Star Wars S(h)itcom

Seriously!?

Apparently they're making a Star Wars sitcom. From the Variety article:

Daytime Emmy and Gemini Award-winner Jennifer Hill ("The Backyardians") will produce with Todd Grimes ("Back at the Barnyard") directing. Brendan Hay ("The Daily Show") will be among the writers and Seth Green and Matthew Senreich, creators and executive producers of "Robot Chicken," will have "creative involvement.

Man, this is such a dumb idea, I don't care who's involved. I read a bunch of the comments after the article on /Film (where I initially learned about this development) and not enough people are waving their hands wildly in the air and screaming for this to not happen. Let's examine why this is a bad idea shall we?

Robot Chicken's Star Wars parodies are funny. The Family Guy parodies are also funny (though I begrudgingly admit it). Spaceballs is also funny. Alright, lots and lots of Star Wars parodies are funny. AND!, Star Wars itself is funny. But a dedicated Star Wars sitcom, will not be funny:

1. Parodies are parodies. All of the Star Wars parodies mock Star Wars. Yes, they embrace the source material, usually with love (especially in the case of the Robot Chicken dudes) but they are still irreverent. These parodies extend characters and ideas from the show into absurd places, that cannot be cannon.
2. This is a sitcom. Sitcoms are not sketches like Robot Chicken has excelled at in terms of their Star Wars humour. Family Guy and Spaceballs tell a story, but they tell the same fucking story as Star Wars. Are we suddenly going to break off and have Han and Leia living on Coruscant, with Chewie dropping by as the obligatory, racist depiction of a minority neighbour? How is this going to be structured? I can't express how little I think of the idea of a situational comedy starring Star Wars characters, or in the Star Wars universe. Anytime I think of something amusing, it's because of irreverence, and it would not be congenial humour, the sort of humour sitcoms are based on.
   
3. Isolated instances. All the Star Wars comedies I can think of do their funny and then end. They're all specials, not long running shows. This is important for two reasons. A) the humour doesn't outstay its welcome. Parody is something that is difficult to sustain. Many would say Colbert has done it (I don't watch it myself because I've grown a little tired of the parody), but I think as a general rule, parody itself does not lend itself to longevity. The novelty of the superiority humour dwindles, and you're left with the same joke: isn't x silly? B) You're going to run out of jokes. Wait, you can't really run out of jokes, because they are like invention (inventio!), but the writers for this show are going to find difficulty mining for humour after a while. How many jokes can you do about the Millennium Falcon failing? And with Star Wars, let me tell you, the writers are going to need to be uber careful not to get too obscure because as a Star Wars comedy, they are already flirting with a small viewership.
   
4. Finally, is this for adult or kids. Star Wars has become progressively more and more childish. The original material was entertaining for all ages but as the movies went they skewed towards juvenile audiences. This is no more clear than in consideration of the humour. If you've watched the movies, you know it to be true. So, if the humour is for kids, I really don't want to watch a dumb, racist, and homophobic Star Wars saturday-morning-cartoon. I doubt its going to be adult-centric, since how do you suddenly tell the majority of your audience (ie kids) that this Star Wars isn't for you. So I imagine it would be in the middle, like a sitcom, and I seriously doubt that Star Wars can walk the line between adult and childish humour, all the while refraining from irreverency.
   

I think my problem(s) come down to this: a Star Wars comedy will necessarily be irreverent, and irreverent isn't funny when it's done by the people that own the source material. That statement may not be true in general, but I'm damn sure it's true of George Lucas. I don't want to watch George Lucas make fun of his own material. He has taken his shit seriously for so fucking long that for him to suddenly find some levity in his creation would be down right insulting. Where was levity when you refused to release the original cuts on DVD because they weren't your vision. Where was levity when you sued all the people you sued for stupid shit and/or stopped them from releasing their own stupid version of a Star Wars thing? I mean, you can't just one day stop taking yourself and your Star Wars seriously because it'll make you a couple of buck and not expect to look like a douche.

This show will suck because either it will be a bland generic sitcom with Star Wars template overtop masking the bland genericness, or it will be irreverant, possibly good for a bit, and a perfect example as to why I libel George Lucas.

Douche!