‘St. Denis Medical’ Team on How Great Jokes Beget More Great Jokes in NBC’s Smart, Layered Sitcom

The funniest comedies can be taken for granted. Not only does the culture tend to value the serious over the silly, but pratfalls and quips that evoke big laughs don’t necessarily provoke deep reflection. What went into filming those scenes? Who thought up that clever line and engineered the piece of slapstick? How did they piece those moments together in a way that seems seamless, so that the comedy can speak for itself?

One such easily overlooked yet ultimately brilliant sequence arrived in “St. Denis Medical” Season 2, Episode 4, “Two Docs One Conf.” The episode sees Ron (David Alan Grier) and Bruce (Josh Lawson) attending a medical conference at a budget hotel, where the cocksure surgeon throws a party in his room with disastrous results. The scene’s big kicker sees Bruce climb on top of his room’s entertainment center and fall off onto a coffee table, crushing the piece of furniture and sending a bowl of popcorn soaring.

“For me, this was kind of ambitious,” David Alan Grier said in a panel hosted by IndieWire. “We were on location — we were outside of the studio — and just watching Josh climb up that furniture thing, when we get to that point, there was a stand-in, but I was like, ‘Oh man. I’m glad I’m watching [and not doing it.]’ It was a big scene!”

“You do feel the pressure of a scene like that,” Josh Lawson said. “Because it’s not just a big scene with extras and stunts and stuff, but in the episode, it’s the climactic scene. It all sort of leads to this moment. So you feel the pressure of that in anything you do, if it feels like there’s a bit more resting on this scene. You take that onboard.”

“But we ran that scene over and over,” he said. “We’re always allowed to play and explore. It’s a set that constantly makes me feel comfortable and makes our guest actors feel really comfortable. It’s just a set that I think is conducive with doing the best work an actor can do.”

Showrunner and co-creator Eric Ledgin said he feels lucky to have the team that he has so he can write challenging material and trust the people on set will be able to handle it quickly and appropriately.

“We’re very lucky,” Ledgin said. “You can imagine a set where you have actors where you might have to go, ‘Listen, David and Josh have stuff, so we have to make sure that the water bottle thing doesn’t get [out of hand.]’ We’re very lucky we don’t have that. We have a sense of professionalism and trust, and it works.”

“I think the biggest thing for art department in this scene is we built that piece of furniture from scratch,” production designer Elliot LaPlante said. “It is a full, big, heavy base that we welded together and engineered to be exceptionally strong for our actors and doubles to get on. We had drawers that came out in different kind of step configurations to let Josh have as much play as possible to find out how we wanted to block this scene. And we also built a coffee table. Of course, it’s a breakaway coffee table, but we lined the top with really thick neoprene and have an excellent craftsman who painted it and woodgrained it so you couldn’t tell when camera was on it, but it allowed the person that fell to have a nice cushion.”

Another key production detail was the popcorn resting on the table. It may seem small, but the skyward kernels add a visual flourish to Bruce’s fall that makes the scene that much funnier. What’s already hilarious because of what’s on the page and what the actors bring to performing it gets that much better because of the crew’s thoughtful, detailed approach.

“That was a request,” LaPlante said of the popcorn placement. “‘Let’s put something there that Josh can play with. That we can have move and it’s soft.’ So it’s kind of that collaboration where it’s [asking], ‘OK, what bowl does it go in so no one gets hurt?’ There’s a lot of little pieces that go on behind the scenes to set this stuff up, and it’s so fun to see them come together on screen.”

It’s Jay Hunter’s job, the director of photography, to make sure the camera is positioned to capture everything clearly, smoothly, and fully, which is no easy task when he’s shooting 18 episodes per season.

“We’re always given the amount of time that we need to do it, but we’re always under the gun time-wise,” Hunter said. “We shoot a lot of script pages per day, compared to your average comedy show. I would say we shoot at least 30-40 percent more than they do, and we tend to do it in a very short work day. We’re always pushing to keep things going and keep things at a brisk pace.”

The ideas, the timing, the chemistry — they all have to come together just to get that one big laugh, and “St. Denis Medical” has proven over two seasons that it’s capable of getting that and so many more every episode. So the next time you find yourself laughing, maybe take a minute to think about what it took to make you so happy. You’ll only appreciate the show — and the people who make it — that much more.

“St. Denis Medical” is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. It is available on NBC and Peacock.

IndieWire partnered with Universal Studio Group for USG University, a series of panels celebrating the outstanding artistry and artisans behind the 2025–2026 television season across NBCUniversal’s portfolio of shows. USG University, a Universal Studio Group program, is presented in partnership with the Motion Picture & Television Fund.