Can Sitcoms Be Funny and Real?

A reader writes:

Is there anything inherently wrong about bringing in real current events to a sitcom? What's wrong with having the cast of Corner Gas discuss equalization payments? Or Chandler Bing realizing that he can't run away to Ireland because of a new Homeland Security squeeze? Is there any room for the real world in the sitcom world? Standup seems to incorporate the two quite well (to the point that some standup loses its edge after only a month or two) - couldn't the same success be achieved on the set?

Hmm. An interesting question. My instincts say no -- but before we get to why, let's take a short look at the traditional place of the half-hour comedy.

Half hour comedies have been the engine that drive television for a very long time. Even when, as now, they're in a cyclical trough period in terms of popularity or heat, they're still hugely important.

That's because they're repeatable; and way more marketable. Even a middling half hour comedy with enough episodes to syndicate makes far far more with off-prime syndicated sales to local stations, than even the best one-hour drama. Also, when they're repeated in prime time, they do far better than repeated drama episodes.

(I would love to see how they compare in DVD box sets sales; my guess would be beyond the major hits like Friends, or Family Guy or Simpsons, that generally hour boxes do better, but that's a hunch not backed up by data. Anyone have the data?)

We have to surmise from this that people are far more willing to see an episode of a sitcom that you've seen before. Rather than the reaction you have watching a drama, "I've seen this one, damn," the reaction is more like, "Oh man, this was a good one." I don't care how many times I've seen the Seinfeld episode "The Contest," if I flip by it, I'll watch. When Ross shouts out, "We were on a Break!" it's still as funny as the first time I saw it. Then add in The Simpsons, where the first act usually never has anything to do with the rest of the show, and you're nine minutes in before you realize, "oh, right, this is the monorail episode!"

So the question of topicality in sitcoms faces an uphill battle right from the start. If you reference what's going on in the world in anything but a general way, you're going to ruin repeatability. You can see this for yourself if you ever see old episodes of All in The Family. It's a show, viewed through the lens of a few decades' space, that's easy to admire, but hard to love. Most of what they reference directly is so tied to the politics of the early 1970's (like jokes about Nixon, and the ERA) that it seems a bit impenetrable now. Compare that to a show that's more than ten years older, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, and it's strange to see that a show that's even older can seem a bit fresher -- because it sticks to its world and doesn't try to stick a foot into ours. (I'm not talking about things like fashion or social convention here...those things do seem dated, but somehow they're more acceptable than a character who's concerned about something, really concerned, that is barely a footnote now. And you don't need to go back to D.V.D. or Archie Bunker to see dated stuff - check out some of those first season Friends eps.) You seem to acknowledge this point near the end of your question, so I'm not going to belabor it.

The second reason why I think too much topicality in the sitcom is bad has more to do with the form itself.

We've talked several times before about comedy characters and how they're different than dramatic characters. I go back again to paraphrase comment a writer acquaintance of mine made on a panel a few months ago: Your average comic character takes about six seasons to change as much as a dramatic character does in one.

Sometimes this is structural. That 70's Show got 8 seasons or so out of the years 1976 - 1980. Happy Days did the same thing with the 50's. I'm hardly the first to note that M*A*S*H ran three times longer than the war it portrayed. (And became a drama in the end, anyway.)

The point is that a comic world is a very careful construction. It's like a souffle, and you don't want to introduce anything into it that might ruin the recipe. Introducing elements of the real world in anything but an offhand way threatens to create a dissonance between your characters' insistence on pursuing their blind obessions and never changing, and the realities of the world outside of Dog River, or Wisconsin, or Cheers, or KCAL radio, or Cafe Nervosa. People seek out comedies for escapism. You want to laugh with, or at, the antics of the characters in their constructed worlds -- not see how they react to the crushing or trivial elements in ours.

So while there's nothing wrong with Corner Gas characters complaining in a general way about taxes, equalization payments would be a stretch. (And a little out of character, too, no? Aren't they mostly concerned with what happens in Dog River, and maybe that other place -- Wolverton? (spit)) If Friends was still on, I suppose you could have someone date someone from Homeland Security, but that would have to be funny -- they couldn't be on the phone Jack Bauer-ing a couple of terrorists.

Finally, if you look at what people are really concerned about these days -- pictures of Brad Pitt's baby, whether Jen is still happy, Britney's bump and dropping the baby issues -- well, if they're not following the news in the news, do you really think they'd accept it more if it was coming out of Grace's mouth?

Or...shudder...Jim Belushi's?