Life Unexpected Star Kris Polaha Teaches Us About "Church Laughter"

"Baze" joins us for his weekly peek behind-the-scenes of the CW's most darling drama

What up, peeps from the blogosphere? Kristoffer Polaha here to fill in the gaps, so to speak, with my weekly Life Unexpected blog. Now, many of you stare at my last name with awe and fear, but I'd like to take this time to edify my readers as promised last week. 

OK, so let's break down Polaha into three syllables: (1) PO, as in Edgar Allan Poe, Po as in a po'boy sandwich. Both dark in their own way. (2) LA, a note that follows so (which also happens to rhyme with po)! Do re me fa so la ti do, as in "Do, a deer, a female deer"... you get it. (3) And finally, that brings us to HA, the last and happiest of the sounds, as in a big belly laugh, ha-ha-ha! PO-LA-HA, easy. Now to the good stuff…

Episode 203 was shot in the beginning of August in what was sunny Vancouver, British Columbia, where they held the Olympics this last February. The title, "Criminal Incriminated," is a play on Life Unexpected—all the titles of all our shows have two words, the second word ending in -ed. Episode 203 was written by Taylor Hamra, man about town, and directed by Nick Marck, who (and if you can ever compare photos of these two you will see what I'm talking about) looks exactly like Larry David, creator of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, the latter of which our very own Austin Basis, aka Math, was a guest on last season as a well-tipped waiter. Very funny stuff.

Now in this episode, Ryan accuses Lux of stealing, which I hear about and all hell breaks lose, as you can imagine, but the joy of this scene was the actual filming of it. You see, Ryan, played by Kerr Smith, has to chase me with a golf club down a little hill and naturally I make a beeline away from him. Well, this is funny. If you are standing outside in the sunshine, on a golf course, and Kerr Smith is chasing you with a golf club that you know he's not gonna hit you with, it's funny, especially because it's not supposed to be. Actually, that's probably exactly why it is funny, because it's supposed to be deadly serious. But it's two grown men, playing make-believe! It's the best job in the world and it's also ridiculous, so we laugh and laugh and laugh. I call it "church laughter," which is the term that best describes the nature of the laugh. "Church laughter" has to be stifled and held back, but in the stifling and holding back, the moment only becomes funnier, and the more serious you have to be the more the giggles hurt. I mean, we get to a point where we are in tears and can barely say our lines, but we are trying as best we can to keep it together. In fact, this happened last season when Kerr and I had a really serious moment together at my bar. Ryan had just punched Baze in the face, and Baze needed someone to go upstairs and talk to Lux, and well, we lost our cookies, we laughed so hard. We barely made it through the scene. Same thing on the golf course, and if you DVRed the show, go back and watch again, because you'll see Kerr turn around as he comes down the hill. He added that move to hide the laughter. Church laughter!

Another interesting thing that happened in 203 was that Nick had to reshoot part of a scene that Gary Fleder directed in the season premiere. Wrap your minds around this next piece of info. Gary Fleder shot a scene with Lux and Eric on a billboard with a picture of the ocean on it. He shot the wide, he shot at a medium angle, and he shot the close-ups, but something happened and they needed, almost a month later, a new close-up shot of the scene—of the kiss, to be specific. So, it was Nick/Larry David's task to build a billboard in a room at the clubhouse of the golf course (they shot this the same day Kerr and I broke out into church laughter), light it the same way Gary did and re-create a moment that needs to fit seamlessly into an already shot and edited scene. Go back to episode 201 and rewatch that scene—you can't even tell. It's Hollywood magic. The scene started on location on a billboard in July and finished in a room at a club house in August. Pretty cool, right?

Well, that's all for now. I wanted to give you what I've been promising all along. A private tour behind the scenes at Life Unexpected. I hope you enjoyed it. We have fun making this show and we hope you have as much fun watching it. How did the public arthouse collective go? Did everyone tell a friend? Thanks again to the fine folks at E! for giving me this venue. I'm having fun with it. Until next week, this is Kristoffer PO-LA-HA signing off!