Elanor’s selfishness.
Do you not remember one single thing about me? -
Dude things have been nuts around here
You are too selfish to ever be a good person.
The four-person ensemble is the chamber music of storytelling.
In string quartets, or in a show like Seinfeld, the number four is
the sweet spot where it’s still intimate enough to hear the individual
voices of each instrument, yet four is still a large enough group to
offer a variety of voices and feel representative of greater society.
Because of how well you can hear each voice, chamber music often
has parts that sound like a musical conversation
between the instruments.
This can take a few forms:
1) a back and forth – listen to how the strings respond
to each other
2) developing a melody – a solo voice plays the tune,
and then the other voices pick it up or call back to it later
or
3) Harmony – multiple voices within the quartet unite in a
certain musical agreement.
Let’s take a look at this same type of conversation in action
in a scene from Seinfeld.
In “the Contest” episode, George introduces a topic
My mother caught me…caught you doing what? you know.
The other voices provide a banter of back and forth to develop his story:
my mother had a glamour magazine I started leafing through glamour?
I didn’t know whether to keep her from falling or zip up,
so what did you do, I zipped up.
And this leads to the development of the episode’s melody or theme,
as Jerry and George decide to make a bet:
I’ll tell you this though, I am never doing that again.
Oh yeah give me a break you think you could well
I know I could hold out longer than you
Kramer and Elaine pick up the melody too
count me in on this, you? you’ll be out before the check,
while the men harmonize in their objections that
Elaine has an unfair advantage.
I wanna be in on this too to, no no, that’s outrageous it’s
a whole different thing, why cause you’re a woman
This conversational exchange also happens on the episodic, plot level.
In Seinfeld, the characters’ plots usually converge in the end,
leading to a final button that hammers home some
unifying irony or comeuppance
you're through soup nazi back it up no more soup for you
Sex and the City organizes many episodes around a particular
dating question for urban women over 30
But how many is too many men?
Are we simply romantically challenged or are we sluts?
, and it replies to that question through the four
women each experiencing a plot that provides a partial answer
Note, men who have had a lot of sexual partners are not called sluts.
They are called very good kissers.
thus,the four voices in harmony
add up to a nuanced resolution to the topic
We were going to sleep together and it was going to mean something.
I was no virgin, but this was definitely virgin territory.
Conversation-driven storytelling allows Fab Four stories to center
on subjects that are a little more a bstract or open-ended
than your average show – from single life or young
millennial women’s post-college years to the frustrations of
suburban marriages or the nature of the afterlife.
Fab Four shows often feature the four central characters
sharing regular meals and unpacking what’s going on in each others’ lives.
We got into it and he called me inconsistent.
What whhhha oh really? Yeah you dumb bitch, just being honest
Seinfeld diner scenes, SATC brunches,
sex lives of college girls
The beauty is that these group chat scenes get to spend time on what
more plot-driven stories consider unimportant minutia
“I will never understand the bathrooms in this country.
Why is it that the doors on the stalls do not come all
the way down to the floor?”
This captures the realistic way people actually talk and
the kinds of things that take up our focus in a day –
and it also allows for exploring topics that aren’t often covered on TV
Don’t be so judgemental, you could use a little back door. -
I’m not a hole!]
Shows from Seinfeld to Girls to Sex and the City were
seen as envelope-pushing in
their time because they often discussed things most shows
glossed over
jessa has hpv, she does she never told me yeah like a couple strains of it.
She says that all adventurous women do.
In Sex Lives of College Girls, the four central roommates offer
different perspectives on whether Bella should report an assault
by an upperclassman, and the interplay between contrasting
points of view adds up to honesty about the complexity of her choice.
Yeah she’s right reporting it may not be a good idea.
What? Hey I don’t like it don’t listen to her. He needs to pay
hold on maybe as a first step you can go to another
upperclassman and ask what they think…]
In the Good Place, the central four characters who meet in the
afterlife get to dissect dry topics like moral philosophy which the
vast majority of TV assumes is way over audiences’ heads - but the
interplay between the four voices makes it lively and relatable
we’re talking David Hume today
bundle theory of the self, sounds like a real banger.
All this conversing helps these shows pull off the third C
in our list: offering
insightful commentary on social norms and etiquette of their day.
Seinfeld, famously called a “show about nothing,” was
really about critiquing the
customs in society that we frequently don’t question
but are actually absurd unfortunately we ran out of cars.
But the reservation keeps the car here.
That’s why you have the reservation that’s really the most important
part of the reservation the holding
And while many of the things these shows pay attention to
may seem small, these details
can be revealing windows into larger truths.
Take this conversation from Season 2, Episode 10 of Sex and the City,
when the ladies are discussing Miranda’s love interest, Steve.
As they banter about whether a relationship can work between
a high-earning lawyer like Miranda and a working-class
bartender like Steve, what follows is an exchange of
multiple dominant points of view about class in the late 90s.
[This guy is working class. It's the Millennium.
We don't say things like “working class” anymore.
You're trying to pretend we live in a
classless society...and we don't.
Meanwhile, this scene is also a perfect illustration
of how the four-person conversation illuminates character.
Each of the Fab Four is responding to the topic
of class by being classically themselves —
Charlotte is concerned with social norms and appearances.
it’s normal for the man to make more money”
Samantha is just focusing on pleasure.
“How's he in bed?
Miranda’s critiquing the double standards of
how her own success is held against her.
When single men have a lot of money, it's to their advantage.
If a single woman has money, it's a problem to be dealt with.
And Carrie is chiming with pithy doses of humor
“Okay Marie antoinette we get the picture”
or making it about herself and her own love life.
“Rich men date not-so-rich women all the time.
Look at me and Big.”
What’s perhaps most remarkable about a lot of these four-person
stories is that they spend their screentime talking
about topics that conventional wisdom previously said
couldn’t work on TV.
But the four-person magic proves to us that audiences do want
windows into real life – the actual talks we’re having,
the norms we’re brushing up against in daily existence,
and the central drives that shape our personalities.
Shows that leave space for conversation and character
development capture something specific about their times and
process social questions with honesty.
And there’s nothing that makes for better,
more satisfying TV.
You’re on a desert island,
you can bring five books I gotta read five books?