This is an entirely stupid and pointless post, so I apologize in advance for that. But sometimes, I get an idea in my head, and the only way to get it out is to write about it.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine comes back on April 11, which means that its viewers will once again be privileged to enjoy Andre Braugher line readings like this one:
As I drove into work this morning, a half dozen different Braugher lines kept rattling through my skull until a dumb question occurred to me:
If the fate of the world depended on the funniest possible delivery of a weird line on a Mike Schur show, would I want Braugher to deliver it, or someone else?
Now, the shows Schur has worked on — Brooklyn, Parks and Recreation, The Office, andThe Good Place — have featured some pretty remarkable comic actors, but the “someone else” field of performers with a particular gift for delivering weird lines weirdly sorted itself into Nick Offerman and Ted Danson. (Aubrey Plaza, Chris Pratt, Chelsea Peretti, and a few others were in a tier just below those guys.) These aren’t the stars of the show, and they’re maybe not as versatile as the leads (though I’m not sure there’s anything Danson can’t do on a TV show), but in this area, they’re unmatched. They’re not the best all-around player on the basketball team, but they’re by far the best three-point shooter, right?
So I turned my stupid mental exercise into a stupid Twitter poll, which as of this writing, Offerman was leading Braugher comfortably, with Danson and “other” way back of the leaders:
https://twitter.com/sepinwall/status/846722828548427778
Offerman is a wonderful choice. Ron Effing Swanson is one of my favorite sitcom characters ever, and so much of that comes from the way Offerman put the perfect spin on lines like, “When I eat, it is the food that is scared.” But I think good arguments could be made for each, so here goes:
Andre Braugher: Two-sport athlete, more or less, using his prodigious skills as a dramatic actor in service of the silliest of comedy. His voice is so rich and mellifluous that there are few words that aren’t a pleasure to hear him say, which in turn makes the energy with which he delivers a phrase like “Velvet Thunder” even more delightful. He can’t spin anything into comic gold, but I’d argue he has the highest ceiling for any single line of dialogue of these three.
Nick Offerman: Though Danson plays an architect in the afterlife, Ron Swanson’s easily the most ridiculous of these three characters. Yet Offerman delivers every line with such utter conviction that he never seems the least bit cartoonish. Ron Swanson believes, utterly, every insane thing he says, and you believe it, too, and that makes each line so much funnier as a result.
Ted Danson: Where Braugher destroys you with tone and Offerman with deadpan sincerity, Danson’s greatest asset is his timing. Lines spin out of his mouth from odd angles when you least expect them to, and it’s the pace as much as the inflection that kills. Though Danson’s the most seasoned actor of the three, he’s only been in this role for 13 episodes, so he doesn’t have the kind of highlight reels floating around YouTube that Braugher and Offerman fans can point to, which means your pick of him has to draw as much on Sam Malone and his many other roles as it does on Michael from The Good Place.
Though the fate of the world hangs in the hypothetical balance, there is no bad answer to this question, even if you want to go off the board for a Poehler or Carell or Ansari. But I had this question stuck in my head, so I had to share it with you. As the kids say, #SorryNotSorry