I'm watching the very first episode of
Seinfeld at the moment (originally called
The Seinfeld Chronicles), and I was struck with a very Seinfeldian thought, about the way stage sets in sitcoms don't make much sense. That led my brain on a quick hopscotch of several unusual--not exactly annoying--but slightly irritating conventions of sitcoms on TV.
This of course means nothing to anybody, but the whole point of having a blog is to let your brain run free, right? Well, it's one of the points, anyway. So here, as best as I can unravel my brain, are those sitcom conventions that just jump out at me.
• Characters, sets and actors different in first episode - This one is easy to understand, but hard to squeeze in to "
canon" if you are one of those people who tries to place storylines into the real world. Pilot or first episodes are often made before a series is green lit, and changes are often made for episode two. But the effect can be jarring. On
Seinfeld for instance, Kramer acts less kooky, and looks quite different. Often, pilot shows are never aired, or re-edited to make sense in the scheme of things, but not always. On
Laverne & Shirley, Shirley had a honking accent in the first episode, gone by episode 2.
• Sitcom sets don't make sense - Take the interior of the
Roseanne house, for example, and the establishing shots from the outside. The front door on the exterior is
far too close to the "TV" wall to contain the living room on the inside. On the
The Golden Girls, the in and out shots don't match, but make matters much worse, as the girls' bedrooms and their garage must share the same exact space. On
Happy Days, the same exterior was used, but the set changed to have the front door on the
opposite side of the house!
On three-camera shows (like all mentioned so far) the sets often "fan" out too much. I understand the necessity of the stage and the cameras, but it is handled well on shows like
Two and a Half Men, and
Will & Grace. Others, not so much. Again,
Seinfeld was a culprit, with a floorplan that makes little sense on paper. Especially, when you notice that in the first episode, there's a refrigerator taking up a huge chunk of kitchen, and in subsequent episodes it is set into a nook in the wall--which would poke it out into the doorway/hallway.
• Who has a living room like that? - Almost every standard sitcom is centered around two or three major sets. One, the kitchen table, which has enough room for everybody to walk freely around, with plenty of other space in the kitchen--even in apartments. And unless the whole family is at the table, or poker is being played, most of the people cluster around
half the table.
Then there is the living room, which has a large couch in the
middle of the room, a couple of chairs, a coffee table, and a (usually unseen) TV. The visible portions of the rooms are often far too large for the typical American, and the people all seem to be situated toward a TV even when one is not on. I've lived in a lot of places, but I've never had room to put my couch in the middle.
The third set is more varied, usually a diner, a bar, a bowling alley. No humans frequent one establishment
this much, do they?
• So many relatives! - On long running sitcoms, the characters seem to have an endless supply of uncles, aunts, siblings, grown children and friends that you see just once, and who are rarely or never spoken of again. They're usually brought in when they score a big name guest star, or an "issue" like homosexuality, a drinking problem, a gambling problem, etc. I'd love to see a flow-chart of all of the
Golden Girls' family trees.
• From flaky to idiot - If a character is slightly daffy, you can count on them to become eccentric and deeply disturbed as time goes on, like Phoebe from
Friends. Or if they're slightly dim, like Chrissy on
Three's Company, they'll be a full blown idiot by season three.
• Where did they go? - After season four or five, major characters sometimes leave a show, and are never heard from, and rarely referred to again. Not such a big deal if it's a friend that moves away--people drift apart. But how about a kid leaving to go to college, and then not show up for Christmas or weddings or funerals? Only the best writers put a reference into the script. If the show is
Family Matters or
Happy Days, children of the main characters just disappear! Forever!
There's much more of course, but my mind jumps around so much, I've lost them for the moment. Maybe I should take notes. In any event, to give this post a little more interest, here are some classic sitcom moments for those who have read this far.
1 - Roseanne - "Jackie makes a phone call" - One of the funniest scenes ever, shows an exterior shot of the house, where you can see that the front door is too close to the edge of the house for the set.
2 - Three's Company - "Bloopers" - Just for fun.
3 - The Golden Girls - "Blanche and the Shoe Salesman" - In the kitchen set, the garage is set to the left on the far wall. On the other side of that wall is a hallway leading to bedrooms that must occupy the same space. Exterior shots show the garage on the other side of the house.
4 - Seinfeld - "25 Greatest Moments" - One of which is sure to show the refrigerator, most of which is buried impossibly in the wall. Great show, but this set makes no sense.
