The writers’ hall on the seventeenth floor was, as I’d anticipated, ghostly in its emptiness, and I sat at my desk and inserted my earbuds. I always listened to classical music, usually Haydn or Schubert, while writing sketches about things like dog farts, tampons, and Title IX. I worked for two and a half hours without standing or removing my earbuds and in this way generated a rough draft of the Danny Horst Rule sketch (nine pages) and then a rough draft of the Blabbermouth one (ten pages). This early on, I was more focused on getting the structures into place than coming up with jokes.
One of the legends of TNO was that most of the show was written between the hours of 5 P.M. Tuesday and, because sketches were due by noon, 11:59 A.M. Wednesday. Another of the legends was that much of the creativity of TNO’s early years had been fueled by cocaine. While both of these rumors were in fact true, I personally had never done coke in my life and didn’t do most of my own writing overnight. I stayed at the office overnight because it was when I worked with cast members on their ideas and because it was considered bad form not to, and I often did find myself feverishly revising at 11:55 A.M. on Wednesday. But I wrote first drafts much better and faster during the day, and I sometimes wondered if, the cult of the overnighter aside, most of my colleagues would have, too.
At some point in my first year, I’d realized that the all-night writing sessions were, in a different way from the sketches, largely performative. Occasionally, it really did take six hours to write a sketch, but far more often, people fucked around for five hours then wrote a sketch in forty minutes. At any point on the writers’ hall, as Tuesday turned into Wednesday, you were as likely to see someone goofing off as typing. The TNO writing staff was still three-quarters male, and they’d be wrestling or making bets or peeing in trash cans. Some writers or cast members left before midnight to do a set at a comedy club; returned to wrestle, make bets, or pee in a trash can; then started writing. But these days, I knew of only one cast member who used hard drugs at work. Far more of my co-workers wore Fitbits, drank kale juice, and meditated in their off hours, or at least claimed to.
It was Nigel himself who was clearly a natural-born night owl, and though the schedule he’d set in the beginning seemed objectively crazy, it was after all this time justified by an if-it-ain’t-broke logic. Many sketches that had found their way into the country’s collective consciousness and spawned beloved characters and catchphrases had indeed been written at one or three or four-thirty in the morning. And really, if you were lucky, Tuesday was just the beginning. If one or more of your sketches made it past the table read, you might stay up late on any or all of the remaining nights until Saturday, rewriting, rehearsing, or directing a shoot for a pre-tape. Then you’d probably stay up all night Saturday, too, commiserating or celebrating at the after-parties, because your sketch had been cut at the last minute and you felt despondent or because your sketch had made it to air but bombed and you felt despondent or because your sketch had aired and killed and you felt exhilarated.
Prior to joining the show, I’d kept typical sleeping and waking hours, but TNO truly had rewired my biology, as if I were a third-shift factory worker except vastly better paid, or an ER doctor except not saving anyone’s life. It now seemed normal to me that most people arrived at the office around 5 P.M. on Tuesday, and we placed our orders for dinner around 9 P.M. I spent the hours before and after dinner working with cast members, most often Viv and Henrietta, on sketches they were developing. Around one or two, I lay on the couch in my office, set a T-shirt over my eyes and earplugs in my ears, and, except when I was awakened by chaos in the hall, I nodded off for about five hours, which was downright decadent by TNO standards. I’d set my phone alarm to go off at six or seven then brush my teeth in the women’s room. There was a shower in the private bathroom off Nigel’s office that some of my co-workers used after he went home, but I wouldn’t have had the nerve or the ambition and merely kept a toiletries bag in a desk drawer. After brushing my teeth, I’d have coffee and an energy bar and sit down again at my desk for revisions. At this point, plenty of people were still awake, never having slept at all, and usually emanating a half-dead exhaustion, though sometimes giving off a loopy camaraderie reminiscent of the kids who’d stayed up all night at an elementary school slumber party. I’d revise for a few hours, turn my sketches in at the last minute like everyone else, and go home for a few hours to poop in peace and shower before returning to work for the read-through at three.
On this particular afternoon, I still had a draft of the Cheesemonger to hammer out but decided to get coffee—real coffee that I’d buy from a place in the lobby of 66, not from the office kitchen—and while I was waiting in line, I texted Viv, How was doctor apptmt?
So, she replied immediately.
Interesting story
I didn’t see my usual doc
I saw someone else
And he was
She added three fire emojis.
Then came a screenshot, clearly taken off the eye clinic’s website, of a man who looked to be in his early forties, was smiling earnestly, was either light-skinned or biracial, and was wearing a white dress shirt, yellow tie, and white lab coat. Next to the photo were the words
Theodore P. Elman
Certification: American Board of Ophthalmology
Education: M.D., Perelman School of Medicine, University
of Pennsylvania
Specialty: Comprehensive Ophthalmology
Another text from Viv: OK he looks kinda middle aged dorky here but trust me
We had crazy chemistry
And he wrote his email on business card if I have Qs
But he can’t ask me out right?
Because it would be illegal
I typed: Wait how’s your eye?
Then: I don’t think illegal but maybe unprofessional?
Want me to ask my college roommate who’s a pediatrician?
From Viv: I have a subconjunctival hemorrhage
Which grossness aside isn’t that serious
Should heal on its own 1-2 wks
From me: Oh good
Obviously you don’t look gross if there was crazy chemistry
Was he wearing a wedding ring
From Viv: No
From me: Did he know who you were
From Viv: Unclear
If I think there was chemistry, was there chemistry?
From me: Yes
From Viv: What if there was chemistry but only for me
From me: Pretty sure that’s not how chemistry works
When are you getting to office
From Viv: 4:30?
Can you write some sketches that make me look hot and hilarious in case the love doctor watches this week
From me: Hmm should I assign not hot woman in Danny Rule sketch to you or Henri
From Viv: Me me me me me
From Viv: All airtime is good airtime
TUESDAY, 10:08 P.M.