Short and sweet? Structuring Humor and Morality in American Sitcoms

1 The situation comedy is perhaps the most successful of television’s short forms, particularly in the United States. It was among the first formats to appear on the small screen, adapted directly from radio sitcoms of the period, and its popularity has never since waned in the American television landscape. This article hopes to examine how the characteristic brevity of the form, and the rapid-fire nature of its humor, is in fact coupled with a slower-paced desire for moral lessons—a soul to accompany its wit. The tension between fast and slow, between humor and morality, will be shown as both a staple of the sitcom, and an ever-evolving relationship within the genre. ces aspects dans l’humour de ces émissions, et depuis The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955-1978) jusqu’à Modern Family (ABC, 2009-présent), les scénaristes se sont appuyés sur le sens de la répartie pour faire rire les spectateurs. De fait, il existe un écart entre les répliques comiques débitées à toute allure et les aspects plus sérieux du sitcom, à savoir les soliloques à teneur morale qui ont pour objet de donner une leçon aux personnages. La disparité entre l’humour et les principes moraux des longs soliloques constitue le cœur de cette forme artistique paradoxale, dont l’unité provient de sa « relatabilité » (qu’il s’agisse de blagues de connivence sur le Zeitgeist américain ou de la connaissance des personnages et du contexte). Cet article analyse cette dichotomie structurelle, s’intéressant à la fois à la manière dont les sitcoms classiques l’ont établie et à la manière dont elle a été redéfinie et subvertie par ses avatars contemporains.


Short and sweet? Structuring Humor and Morality in American Sitcoms
Shannon Wells-Lassagne 1 The situation comedy is perhaps the most successful of television's short forms, particularly in the United States. It was among the first formats to appear on the small screen, adapted directly from radio sitcoms of the period, and its popularity has never since waned in the American television landscape. This article hopes to examine how the characteristic brevity of the form, and the rapid-fire nature of its humor, is in fact coupled with a slower-paced desire for moral lessons-a soul to accompany its wit. The tension between fast and slow, between humor and morality, will be shown as both a staple of the sitcom, and an ever-evolving relationship within the genre.
Sitcoms, triviality and moral conformity 2 The sitcom has always been characterized by its limited scope: beyond its traditional 30-minute length-today the equivalent of 22 minutes to accommodate commercials-, beyond its limited stage sets used repeatedly for both financial and traditionally aesthetic reasons, the sitcom has always concerned itself with the trivial. Perhaps the most popular sitcom of recent years, Seinfeld (NBC, 1989(NBC, -1998, famously insisted it was a show about nothing, about the pettiest details of everyday life, from preferred brands of food to the ethics of using handicapped parking. Though Seinfeld remains most outspoken about its obsession with trivia, the series in fact simply exaggerated one of the founding principles of the situation comedy: its humor is rooted in the mundane nature of the everyday. In blatant contrast to that other successful product of the late twentieth century, the science fiction extravaganza, there is no epic scale, no deathdefying incidents, no saving the world. 1 example, remained fairly similar throughout the first 50-odd years of its history, with the half-hour format, the flat lighting that allows for both close-ups and wider shots without changing lighting cues, and the requisite studio audience and recorded laugh track before multiple cameras. Likewise, the conformity of the sitcom is often social, apparent in the world presented to the viewer, which was long an idealized one, especially in terms of gender roles and middle-class social expectations. 3 Exceptions existed, of course; aesthetically, we can mention the single-camera sitcoms of the 60s such as The Andy Griffith Show, I Dream of Jeannie or Hogan's Heroes, though these shows still functioned within the half-hour format and with a recorded laugh track. 4 Another exception to the rule of conformity from a social standpoint was The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955(CBS, -1956, an early example of working-class characters living without the traditional connubial bliss. These examples are rare, however, and whatever these sitcoms' impact on television history today, 5 they met with limited success at the time. It is only with the turn of the century that these traditions started to be subverted again, notably with the absence of a laugh track and a single-camera format which has been associated with increased realism in series such as Malcolm in the Middle, Curb Your Enthusiasm, or Scrubs, a fashion that continues to be common today.

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In a recent work on the sitcom, Saul Austerlitz gives social justifications for conformity of early productions: The sitcom, emerging at the tail end of the 1940s alongside the television itself, bore witness to the conformism borne of the horrors of the Second World War. A generation forged in the fire of the war sought placidity and sameness on the homefront: stable nuclear families, a nation of identically constructed Levittowns. Television was a product of the same enforced consensus. It would mirror America, not necessarily as it was, but as it should be: peaceable, middle-class, eternally unchanging. (Austerlitz 8) 5 Though clearly this ideal America was essentially only to be found onscreen, whatever the justification for orthodoxy, it manifested itself not only in the characters represented in the popular sitcoms of yore, but also in the moralities offered by these shows. Adepts of the genre are well aware of the tendency of TV parents to lecture their fictional children on the lessons to be learned from today's episode, whether it is The Brady Bunch learning the lesson (ABC, 1969(ABC, -1974, or that little rascal the Beav' from Leave it to Beaver (CBS, 1957(CBS, -1958ABC, 1958ABC, -1963 Episode 10, 1970, 12'38''-14'30''. See video below) This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/2096 6 The show takes this minor indiscretion very seriously, complete with musical cues that systematically signal the impending weekly lesson, close-ups of the father and daughter as he lectures, and a lack of jokes in what is nonetheless considered a situation comedy. If this was all there was to the sitcom, a rigid enforcement of aesthetic and societal norms with a morality solemnly attached, one might reasonably wonder at their popularity. The situation comedy is a genre, however, where the idea of paradox is implicit in almost every aspect. Thus, though the idea of conformity to the sitcom aesthetic was almost uniformly upheld, it was accompanied by a constant questioning of its own status as televised entertainment, both through its content-be it The Dick Van Dyke Show's protagonist (CBS, 1961-1966, a writer for a television variety show, or Lucy's constant attempts to become a famous TV star in I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951(CBS, -1957)-‚ or through those very traditions within which it is confined, as we can see even in the somewhat limiting definition that Laurence E. Mintz gives of the genre: Sitcoms are generally performed before live audiences, whether broadcast live (in the old days) or filmed or taped, and they usually have an element that might almost be metadrama in the sense that since the laughter is recorded (sometimes even augmented), the audience is aware of watching a play, a performance, a comedy incorporating comic activity. (Mintz 114) 7 The canned laughter that has come to be seen as the hallmark of traditional situation comedy is also a constant reminder that these aesthetics are just that, traditional artifices used by these comedies to induce laughter.

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Likewise, the social norms that are seemingly consistently propagated by the sitcom are quickly undercut by the vast array of progressive values they suggest. One immediately thinks of the sitcoms of the 1970s, be it the many political sitcoms of producer Norman Lear-All in the Family (CBS, 1971(CBS, -1979, Maude (CBS, 1972(CBS, -1978, The Jeffersons (CBS, 1975(CBS, -1985-; or shows like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970(CBS, -1977 or Alice (CBS 1976(CBS -1985, which depicted strong working women who didn't need a man's support; MASH (CBS, 1972(CBS, -1983, demonstrating the horrors and absurdities of war and the successful mixture of the comic and the tragic; or the working class and minority concerns in Sanford and Son (NBC, 1972(NBC, -1977 or Good Times (CBS, 1974(CBS, -1979. However, even before the 1970s, this desire to subvert the norm was implicitly present in the rash of supernatural sitcoms like The Munsters (CBS, 1964(CBS, -1966, The Addams Family (ABC, 1964(ABC, -1966, My Favorite Martian (CBS, 1963(CBS, -1966, I Dream of Jeannie (NBC, 1965(NBC, -1970 in the 60s, depicting characters who did not conform to a norm, a visible minority. Such characters were depicted even farther back with the many immigrant comedies like The Goldbergs (CBS, 1949(CBS, -1951 staging Jewish characters or in Beulah (ABC, 1950(ABC, -1952, the first show with an African-American lead, which made it clear that conformity could exist according to different models, and was often only an overlay of normality with underlying weirdness. Quick humor and moral soliloquies: a paradoxical dichotomy 9 From a structural standpoint, the moral conformity that is both characteristic of the genre and somewhat undermined within it seems in fact at odds with the very idea of the situation comedy. From The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955(CBS, -1978 to Modern Family (ABC, 2009-present), show writers have relied on quick repartee and clever one-liners to keep the audience laughing. Unlike stand-up comedy, for example, which depends on extended riffing to set up a single punchline, the sitcom has traditionally demanded a much quicker output of humor, grounded in familiar situations and characters (both in the series itself and in relation to the experience of the audience). 6 10 The rapid-fire nature of this fundamentally domestic comedy 7 is in marked contrast to the very serious aspects of the morally motivated soliloquies that intend to teach a lesson to characters facing situations the audience itself might be faced with, be it an overbearing mother-in-law (Bewitched, ABC, 1964-1972 or unemployment (Roseanne, ABC, 1988-1997)-or telling tales, of course. The disparity of extended principled soliloquies and bursts of humor, of soul and wit, constitute the crux of the paradoxical art form, whose unity stems from its relatability, whether it be in terms of inside jokes about the American Zeitgeist or the familiarity of its characters and setting. I would like to examine this structural dichotomy, both as it was established by classic sitcoms of the 50s and 60s, and as it has been redefined and subverted by more contemporary versions in shows like Community (NBC, 2009-present), The Office (NBC, 2005(NBC, -2013, or Parks and Recreation (NBC, 2009-present).
11 One might almost say that this tension, both in mood and rhythm, can be personified by the dichotomy of characters in the sitcom. The lead characters, from solemn father Mike Brady, or any of his kin (from Father Knows Best, Ozzy and Harriet, The Andy Griffith Show and so on), or the strong but understanding women putting up with largely male hijinks (from Harriet of Ozzy and Harriet, or Laura in The Dick Van Dyke Show, to the longsuffering Jill in Home Improvement), are often straight men that act as foils to the zany sidekicks: sidekicks were the collective deus ex machina of the sitcom, setting into action the inevitable oil slick of chaos, and the hasty cleanup crews scrubbing the floors and wiping down the counters before the onset of the next disaster. The sitcom was devoted to a certain kind of star-one whose familiarity and affability encouraged viewers to return, week after week, for our scheduled time with them. But even the most appealing sitcom stars […] required someone off whom they could bounce their comic ideas (Austerlitz 150) subverted by a recurring story of Rob's fellow comedy writer Sally, who is incapable of domestic bliss largely because of her inability to stop cracking jokes: 15 Again we can notice a change of pace as Sally acknowledges her failings and makes explicit the idea that comedy is contrary to emotion: as we get to the moral of the story, the pace slackens considerably, the character speaks more and more slowly, the musical cue reinforces the seriousness of the moment, and the clip has only one clear joke (signaled as such by the laugh track). Though we may be surprised by the unexpected locale and character, both of which have previously been associated with pure comedy, to represent this emotional realization, the change of rhythm is invariable, underlining the dichotomy between slow-paced emotion with longer dialogue versus fast-paced quips and short repartee. In an interview by Dick Van Dyke (1998), the actor even suggested that this dichotomy was incarnated behind the scenes as well: Carl Reiner was the "master of comedy", while Sheldon Leonard was the "master of storytelling", and they would often be at odds.
Picking up the pace and lightening the tone 16 However, as the sitcom evolved, writers sought to pick up the pace and increase the comic output of their shows. One of the ways they chose to do that is by increasingly featuring outrageous secondary characters who could always reliably garner a laugh. Whether it be Taxi (ABC 1978-1982, NBC 1982-1983, whose straight man Alex (Judd Hirsch) was slowly pushed into the wings by secondary characters like Latka (Andy Kaufman) and Iggy (Christopher Lloyd), or Happy Days (ABC 1974(ABC -1984, where the family fun of the Cunningham family gave way to the increasing importance of Henry Winkler's "The Fonze", the sidekicks slowly took over the screens. 17 As such, one of the results of this attempt to increase pacing was the creation of ensemble shows where there is no clear-cut lead, no straight man with whom the viewer is supposed to sympathize, but rather a group of quirky individuals. One could argue that no one character acts as straight man to the others in Friends (NBC, 1994(NBC, -2004, for instance, especially in its later seasons, and Seinfeld definitely eschewed any sane character, preferring to demonstrate the neuroses of each member of the crazy quartet. This trend perhaps culminated with The Big Bang Theory (CBS, 2007present), where the ensemble is a cast of misfits-those who argue Penny is "normal" have forgotten that the aspiring actress-cum-waitress is played for laughs both in her lack of career prospects and her inability to understand geek culture. 18 The importance of the lesson drawn from the events of the sitcom was also affected by this desire to pick up the pace: increasingly sitcoms came to attempt to inject the morality with some form of humor, to limit the change of pace and tone that we've seen in the examples of both The Brady Bunch and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Thus, the 80s and 90s featured shows whose morality was not undermined in content, but whose tone could be lightened through context or characterization. In Home Improvement (ABC, 1991(ABC, -1999, for example, neighbor Wilson is a fount of knowledge for Tim, the clueless lead-to the extent that the miscommunication between the two is a source of comedy even as the moral itself remains intact: This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/2096 22 This monologue was from the pilot episode of the series, and established both the form and content of the series to come: the idea of women speaking amongst themselves without the need for a man was a recurrent one in the show, given that the focus was always on the friendship of the four women and not their male love interests, and Julia delivered at least one sermon per episode. As in Home Improvement, there are obvious efforts made to keep the moral lesson from slowing the pacing of the show. Indeed, Dixie Carter's dramatic and rapid-fire delivery does not really deaden the pace; the desultory conversation that precedes it means that the moral does not cause delivery to flag, but arguably actually increases the tempo, while her feigned civility and veiled mockery induce laughter at the expense of her hapless victim (who has been carefully depicted as a misogynist villain entirely worthy of such scorn). Clearly, the tension between humor and emotion, between monologue and one-liner, was identified and problematized by these late twentieth-century sitcoms.
23 Other aspects of the traditional structure of the sitcom have also had an effect on the quick pacing of contemporary shows. The new popularity of single-camera sitcoms may not appear to necessarily impact their pacing, but an article in The Atlantic demonstrates the sharp contrast in the number of jokes per minute between the shows with multiple cameras and the new, single-camera fictions: 11. Frasier 4.09 12. Curb Your Enthusiasm 3.41 (Visram 2014) 24 It is significant that the top five with the rapid-fire delivery of jokes are all singlecamera sitcoms, while more traditional sitcoms with laugh tracks, like Friends, The Big Bang Theory, or Frasier, all score somewhat lower. The author suggests that pacing differs significantly according to the type of humor attempted, but from a more mechanical standpoint, one could simply say that a laugh track automatically slows down the pace. 10 Even in more recent series such as Friends which actually speed up the action by having a third plot each episode, 11 an excerpt of an episode without the laugh track shows how the actors must delay their reactions to insert the studio audience and pre-recorded laughs, making these moments of "dead air" sound stilted, and revealing the slower pace of the traditional laugh-track sitcom ("The One after Vegas", Season 6, episode 1, 1999, see video below).
This media file cannot be displayed. Please refer to the online document http:// journals.openedition.org/angles/2096 Undermining the idea of a moral 25 Beyond this, there has been a tendency to not only mine the moral lesson for humor, as in the attempts of the 80s and 90s to inject the moral with comedy, but to slowly undermine it, questioning its very basis. As the leading characters have become less prevalent in the current landscape of comic television and the antics of characters who would formerly be sidekicks take center stage, the very idea of a moral, a life lesson, has begun to be questioned. When Penny becomes addicted to video games in The Big Bang Theory, for instance, Leonard's efforts to teach Penny a life lesson simply make him the butt of the joke, not the moral authority: LEONARD: Okay, um, here's the thing, um, sometimes people, good people, you know, they start playing these games and they find themselves through no fault of their own, you know, kind of, addicted. PENNY: Yeah, get to the point, I'm about to level up here. LEONARD: Well, i-i-i-it's just if a person doesn't have a sense of achievement in their real life it's easy to lose themselves in a virtual world where they get a false sense of accomplishment. PENNY: Yeah, jabber jabber jabber, okay boys, Queen Penelope's back online. (Big Bang Theory, "The Barbarian Sublime", Season 2, Episode 3, 2008) 26 As is its wont, The Simpsons goes even further in questioning the very idea of a didactic lesson to be gleaned from the family's antics. In an episode entitled "Blood Feud", the characters attempt vainly to find a moral to their adventures: Likewise, The Office is remarkable in that its lead character, the self-appointed "World's Greatest Boss," Michael Scott, offers the traditional moral speeches expected in that role, but is so morally ambiguous as to undercut his point-which of course makes it funny, but also less moral. In the episode entitled "Diversity Day" (Season 1, Episode 2, 2005), Michael's attempt at conducting a seminar on racial sensitivity is doubly undermined, first because it turns out to be a management initiative ordered in reaction to his own actions (offending the office staff with an ill-conceived rendition of Chris Rock's stand-up comedy), and then because his suggested activity actually fosters racial stereotypes (asking his workers to treat each other as if they were members of a given race). Whatever his intentions, Michael Scott fails as a moral authority, and it is that very failure that inspires laughter.
28 Another recent sitcom, Community, also bucks the trend of an ensemble of quirky characters. It has a clear lead character who might provide moral leadership: Jeff Winger is handsome, cool, and intelligent-but he's also largely amoral, returning to the titular community college to get the Bachelor's degree he lied about having in his previous life as a lawyer. The pilot episode features Jeff explaining "I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I'm God, or truth is relative. And either way, Boohyah!" (Community, "Pilot", Season The tension between quick repartee and long monologues is but one aspect of the many revolutions taking place in sitcoms in particular and in television in general, but it exemplifies the fine line that comedy walks-it must be familiar enough in content and form to allow the audience to identify with the characters or the situations, and it must provoke and innovate enough to surprise and delight the same audience to laughter. An episode of Scrubs, another single-camera fiction that eschews the laugh track in favor of more rapid-fire jokes, seems particularly relevant here. In one episode, lead character J.D., ER doctor and sitcom fanatic, meets a writer from the sitcom Cheers-and discovers the man has cancer. His commentary suggests that whatever the changes, the sitcom acknowledges its roots, and its need, above all, to entertain: Short and sweet? 30 Whether it is classic or contemporary comedy, with a laugh track and a studio audience or without, the sitcom exists to make us feel good for the next half hour. And ultimately, the situation comedy does so by making us care for the characters who make us laugh. If the certainty of the all-knowing monologue is being questioned in a postmodern world, if it is revealed to be hollow and self-contradictory, as in Community, the emotion it engenders is no less necessary to bring the group and the audience back together. Whether there is a formal monologue or not, the push and pull between joke and emotion, between banter and confidences, between short and long, remains a structural force in TV sitcoms.

Short and sweet? Structuring Humor and Morality in American Sitcoms
Angles, 1 | 2015 11. "The producers of Friends prefer that each episode has three storylines, which differs from most sitcoms that feature just two stories. Because of this decision, there are more scenes, but they're shorter, just like E.R., Friends's Thursday night companion." (Owen 113) ABSTRACTS Seinfeld (NBC, 1989(NBC, -1998, perhaps the most popular sitcom of recent years, famously insisted it was a show about nothing, about the pettiest details of everyday life. Though Seinfeld remains most outspoken about its obsession with trivia, the series in fact simply exaggerated one of the founding principles of the situation comedy: its humor is rooted in the mundane nature of the everyday. This focus on minutiae extends to the very nature of its humor; from The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955(CBS, -1978 to Modern Family (ABC, 2009-present), show writers have relied on quick repartee and clever one-liners to keep the audience laughing. Interestingly, the rapid-fire nature of this fundamentally domestic comedy is in marked contrast to the very serious aspects of the sitcom, the morally motivated soliloquies that intend to teach characters a lesson. The disparity of bursts of humor and extended principled soliloquies constitute the crux of this paradoxical art form, whose unity stems from its relatability (whether it be in terms of inside jokes about the American Zeitgeist or the familiarity of its characters and setting). I would like to examine this structural dichotomy, both as it was established by classic sitcoms, and as it has been redefined and subverted by more contemporary versions.