The great thing about the TV situational comedy is that one can sit down turn on the TV and start watching it for the first time, or after not seeing the show for a month and still be able to pick up on each characters unique personality and relationships, as well as what is going on in the show within the first couple of minutes. Viewers are able to indulge in a sitcom whenever they want (there are usually re-runs) as means to unwind or just be lazy because the shows usually have very small levels of plot and character development. One would not be able to just turn on a series show such as ‘24’ or ‘Gossip Girl’ in the middle of the season and be able to understand what and why everything was happening; they are too complex (each show builds off the last). Sitcoms on the other hand are usually comedic, are pretty predictable with familiar plot development, and tend to end at about the same place where they began.
The fact that sitcoms are usually comedic helps draw a very large audience. The predictability of the shows allows for viewers to watch without much in depth thinking or understanding. The main characters in the show never really stray from their defining personality traits, and almost always play the same role within the group of characters. Most sitcoms are episodic, but some can evolve into serial sitcoms over time (think Boy Meets World and Friends). This occurs because sitcoms have a seasonal text along with episodic texts with mini-resolutions. This means that although there might be a underlying story line or issue (such as a relationship) building throughout the season, each show brings up new issues and storylines that are almost always resolved at the end of that 30minute show. The fact that some sitcoms become serial is just kind of like a reward for loyal followers to see what happens, but the topics of each individual show remain skin-deep to wear a random viewer can still come in and understand almost everything that happens in the first time watching the show.
A comedic sitcom that started out as episodic but became more serial is the show about America’s favorite and most loyal group of coffee house buddies, Friends. If you have ever seen Friends you know that from beginning to end the characters all stayed pretty much the same. Ross was the nerdy and awkward guy that you loved, Monica that OCD, beautiful ex-fat kid, owner of the apartment the friends seemed to always gather in, Rachel the beautiful and trendy one, Pheobe the quirky one, Joey the aspiring actor/ weird ladies man, and Chandler the goofy one. In every episode you knew that a conflict would arise in one of the friends lives or between each other, there would always be a coffee house scene, and every show would end with all the friends coming around the help each other out and all would be perfect again in their close-knit friendship circle. Friends became a serial sitcom in that everyone was always asking the question, “Will Ross and Rachel end up together?” Chandler and Monica also got together at some point near the beginning of the series and so on. Loyal followers knew the deeper parts of each relationship between the friends, but you could also not watch it for a month and come back to find it perfectly humorous and make sense of almost everything, because for the most part, nothing ever changed.
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