"Some TV critics have written that the sitcom is dying out as a format (or art form?). We might look back on the Seinfeld/Friends days as the end of that era."
An interesting notion. Could it be that the classic sitcom form is mined out, that it's becoming harder and harder to find ground within that format that wasn't covered by Lucille Ball or Dick van Dyke decades ago? I've seen assertions that each genre has a finite lifespan; a phase in which it is novel, a period of exploration, a golden age, a "glean the rest of the good ideas" spell, and finally a decline into cliche ... and that when the new works in the genre turn to self-parody, that is its epitaph and it is time to create new forms. (Do we have any sitcoms that are inherently parodies of the sitcom genre itself? How would that work?)
I figure there are two ways for the sitcom to die: for the ideas in the format to be used up, or for the tastes of audiences or networks to shift (some say that so-called reality shows spell the death of the sitcom on purely economic grounds). And either the sitcom as a whole can die out, or the most familiar subset of sitcoms can fade to be replaced by new subgenres of sitcom. IF that is what's happening, then Seinfeld/Friends might mark the transition, with Seinfeld being one of the last significant "classic" sitcoms and Friends being the harbinger of the new, or an intermediate form between the old and the new.
Or maybe what I'm thinking of as "new sitcom" is just the last brilliant flash of the fading of sitcoms in general, and the new genre to move to is the "dramedy"?
And at this point I am clearly out of my depth as a television critic / art historian, so I should probably just shut up and listen for a while.
(no subject)
An interesting notion. Could it be that the classic sitcom form is mined out, that it's becoming harder and harder to find ground within that format that wasn't covered by Lucille Ball or Dick van Dyke decades ago? I've seen assertions that each genre has a finite lifespan; a phase in which it is novel, a period of exploration, a golden age, a "glean the rest of the good ideas" spell, and finally a decline into cliche ... and that when the new works in the genre turn to self-parody, that is its epitaph and it is time to create new forms. (Do we have any sitcoms that are inherently parodies of the sitcom genre itself? How would that work?)
I figure there are two ways for the sitcom to die: for the ideas in the format to be used up, or for the tastes of audiences or networks to shift (some say that so-called reality shows spell the death of the sitcom on purely economic grounds). And either the sitcom as a whole can die out, or the most familiar subset of sitcoms can fade to be replaced by new subgenres of sitcom. IF that is what's happening, then Seinfeld/Friends might mark the transition, with Seinfeld being one of the last significant "classic" sitcoms and Friends being the harbinger of the new, or an intermediate form between the old and the new.
Or maybe what I'm thinking of as "new sitcom" is just the last brilliant flash of the fading of sitcoms in general, and the new genre to move to is the "dramedy"?
And at this point I am clearly out of my depth as a television critic / art historian, so I should probably just shut up and listen for a while.