Sitcom September

The sitcom was one a near perfect model for visual entertainment. A nearly never ending series of episodes, with only the slightest tether of plot between them, that allows audiences to jump in anywhere but easily become invested in the consistency of the characters. It survived home media with seasonal box sets, it survived the binge era with its seamless flow and rapid pacing, and it survived the prestige with elevated acting and dramatic plot lines, or did it? Has its form shifted too much to be recognizable?

Certainly sitcoms still exist as they once did, but like the clone dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, most of them are made from similar styles trapped in amber, and recreated in either distinct subgenera like mockumentary, or adjunct mediums like animation. Rarely does original programming offer just straight situation comedy any more, for a variety of reasons.

First, the economics on syndication have changed dramatically. Sitcoms aren’t as expensive as world traveling fantasy series, or explosive action or science fiction, but they still require sets, actors, writers rooms, directors, and overworked editors. In a world where every studio wants desperately to cut scripted content and move to endless reality and sports, sitcoms are often first on the chopping block.

Second, the dramatizing of the sitcom in trying to emulate prestige TV so that Ted Lasso is lecturing an audience of ostensibly impressionable young men on the right way to be masculine, has shifted many “sitcoms” out of their genre entirely. This isn’t to say the situation comedy can’t have serious moments, Carla saying “I miss him so much” in reference to Coach on Cheers, or Ross and Rachel’s endless breakups never getting laugh tracks on Friends, or the unending parade of Very Special Episodes scattered throughout the eighties and nineties. However, what BoJack Horseman and Ted Lasso and Girls all try to do is infuse their comedies with enough importance and authenticity that they seem elevated. However, for every one of these that works, there are a million Million Little Pieces or Council of Dads or This is Us’s that come off as twee nonsense.

Finally, streaming and cost cutting in general have altered the concept of a “season” too drastically. The twenty plus episode season running starting in the fall and ending in spring was an industry standard long made pointless, but it did have passive benefits; shows permeated culture through word of mouth, and there were enough episodes that rewatches rarely got stale. Now, show runs are slimming down so much there just isn’t much there. South Park’s first two seasons featured a total thirty-one episodes, the same amount of episodes they’ll have released since 2020 at the end of this current season.

Still, the sitcoms relevance remains, both as a historical artifact, and a canary for the state of scripts television as a whole. As the medium shifts in response to changing technology and economics, so to must its output, and the sitcom will be the focus of this throughout the rest of the month for the first monthly theme, Sitcom September.