The Sitcoms They Are A-Changin'

Let me ask you something. What is How I Met Your Mother about?

Typical answer: All the girls Ted Mosby had to date before he found his wife.

Okay, I can accept that on some level. But is that what the show is really about? Is that one-line plot description enough to make us tune in every week, TiVo the reruns, and memorize the commentaries on the DVD sets? We love the show because Ted dates a lot? Honestly?

While you’re pondering that, let me ask you another question. What is Gilligan’s Island about?

Typical answer: Seven castaways on an island, trying to get back home.

That’s correct. Is it about anything more than that? Nope, not really. The entire series can be summed up in one sentence, and no matter what episode you watch, you get the same shtick. They’ve either got a hope of leaving the island or have found something that will occupy their time there, but by the end of the episode, everything goes back to the way it was at the beginning. If visitors come, they leave. If problems arise, they are resolved. If the Professor invents something, it is either destroyed or deemed useless. So when the end credits roll, everything is back to normal for the castaways… until the next episode, of course.

Is that true for How I Met Your Mother? Mmm, not really.

Chances are slim you see where I’m going with this.

In the old days, sitcoms were episodic. One episode’s shenanigans had no bearing on the next’s. You can turn on any ol’ I Love Lucy or Brady Bunch and understand what is going on immediately, even if you’ve never seen the show before, because they never make any references to previous episodes. It’s like an entire series of pilots.

Now, of course, I recognize there are exceptions—two-part episodes, for instance—but I’d estimate, for sitcoms produced before 1990, my argument holds up about 80% of the time.

But somewhere in the ‘80s, sitcoms started straying from the episodic format. Not discarding it entirely, just straying. Writers had discovered something new—romantic tension. Rather than bringing all the characters back to equilibrium at the end of every episode, the writers found that audiences enjoyed it much more when dating relationships between main characters developed slowly over a span of many episodes, perhaps even seasons. ‘Cause we all know that romantic, gushy stuff can get complicated. And dramatic. And difficult. And cute. And it’s so much fun to watch!


Ted Danson & Shelley Long on Cheers

Here’s the best example I can come up with: Sam and Diane from Cheers. These characters had an on-again off-again relationship right up until Shelley Long left the show. It was the most memorable plotline Cheers had to offer, simply because it took so much time to develop. Over a five-season span, no matter what the main plot of the episode was, Sam and Diane’s sexual tension was always lingering in the background. Thus, the audience spent so much time watching the plot unfold that before they knew it, they were emotionally involved. And now Sam and Diane’s relationship has gone down in TV history, whereas that one episode where Cliff doesn’t want to bring his girlfriend to the bar because she isn’t pretty… ehh, not so much.

Other shows did the same thing. Jesse and Rebecca on Full House. Harry and Christine on Night Court. Tony and Angela on Who's the Boss?



David Schwimmer & Jennifer Aniston on Friends

And the trend continued into the '90s. Just look at Friends's Ross and Rachel. Good luck following their relationship if you don't watch the entire series in order. Are they together or broken up? Is this before or after the pivotal "we were on a break" moment? And why are they living together and having a baby together, but still not together? The same goes for Cory and Topanga's relationship, which had its ups and downs in season five of Boy Meets World. For that matter, so did Kevin and Winnie's relationship in The Wonder Years. See the pattern? The episodic format waned so that main characters could have messy romances. And the audiences ate it up.

Now we’re in the new millennium of television, and modern comedies are mostly serialized. That means they have larger narratives going on that span multiple episodes. So if you start in the middle of a season, you’ll be totally lost. They’re not made to be watched out of order. While older sitcoms resolved all of life’s problems in a half hour, these days the problems take more time and often don’t get resolved at all. (Kind of like real life.) Overarching storylines are no longer just for good dramas—they’re for comedies too!

Let’s look at a few examples. At its most basic level, 30 Rock is about the wacky adventures of the head writer of a sketch comedy series. But underneath the surface, it explores how co-workers can become like family. Liz Lemon is the single mother, Pete is the bumbling father, the writers are the teenagers, and the actors are the infants. That makes Kenneth the babysitter and Jack Donaghy the wise grandfather whom Liz goes to for advice. Together they all make a beautiful, dysfunctional family. The show isn’t about silly situations so much as it’s about silly characters and their relationship dynamics.



Melissa McCarthy & Billy Gardell

Mike & Molly is about a new couple figuring out their relationship. But at a deeper level, it’s about all the milestones and obstacles that relationships go through, and how couples and the people in their lives react to these events.



And How I Met Your Mother. What’s that one about? You guessed it—relationships. And I’m not just talking about Ted’s failed romances. It’s also about Lily and Marshall’s monogamous relationship, Barney’s string of one-night-stands, Robin’s fear of commitment, and of course, Ted’s attempts to find true love. It’s about all the different ways one might approach love and sex—well, except for abstinence.

So while the old shows entertained audiences with silly situations that were easily rectified in a half hour, today it’s the characters’ ongoing, ever-changing relationships that keep audiences watching.

But I’m only commenting on trends and speaking in generalizations, so even as I write I am thinking of exceptions. For instance, the ABC comedy Happy Endings still resolves its issues at the end of each episode, and it doesn’t often reference previous shows. But it’s only in its first season. If it hopes to last, it’s bound to evolve into the serial format of its peers. That’s what audiences want nowadays.

The sitcoms, they are a-changin’. We might tune in for the funny situations, but we stick around for the relationships between the characters. Modern comedies are giving us stories that take longer than 22 minutes to resolve (if they are ever resolved), and that opens up the doors for more complicated and realistic plots. Our little sitcoms are growing up.