15 ms·

There are lots of prominent counterexamples. The Office was a pretty direct attempt at making a modern middle class show. Breaking Bad at least started with o

There are lots of prominent counterexamples. The Office was a pretty direct attempt at making a modern middle class show. Breaking Bad at least started with one man's middle class problems. I think the main artistic factor here is that the sitcom, an awfully convenient medium for telling middle class stories, is dead. A 30 minute comedy where every episode was basically an island could be an oddly touching medium to talk about a teacher dying or a dad losing his job. But these tiny canvases were mostly the result of the constraints of 20th century TV. Without those constraints, consumers don't have that much interest in slices of everyday life, just as most consumers don't read Raymond Carver stories. Our imaginations go to the rich, powerful and supernatural. I'd argue that other mediums - podcasts, reality TV, social media - fulfill the basic human need behind the sitcom: to simply bask in the company of agreeable/relatable sounding human voices.

dominotw 10y ago
>consumers don't have that much interest in slices of everyday life Last weekend I watched amazon original 'catastrophe' and 'lilyhammer' a netflix original. Both of these revolved around ordinary people doing everyday stuff.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  I'm not sure if I would classify the protagonist of Lillyhammer an "ordinary person" doing "everyday stuff". (I do, however, very highly recommend the series. I've only seen Season 1, but it was fantastic, and the character's slow immersion into the local language and culture was very well done.)
- atspruce 10y ago
  Lilyhammer? The mafia and the Witness Protection Program have thankfully not become "ordinary" and "everyday." Certainly the main character tries to play the part of an everyday ex-pat in Norway convincingly, but the sustaining premise of the show is that he fails to do so.
Touche 10y ago
Didn't basically every character on The Office become the manager at some point? It felt like it. Jim left the company for a while to start a sports agency or something? The Office definitely fell into the modern trap of every character needing to be upwardly mobile.
- untog 10y ago
  I think it fell into the TV show trap of being successful and having your actors be in demand, and taking time off from the show or leaving it altogether. They likely should have ended it when Steve Carrell left.
  - jonnathanson 10y ago
    This. The Office went through all of its kooky manager plotlines because Steve Carell's career trajectory outpaced the show's initial popularity. The second he got too big for the show, everyone knew it, and much ink was spilled in the writers' room trying to anticipate and/or compensate for his eventual departure. Jim was given some upward mobility because he's the protagonist, and the audience was rooting for him (and Pam) in a personal way. Nine seasons of Jim's being stuck in a dead-end paper sales job, with no hope of escape, would have been extremely depressing. I realize that's how the UK version chose to play things, but it would have been too bleak by half for the US market.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      The UK version also only has 14 episodes in total (vs 201 in the US). Not that much time to create the feeling of being stuck.
      - jonnathanson 10y ago
        True, but the UK show goes to great lengths to make a point of its protagonists' hopelessness. The Christmas special capping Season 2 pretty explicitly implies: "Just in case you were wondering, nobody wins."
gregmac 10y ago
Modern Family, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Middle, Raising Hope, How I Met Your Mother, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt were all fairly recent examples of decent modern sitcoms (and wow that list is bigger than I thought it'd be), and for the most part, generally centered around middle class families/people. Some are a bit more outlandish and over-the-top at times, but that can also be their appeal. By modern, I also mean they follow a continuing story arc episode-to-episode, so while you could watch any episode in isolation, you get a lot more if you know backstory and the characters. They're also all "single camera" shows (no laugh track) which IMHO is a much better style, and allows them to be more creative, have a continuing story, and frankly, be funnier than the (pause for laughter) lines in a show like Big Bang Theory.
- saturdaysaint 10y ago
  Those are all interesting cases that I had in mind when writing the parent post. At the risk of sounding the "No true scotsman" alarm, to me, many are just evidence that contemporary TV needs a pretty big dose of the fantastic (Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock). To me, even the most "everyday" of those fall prey to the usual U.S. tendency to elide class at all costs - even the no-good slackers in a lot of these shows seem to have the comforts of someone in the top 20%.

dominotw 10y ago

>consumers don't have that much interest in slices of everyday life Last weekend I watched amazon original 'catastrophe' and 'lilyhammer' a netflix original. Both of these revolved around ordinary people doing everyday stuff.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
I'm not sure if I would classify the protagonist of Lillyhammer an "ordinary person" doing "everyday stuff". (I do, however, very highly recommend the series. I've only seen Season 1, but it was fantastic, and the character's slow immersion into the local language and culture was very well done.)
atspruce 10y ago
Lilyhammer? The mafia and the Witness Protection Program have thankfully not become "ordinary" and "everyday." Certainly the main character tries to play the part of an everyday ex-pat in Norway convincingly, but the sustaining premise of the show is that he fails to do so.

Touche 10y ago

Didn't basically every character on The Office become the manager at some point? It felt like it. Jim left the company for a while to start a sports agency or something? The Office definitely fell into the modern trap of every character needing to be upwardly mobile.

untog 10y ago
I think it fell into the TV show trap of being successful and having your actors be in demand, and taking time off from the show or leaving it altogether. They likely should have ended it when Steve Carrell left.
- jonnathanson 10y ago
  This. The Office went through all of its kooky manager plotlines because Steve Carell's career trajectory outpaced the show's initial popularity. The second he got too big for the show, everyone knew it, and much ink was spilled in the writers' room trying to anticipate and/or compensate for his eventual departure. Jim was given some upward mobility because he's the protagonist, and the audience was rooting for him (and Pam) in a personal way. Nine seasons of Jim's being stuck in a dead-end paper sales job, with no hope of escape, would have been extremely depressing. I realize that's how the UK version chose to play things, but it would have been too bleak by half for the US market.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The UK version also only has 14 episodes in total (vs 201 in the US). Not that much time to create the feeling of being stuck.
    - jonnathanson 10y ago
      True, but the UK show goes to great lengths to make a point of its protagonists' hopelessness. The Christmas special capping Season 2 pretty explicitly implies: "Just in case you were wondering, nobody wins."

gregmac 10y ago

Modern Family, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Middle, Raising Hope, How I Met Your Mother, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt were all fairly recent examples of decent modern sitcoms (and wow that list is bigger than I thought it'd be), and for the most part, generally centered around middle class families/people. Some are a bit more outlandish and over-the-top at times, but that can also be their appeal. By modern, I also mean they follow a continuing story arc episode-to-episode, so while you could watch any episode in isolation, you get a lot more if you know backstory and the characters. They're also all "single camera" shows (no laugh track) which IMHO is a much better style, and allows them to be more creative, have a continuing story, and frankly, be funnier than the (pause for laughter) lines in a show like Big Bang Theory.

saturdaysaint 10y ago
Those are all interesting cases that I had in mind when writing the parent post. At the risk of sounding the "No true scotsman" alarm, to me, many are just evidence that contemporary TV needs a pretty big dose of the fantastic (Kimmy Schmidt and 30 Rock). To me, even the most "everyday" of those fall prey to the usual U.S. tendency to elide class at all costs - even the no-good slackers in a lot of these shows seem to have the comforts of someone in the top 20%.