the.com/sitcom
Same six jokes, new furniture, twenty-two minutes, laugh track doing the emotional labor.
means A scripted comedy series built around a recurring cast and setting, typically running about 22-30 minutes per episode and resolving its plot before the credits roll.
from A 20th-century blend word — 'situation' plus 'comedy' — coined to describe radio and then television shows that mined laughs from the same characters stuck in the same rooms week after week. The compressed form 'sitcom' caught on as broadcast slang once TV took over from radio, because nobody in a hurry wants to say 'situation comedy' twice in one sentence.
- origin
- short for situation comedy, coined 1950s radio
- structure
- problem introduced, solved, forgotten by next episode
- reset button
- characters never really change, that is the product
- laugh track
- often recycled from the same 1950s audience