4 ms·

Sit coms are really hard to do well for more than one season. The reason is in the name: It's comedy rooted in some situation, so you can't allow the situation

Sit coms are really hard to do well for more than one season. The reason is in the name: It's comedy rooted in some situation, so you can't allow the situation that is the source of humor/drama to ever resolve or the premise for your show ceases to exist. This is why MASH was so long-running: The situation in question was The Korean War and the conflict between career military types and draftees who had hippie-like values and really didn't want to be there. This allowed for a lot of swapping out of characters when things went sideways. The TV show was based on the movie and over time Burns became increasingly toxic and crazy and they finally wrote him out of the show and replaced him with a character who could have some of the same inherent frictions with other characters without it being Flanderized into something really stupid and ugly and no longer actually funny. I've long considered writing a blog about the moral bits in MASH and/or other sitcoms. I sometimes think that might be a better outlet for my keen eye for social patterns than turning my baleful eye on actual people, which tends to be taken as extremely cutting. It's sort of an "occupational hazard" as someone who spent too much time in therapy and sorting my own crap to be at all socially acceptable for small talk with most people.

Uhhrrr 6y ago
The situation might wear out, but if they do a good job, the writers and to some extent the actors will figure out the sweet spots in the characters. Also, a lot of useful context will get built up, which makes it easier to tell richer stories. I would say Seinfeld, NewsRadio, and Frasier are good examples of this.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Seinfeld, NewsRadio, and Frasier I'm not familiar with NewsRadio, but both Seinfeld and Frasier are simply named after the main character. This inherently gives the show some latitude. But, say, Three's Company was based on the premise that this guy was pretending to be gay in order to justify living with two women because they all were pretty poor and he couldn't find another place. That's pretty constraining as to what you can do with the plot line. It means that any episode that was at the beginning holding out hope that one of the characters would suddenly start making more money and be able to afford to move or something was an episode where the viewer could confidently predict that this would fall through because if it didn't you no longer had a show with the premise that some guy needs to pretend he's gay in order to have an affordable housing situation where he lives platonically with two women. What's funny there is the tension of, no, they aren't having a threesome. No, he's not sleeping with either of the women. No, he's not really gay, but most people would never believe he's honest to god just living with two women to split the rent if he weren't pretending to be gay. It's funny because it casts some light on a lot of serious social issues in a way that's socially acceptable to poke fun at, but it's extremely contrived and you can't otherwise try to address those kinds of topics. They are too hot button. So you can't do it humorously without an extremely contrived situation and you can't do it in earnest without it being terrible drama. Humor is one of the ways society processes hot button topics and works through them without it turning into terrible real life conflict.
- scott_s 6y ago
  Seinfeld is an outlier, I think, because the characters are purposefully unsympathetic. You like watching the characters, but you don't like them. You wouldn't want to spend time with them. That means you're never rooting for Jerry to find a satisfying relationship, Kramer to finally succeed in a scheme, Elaine to finally leave the group or George to find fulfillment in anything. Rather than making the reversion to status quo painful, it becomes funny and cathartic. The fun basically becomes watching them be and make each other miserable.
vidarh 6y ago
Two and a half men is a great example of when this really becomes tricky. To the point that in later seasons the characters become more and more self-aware that they are stuck in a situation that is ridiculous and increasingly express frustration that they can't understand why. This especially comes to the fore after Charlie exits, when it seems the writers realised the situation was now so crazy they had little choice but to just play into it. Alan in particular is also a great example of being flanderized from a down on his luck but somewhat normal person to a mooch prepared to do anything to stay in the house at even the cost of good own happiness, while giving up any pretense of wanting to work his way out of it. Jake as well - in fact in the final episode they flat out state it in dialogue: Alan points out that Jake wasn't really dumb at first, but he was funnier dumb. (The final episode breaks the fourth wall a lot to point out many of these things)
scott_s 6y ago
Avoiding this was one of the brilliant parts of The Good Place: after the first episode, I thought I knew where the rest of the season was going to go. I was completely wrong, and they fulfilled that arc in the first three episodes. I think the showrunner consciously avoided the sitcom trap of always maintaining the status quo which was satisfying because the situation kept constantly evolving. Which is important, because one of the themes of the entire show is that people can change.

Uhhrrr 6y ago

The situation might wear out, but if they do a good job, the writers and to some extent the actors will figure out the sweet spots in the characters. Also, a lot of useful context will get built up, which makes it easier to tell richer stories. I would say Seinfeld, NewsRadio, and Frasier are good examples of this.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Seinfeld, NewsRadio, and Frasier I'm not familiar with NewsRadio, but both Seinfeld and Frasier are simply named after the main character. This inherently gives the show some latitude. But, say, Three's Company was based on the premise that this guy was pretending to be gay in order to justify living with two women because they all were pretty poor and he couldn't find another place. That's pretty constraining as to what you can do with the plot line. It means that any episode that was at the beginning holding out hope that one of the characters would suddenly start making more money and be able to afford to move or something was an episode where the viewer could confidently predict that this would fall through because if it didn't you no longer had a show with the premise that some guy needs to pretend he's gay in order to have an affordable housing situation where he lives platonically with two women. What's funny there is the tension of, no, they aren't having a threesome. No, he's not sleeping with either of the women. No, he's not really gay, but most people would never believe he's honest to god just living with two women to split the rent if he weren't pretending to be gay. It's funny because it casts some light on a lot of serious social issues in a way that's socially acceptable to poke fun at, but it's extremely contrived and you can't otherwise try to address those kinds of topics. They are too hot button. So you can't do it humorously without an extremely contrived situation and you can't do it in earnest without it being terrible drama. Humor is one of the ways society processes hot button topics and works through them without it turning into terrible real life conflict.
scott_s 6y ago
Seinfeld is an outlier, I think, because the characters are purposefully unsympathetic. You like watching the characters, but you don't like them. You wouldn't want to spend time with them. That means you're never rooting for Jerry to find a satisfying relationship, Kramer to finally succeed in a scheme, Elaine to finally leave the group or George to find fulfillment in anything. Rather than making the reversion to status quo painful, it becomes funny and cathartic. The fun basically becomes watching them be and make each other miserable.

vidarh 6y ago

Two and a half men is a great example of when this really becomes tricky. To the point that in later seasons the characters become more and more self-aware that they are stuck in a situation that is ridiculous and increasingly express frustration that they can't understand why. This especially comes to the fore after Charlie exits, when it seems the writers realised the situation was now so crazy they had little choice but to just play into it. Alan in particular is also a great example of being flanderized from a down on his luck but somewhat normal person to a mooch prepared to do anything to stay in the house at even the cost of good own happiness, while giving up any pretense of wanting to work his way out of it. Jake as well - in fact in the final episode they flat out state it in dialogue: Alan points out that Jake wasn't really dumb at first, but he was funnier dumb. (The final episode breaks the fourth wall a lot to point out many of these things)

scott_s 6y ago

Avoiding this was one of the brilliant parts of The Good Place: after the first episode, I thought I knew where the rest of the season was going to go. I was completely wrong, and they fulfilled that arc in the first three episodes. I think the showrunner consciously avoided the sitcom trap of always maintaining the status quo which was satisfying because the situation kept constantly evolving. Which is important, because one of the themes of the entire show is that people can change.