SitCommentary

WHAT'S THAT YOU say? All this reprint stuff is making you the depressed? Well, fudge to you, hippy. Temp's in the high 70's and I'm renting myself an Escape Hybrid. I can be part of the problem and smug at the same time!

Meantime, for you, dear reader, for you there is Professor Jaime Weinman's disquisition on sitcoms this fall, and generally. You could choose not to read it, I guess. But that would just make you a goof.

As it is, though, single-camera shows spend more money than their multi-camera counterparts to make the public laugh less. And the ones that do manage to include more jokes than usual, like 30 Rock or Arrested Development (where Mitch Hurwitz said that he was aware of the feeling that “single-camera comedies are less funny than multi-camera comedies,” and wanted to do a show that would have as many jokes as a good multi-cam show) often wind up getting so heavily-plotted and frenetic that they lose the one thing a sitcom must have to succeed: a sense that these are characters the viewer wants to hang out with. (Dramas can get by with plot, with solving the mystery or stopping the terrorists. Plot is almost a secondary thing on a sitcom, where the reason most people watch is simply to hang out with people they like.) An exception, again, is The Office, which has managed to create that “hanging out with friends” feel that a hit sitcom must have. It could be that the mock-documentary format helps a show sidestep the usual problems of single-camera, which could be a good sign for Modern Family (though I have my doubts; the characters feel too paint-by-numbers to me).

None of this is to say that networks shouldn’t make one-camera shows; some of the biggest hits of all time are one-camera, though again, history shows that it helps when the show is not absurdly expensive to produce. (You’ll have better, more durable luck with a mostly studio or backlot-bound show like M*A*S*Hor The Office than something like My Name Is Earl that requires many different locations, guest actors and camera angles every week.) But the current development slate shows the networks putting a lot of money and effort into a type of show that is usually no more than a niche success: the one-camera, movie-style, innovatively-told comedy. That’s usually Malcolm in the Middle numbers at best. The opportunity is still there for the next great traditional sitcom (again, BBT isn’t it in my opinion; in another era it would be a good sitcom, not state of the art), an opportunity that the networks have been surprisingly slow to seize.

If you're pitching or developing right now, this is some thoughtful, high level, creative ninja shit. Go read the whole thing.