TV Strikes Back

Welcome back, TV.  For the little television watching I do, it surprised me how refreshing it was to hear “New Episodes!” blaring excitedly over fresh clips of condensed hilarity.  Perhaps it’s not so much an excitement for the return of new sitcoms as it is for the reduction of reality TV.  It hurts my head to even overhear snippets of Bachelor contestants bitching back and forth while I’m in the kitchen.

But, fear no more, The Office returns.  At this point, I’m more interested in seeing how the writers meet the weekly challenge of new material than any advancement of plot of character development.  It’s been a mixed bag this “season”.  The double-length episodes dragged and felt forced to fill two time slots (and for some reason seemed extra commercial interrupted), but the normal episodes, especially Jan’s sexual harassment suit, have fared much better.

I wish I had the time to watch some TV series and track some variables across them because, just thinking about The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, there seems to be a trend from season to season.  I use these two examples both because of their high level of quality and because, well, they’re really the only two sitcoms I’ve watched completely in recent years.

A pattern seems to have each show beginning about the intangibles of its setting–the office and Paddy’s Pub, respectively.  There is a period of character development, in which another character is introduced both to up the stakes and also to act as a foil to already established characters, giving them more identity by contrast.  Settings also become more variable.  Finally, it seems that character development reaches an end–I haven’t learned anything new about Jim, Dwight, or Stanley, or Charlie and Mac.  At this point (4th season Office, 3rd season Sunny), the setting no longer dictates the action, the characters ‘type’ is set, and the comedy truly falls back to the bare bones of the situation.

For it’s part, season 3 of Sunny was akin to live-action Looney Tunes.  I should also mention that this isn’t a criticism of either show.  I have not laughed so hard, ever, as I have at the 3rd season of Sunny, and The Office is far from stale.  I note this observation wondering what that says about the creative process, and maybe if there actually is some kind of a notion of recognizing when enough is enough?  More so, I wonder how this compares to older sitcoms from the early 90s.  Maybe in retirement I can sit around and watch all that TV.