The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Thursday, April 4, 2019 — 5

itcoms are as American as 
television can get: They display our 
signature appreciation for tight-
knit circles and the eerie feeling 
that although time is pushing 
onwards, you keep reaching the 
same equilibrium. In their take on 
“time,” Daily Arts Writers, Maxwell 
Schwarz and Sophia Yoon tackle 
recent changes to the sitcom form 
over time, particularly the recent 
popularization of single-camera 
comedies. While Sophia emphasizes 
the ’90s versus ’00s sitcom debate, 
Maxwell 
analyzes 
further 
to 
decipher how changes in camera 
style and humor ultimately reflects 
the changing tastes of audiences. 

If you grew up sometime within 
the past four decades, chances 
are you fall under one of three 
categories: ’90s sitcom watcher, 
’00s sitcom watcher or the kid 
who had to resort to watching 
reruns of “Judge Judy” as a 
result of having strict parents. 
In the past, I was stuck in the 
third category, yet despite 
my exclusion, the genre of 
situation comedy never ceased 
its evolution.
Situation 
comedies 
are 
shows that revolve around the 
same 
recurring 
characters 
played by the same actors in 
a shared environment. Over 
the course of their 30-minute 
run-times, weekly conflicts 
are resolved cleanly, bringing 
the show back to its natural 
equilibrium. 
Traditional 
sitcoms are either filmed in 
front of a live studio audience 
or use laugh tracks, but this 
format has been challenged 
as the genre changed over 
time. The constant debate on 
what era of sitcom reigns over 
the others will never find a 
resolution — it’s like comparing 
apples and oranges. Let me 
explain why.
The great majority of ’90s 
sitcom fans will cite classics like 
“Friends,” “Seinfeld” and “The 
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” as the best 
the genre has to offer. They can 
probably recite lines and sing along 
to the theme songs with ease. 
The same goes for 2000s sitcom 
watchers with shows like “The 
Office,” “How I Met Your Mother” 
and 
“Parks 
and 
Recreation.” 
There’s definitely some crossover 
in style between these eras and 
their TV shows, but, over time, 
sitcoms have adapted other genres 
and transformed themselves into a 
modernized new normal, making 
any new or currently running 
sitcoms with a live audience 
or laugh track structure seem 
outdated and often tacky. For 
instance, sitcoms still consist of 
a group of recurring characters 
in 
the 
same 
environment, 
but depending on where the 
environment is and how the show 
is shot makes all the difference 
in how the show’s plot is set up. 
House-based sitcoms will most 
likely be about the nuclear family 
and domestic living, workplace-
based sitcoms will vary more 
but follow along with the lines of 
the struggles of each workplace 
industry, and so on and so forth.
An extremely familiar and 
renowned style of sitcom is the 
mockumentary, 
which 
existed 
long before in movies like “This is 
Spinal Tap,” but was popularized 
with shows like “The Office” and 
“Modern Family.” Its divergence 
from 
the 
multi-camera, 
live 

studio audience is pretty evident, 
and the mockumentary sitcom’s 
development is merely a branch 
off of the classic format — nothing 
more, nothing less. Think about 
it. 
In 
mockumentaries, 
we 
never see the audience, but it’s 
presumed when the characters are 
interviewed by the “camera crews” 
following them. In “The Office,” 
they explicitly mention the release 
of the documentary, and we are 
even able to see a cameraman 
in the later seasons (which is an 
entirely different rabbit hole we 
can’t get into right now). In shows 
like “Modern Family” and “Parks 
and Recreation,” the characters 
make eye contact with the camera 
and have interviews, but nobody 
really mentions why they’re being 
recorded. Nevertheless, they’re 
aware the audience is there. 

Somewhat 
similarly, 
’90s 
sitcoms 
never 
address 
the 
audience 
directly, 
but 
scripts 
and jokes are tailor-made to fit 
between audience responses. The 
environment is nothing like the 
sleek, cinematic atmosphere of 
most modern sitcoms. But to its 
credit, live studio audiences and 
laugh tracks create the perfect 
environment to heighten reactions 
for whatever might be going on in 
the show’s plotline. Depending 
on 
your 
preferences, 
hearing 
audience reactions might be like 
nails on a chalkboard, but I’ve 
found that some people just can’t 
follow quick-witted humor when 
there’s not an audience telling you 
when to laugh. 
I’m not here to judge, but I will 
always reserve a little side-eye for 
people who try and compare the 
different but equally iconic forms 
of ’90s sitcoms and ’00s sitcoms. 
Each come with their own factor 
of nostalgia, which makes it even 
more impossible to objectively 
compare these distant relatives. 
So don’t. Take them as they are 
for what they are — funny shows 
with loveable characters and quick 
resolution.

 —Sophia Yoon, Daily Arts Writer

 
Sitcoms 
are 
a 
timeless 
television staple. From 1946’s 
“Pinwright’s Progress” to the 
comedy powerhouse that was “I 
Love Lucy,” to television’s current 
comedy darling “Master of None,” 
sitcoms have been been around for 

a long time. But if you compare “I 
Love Lucy” to something like “The 
Office,” you might have trouble 
equating them. We might call them 
the same genre, but their forms are 
very different. They reflect the era 
in which they were made — which 
only begs the question, where does 
it go from here?
When you think of a sitcom, you 
probably imagine a very particular 
kind of standard. A multi-camera 
set up with regular locations and 
the almighty laugh track. This 
form has persisted for decades now, 
with classic staples like “Friends,” 
“Seinfeld,” and “Cheers.” But 
these are the sitcoms of old. Our 
modern sitcoms are single-camera 
shows, they move freely between 
locations and are devoid of laugh 
tracks. The camera snaps between 
characters with rapid-fire dialogue 
and subtle jokes. Shows like “30 
Rock,” “Parks and Recreation” 
and “It’s Always Sunny in 
Philadelphia” 
do 
not 
look 
like standard sitcoms. They 
almost look like low-budget 
independent films with their 
low lighting, dark humor and 
shaking cameras.
The modern shows that 
follow the more traditional 
form also seem to get an awful 
lot of flack. Consider “The Big 
Bang Theory.” If you look that 
show up on Google, followed by 
the word “sucks,” you’ll get an 
astounding amount of results. 
Or, how about “Two and a Half 
Men”? How often do you hear 
about that show? 
If the ubiquity of white 
girls with “I love ‘The Office’” 
in their Tinder bios is any 
indication, then our generation 
clearly favors the single-cam 
approach. It seems like the 
evolution of the sitcom is a kind 
of devolution, where the fewer 
the cameras and the more open 
the world onscreen is, the better 
it is for audiences. However, this 
shift makes it difficult to predict 
how the form is supposed to 
progress from here. The multi-
camera, laugh track standard has 
been around for decades, and with 
the relatively new invention of the 
single-camera sitcom, the genre 
shows no signs of departing soon 
from our TV guides. 
I think it’s worth considering 
what the laugh track actually does, 
and perhaps, it will elucidate the 
causes for its decline in popularity. 
It doesn’t just cue viewers into 
the joke. It creates a sense of 
community, a collectivity that just 
isn’t present in single-cam sitcoms. 
If you think about it, single-cam 
shows are kind of lonely. Under 
what circumstances did you last 
watch “Parks and Rec”? Alone, 
in your bed, with the lights off? 
Do we really think laugh tracks 
make us feel stupid, or are we just 
more lonely that we used to be? 
Maybe this trend of single-camera 
shows won’t last. Maybe it’ll fizzle 
out soon. Or maybe it’ll get to the 
point where the only way we can 
connect with a show is by making 
the camera a character — including 
us in the situations, letting us live 
somehow with the characters, 
like a distorted concoction of VR 
and meta-television. I guess the 
answer isn’t so much how sitcoms 
will change, but how sitcoms will 
interact with the overarching 
feelings we project onto them.

 —Maxwell Schwarz, Daily Arts 
Writer

The situation of comedies: 
comparing then and now

TV SPECIAL

NBC

If you think about it, 
single-cam shows are 
kind of lonely. Under 
what circumstances 
did you last watch 
“Parks & Rec”? Alone, 
in your bed, with the 
lights off? 

For our discussion of time, 
Senior Arts Editor Samantha 
Della Fera and Daily TV Editor 
Ally Owens discuss the beast that 
is syndication, the cryogenic tank 
of television. Through looking at 
the process behind syndication 
itself, they are better able to 
theorize what privileges certain 
shows to last the test of time, while 
others are forgotten forever.

We’ve all seen the memes. 
Insert clip of someone jumping in 
slow-motion; insert trite caption 
related to being startled awake 
by the unmistakable horns of 
War’s “Low Rider” signaling 
the commencement of the 4:30 
a.m. “George Lopez.” If you 
understand the joke within this 
meme, then there’s a good chance 
you’ve had some sort of contact 
with 
syndicated 
television. 
SYNDICATION: It’s the reason 
why Matthew Perry has been 
able to stave off a middle-class 
existence despite not 
appearing in anything 
of note for over a decade, 
why 
Jerry 
Seinfeld 
is nearly a billionaire 
and why, to this day, 
I hold nothing but an 
irrational 
resentment 
towards the actor who 
played Carl Winslow on 
“Family Matters.”
Using 
industry 
terms, when a television 
show is syndicated, it 
has been specifically 
selected and purchased 
by a television network 
separate 
from 
the 
channel that originally 
aired the program. The 
show then runs on this 
new network at random 
times 
of 
the 
day, 
normally in the gaps 
between daytime and primetime 
or during the graveyard shift 
before the infomercials begin. 
Using layman’s terms, the entire 
process is a bit like the afterlife 
depicted 
in 
“Coco”: 
Those 
that are popular enough to be 
remembered get access to the 
afterlife syndication provides, 
and those that are not … well … 
have you ever heard of “Small 
Wonder”? By the book, it seems 
like a pretty simple process, 
but when I took a step back and 
compared the endless amount of 
television shows produced over 
the years with the oligarchy of 
shows that dominate various 
networks’ syndication rotations, 
I had to wonder what made these 
shows so special. Was there 
someone out there really pushing 
for “The Big Bang Theory” 
to run simultaneously on six 
different networks at 7 p.m. 
on a Wednesday night? What 
prioritizes shows like this over 
“Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 
23?” Just why was I forced to 
spend my childhood pretending 
Dave Coulier was funny on “Full 
House,” when Alanis Morissette 
worked so hard to inform the 
country that he was a mondo 
douche?
The first clue that I received 
on my hunt for answers was a 
concept called the “100-episode” 
rule. 
The 
100-episode 
rule 
decrees that television shows 
must have over 100 episodes in 
their original series run to have 
a better shot at being purchased 
for syndication. Think about 
it: 
A 
show 
like 
“American 

Dad!” with over 256 episodes 
spanning 15 seasons is better 
suited for the basic cable mid-
afternoon 
programming 
lull 
than something like “Freaks and 
Geeks” with only 18 episodes to 
its name. If TBS chose the latter 
over the former for syndication, 
almost weekly, the same episodes 
would air in sequential order. 
Take this from someone who has 
spent many summers parked in 
front of the TV during this block 
— repetition of the same episodes 
is enough to drive someone to 
madness. Or worse, reading a 
book!
In realizing this, it becomes 
very clear that the key to 
syndication lies in how the show 
was received — not by fans — by 
network executives during its 
original run. Big, bloated shows 
like “Friends” are selected for 
syndication because they easily 
have more than 100 episodes to 
its history, but then this presents 

the question of what factors were 
at play to ensure that it continued 
to get renewed during the 1990s? 
It is easy to draw the line between 
length and syndication when 
comparing “Friends” to “Pushing 
Daisies,” but not as clear when 
you compare to two titans such 
as “Friends” to “NYPD Blue.” 
Why is one seen so much for 
frequently than the other?

— Ally Owens, Daily TV Editor

 
Syndication is not always a 
bad thing; I discovered some 
of my favorite shows (“Scrubs” 
binge anyone?) through their 
repeated airings far after the 
last episode premiered live. But 
syndication has become much 
like an annoying public policy 
class — some people take up 
way too much airtime, with 
little or nothing to say. We’ve 
all seen the “pivot” episode of 
“Friends” far too many times 
to find it funny anymore, and 
I can recite entire episodes of 
“Law and Order: SVU” from 
2003 better than I can recite the 
“Star-Spangled Banner.” These 
shows have survived the test of 
time, infiltrating laptop stickers 
and Instagram bios with jokes 
and quotes that should’ve died in 
2004. They’ve been dug up time 
and time again, but what about 
the shows who weren’t given 
enough time? The ones who were 
laid to rest forever? The ones not 
deemed good enough in their 
first runs, catapulting them into 
obscurity for the rest of eternity?

With the exception of “Scrubs” 
and maybe “The Nanny,” some of 
the best shows are those that are 
left alone. This isn’t a snobbish 
declaration that I know what’s 
better for TV more than the 
“common man,” it’s actually quite 
the opposite. Most of the shows 
cancelled or ignored before they 
get their chance to make it big are 
fan and critic favorites — it’s the 
corporations that don’t like them. 
Take “Arrested Development,” 
for example. Seasons one through 
three of the show were wildly 
popular among critics, yet it was 
cancelled due to low viewership 
(partly due to low publicity, as 
the show was slapped with a 
lawsuit in its first season). Yet, 
today “Arrested Development” 
has a cult following.
This example of cancellation 
despite high critical acclaim 
is not exclusive to “Arrested 
Development.” 
Just 
look 
at 
two 
more 
recent 
examples: 
“Brooklyn 
Nine-Nine” 
and “One Day at a Time.” 
“Brooklyn 
Nine-Nine” 
was 
cancelled 
after 
five popular seasons to 
make room for “Bob’s 
Burgers” and “Thursday 
Night 
Football,” 
two 
programs 
that 
FOX 
wanted to prioritize. Yet, 
the cancellation caused 
universal outrage and, in 
an unprecedented move, 
NBC snatched up the 
show barely a day later. 
“One Day at a Time” 
hasn’t been so lucky.
At risk of sounding 
like 
a 
tin-hatter, 
it’s 
interesting that shows 
like 
“Brooklyn 
Nine-
Nine” and “One Day at a 
Time,” two shows praised 
for their diversity, were 
not given the time and effort 
to 
properly 
succeed. 
Much 
like 
“Arrested 
Development,” 
“One Day at a Time” received 
high critical praise and a cult 
following, yet that still wasn’t 
enough to save it. The effects 
of cable syndication has seeped 
into streaming services, as just 
months before Netflix cancelled 
“One Day at a Time,” they spent 
thousands to keep “Friends” 
on the platform. Apparently 
people need to watch Ross and 
Rachel fight for one more time 
and a group of white twenty-
somethings drinking coffee more 
than they care to watch a diverse 
family go through real issues 
with grace and humor. But, that’s 
none of my business.
Does syndication prevent new 
shows from succeeding? No — 
well, not exactly. What it does is 
force outdated casts and humor 
on to audiences. People love 
“The Office” and “Friends,” and 
that’s fine, but watching these 
shows over and over cause them 
to crave material just like them, 
and networks want to feed that 
craving. Critics and audiences 
are telling TV companies what 
they want — they just aren’t 
listening. As hit shows like 
“Broad City,” “Jane the Virgin, 
“Veep” and “Game of Thrones” 
end this year, what is lining up 
to take their place? Society has 
been through enough, another 
repeat of “Friends” just won’t cut 
it anymore.

— Samantha Della Fera, Senior 
Arts Editor

A little less syndication: 
lowering the frequency 

TV SPECIAL

ABC

People love “The Office” and 
“Friends,” and that’s fine, but 
watching these shows over 
and over cause them to crave 
material just like them, and 
networks want to feed that 
craving. 

