How ‘Wrecked’ Went From ‘Unproduceable’ to One of the Summer’s Funniest Shows
On its face, TBS’s new comedy Wrecked looks like a simple parody of Lost: Survivors of a plane crash contend with a mysterious island — only there are poop jokes. But within the first few episodes, it becomes clear that creators Justin and Jordan Shipley have created something more like The Office meets Lord of the Flies, mixing lowbrow and highbrow comedy with reckless abandon. Yahoo TV spoke with the Shipleys as well as Zach Cregger (The Whitest Kids You Know) about keeping the comedy grounded enough to care about the characters, but wild enough that we don’t mind when one of them gets crushed by the nose of an airplane.
In this exclusive clip from Episode 3, the crash survivors are faced with the Sophie’s choice of choosing what may be the last movie they will ever see. “We conceptualized that [story idea] pretty early,” says Justin. It’s a question all of us recognize: Will you watch the dumb fluff movie or the socially redeeming biopic? Only because of the circumstances, it becomes nearly a matter of life and death.
Here are six reasons why you should peek underneath Wrecked’s deceptively simple exterior and get a look at the too-sharp-for-network-TV comedy lurking in its heart of darkness.
1. There Are Lost Jokes, But It’s Not a Lost Parody
The Shipleys are fans of Lost, but the decision to set the show on an island has a more practical basis. They wanted to create a “Greg Daniels-style” show, in the vein of The Office or Parks and Recreation, says Justin. “A lot of times, writers are trying to come up with new ways to entrap a cast of eccentric characters somewhere that forces them to interact with each other. Quite literally trapping these nutjobs on this island felt like a fun way to tackle the ensemble comedy in a different way.”
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2. TBS
“I think we were just trying to get staffed on Angie Tribeca,” Justin jokes about their pilot script. Jordan laughs when he says their manager, Jesse Hara, told them, “’Just write something unproduceable,’ and TBS was, like, ‘Yeah, we’ll produce it.’” Take note apprentice TV writers: Writing a man crushed by the nose of a plane into your script won’t get your pilot shot anywhere else.
“It’s a whole new deal over there [at TBS],” says Cregger. The network is trying to make itself distinctive with smart, self-aware comedies like Angie Tribeca and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. “A lot of times, networks are responsible for dumbing down programming,” Cregger continues, “But that’s not the case with our show. I know that the Shipleys have been able to make the show they wanted to make and the show I wanted to make and I’m really pleasantly surprised that we have a network that’s let us do that.”
3. Location, Location, Location
Unlike the last great island comedy Gilligan’s Island, the show is shot on an actual island — Puerto Rico — and, says Cregger, “that lends itself to comedy.” It’s “more credible, less goofy.” Being on location led the cast to bond more, though, he adds woefully, it also meant the mosquito bites were very real. “It was kind of a dream come true. If we weren’t shooting on an island that was plagued by Zika and bankruptcy, it would have been a total paradise shoot.”
4. Keeping It Real
Where Lost immediately dove into the supernatural elements of its island home, Justin says they chose to “mine the comedy in what would be the actual disappointments” of being stuck in a jungle wilderness. Simple creature comforts — like choosing between Dumb and Dumber To and Selma or eating a bag of Cheetos — become so important, they lead to violence. They also lead to strange answers to the big questions, like “How do you deal with crime?” “The most logical — and also dumbest — thing to do would be to just dig a pit,” says Jordan, and so is born the concept of “pit justice,” which escalates into lunacy by season’s end.
5. Rhys Darby
The character of Steve was originally a bit part, says Justin. “He was just supposed to pop up as the island’s punching bag,” adds Jordan. But when Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords) was cast at the last minute — Justin says they sent him the script, “never thinking he’d actually do it” — it radically altered the course of the show. Steve goes from punchee to puncher, and there’s an episode later in the season that, Justin says, “got pretty sad and pretty dark quickly in a way that I don’t think we ever really had imagined for that character.”
6. Serialization Allows It to Get Dark
The slapstick of the early episodes soon gives way to grimmer material — the sort of thing not easily explored on network television, but is becoming the norm on basic cable — and that is due, in part, to the fact that the show is serialized rather than episodic. “S••• goes down on this island,” enthuses Cregger. “It gets really gnarly, and it stays funny all the way through. There’s some cool cannibalism stuff that’s going to come into play. There’s a lot of cabin fever and dementia. Society is going to break down; people are going to start wilding out.”
Wrecked airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on TBS.
