Hot In Cleveland, Meta-Rom-Com

Hot in Cleveland has had some ups and downs; I loved the Huey Lewis sex episode, but the Wayne Knight/oh-no-what-have-I-said episode was just too unapologetically…sitcom-y. Last night’s episode went above and beyond the call of sitcom duty, though, by doing a nice little deconstruction of romantic comedies.

If there’s one thing I’ve brought gotten from being a scholar, it’s a love for the “meta.” “Meta”, to me, means addressing not just the subject at hand (say a genre of comedy) bu employing theme and variation on said subject and occasionally breaking the fourth wall so the tropes can play out in ironic, semi-ironic, or not at all ironic ways. The zen of meta is doing it just enough — too much is too clever by half; too little and you’re not being ironic at all. And hey, if Metacritic can be meta, we can all be meta.

So, last night, when the characters in Hot In Cleveland explicitly dissed rom-com stereotypes, but also lived them, the show went meta — thus proving it’s more on board with the Zeitgeist of “young” shows like Community than I would have guessed, and providing an enjoyable riff on a topic dear to my heart.

PS I just love Jane Leeves’ character and I want all her clothes.