As time passes, certain popular tropes have become outdated and no longer fit the modern era. Essentially, the humor outgrows the comedic device. A recent online discussion examines ten sitcom tropes that feel out of place today.
1 – Spending Money Like It’s Water
How is it that in every family or girlfriend-type sitcom (looking at you Sex and The City) every character seems to have unlimited supplies of money and can spend spend spend, yet somehow complain about making no money at all? Make it make sense.
2 – Overly Nice Bedrooms
It seems like in every sitcom, regardless of the income of the characters, they all have insanely nice and professionally decorated bedrooms. How is this even possible? Can a sitcom writer come to decorate our rooms?
3 – Attractive Wives With Idiot Husbands
One user said, “Hot wives married to average or below average men that lack common intelligence. It almost balances out the Hallmark movies that would showcase a rich city guy losing his girl to a small-town hunk that shows her the real meaning of Christmas.”
Another user added, “This goes back to the roots of TV – The Honeymooners. Audrey Meadows had a sort of 50s vibe that I never considered attractive, but according to my dad, she was a major hottie in her day and married to the overweight loser bus driver.”
4 – The Main Character’s Ugly Phase
The first user said, “The ugly years for the gorgeous main character are usually just the actor in a fat suit and fake braces. Bonus points for glasses.”
A second user stated, “And they have curly, frizzy hair that gets straightened – bam, beautiful! Loved that as a girl with curly hair.”
Another fan commented, “Shows will still do this with the ugly or nerdy characters who are still crazy good-looking. Elena in One Day at a Time is a beautiful woman, but you know, glasses and a ponytail!”
5 – The Clip Shows
One critic said, “I am doing a binge on Family Ties currently, and they have about one clip show per year. Same premise every time: a visitor arrives, and the family reminisces about the previous episode. I hated these back then and completely skip them in the rewatch now.”
Another replied, “I love that the point of clip shows is cheap filler programming, but that episode must have been one of the most expensive with all the costumes and sets they needed for a 10-second gag each.”
6 – Characters Living Far Above Their Means
Someone replied, “Carrie from SATC comes into my mind! Carrie has a lot of money problems in the show; at one point, I’m pretty sure her partner has to buy her apartment so she can keep living there. They also mention her atrocious credit card debt quite a few times!”
Another commented, “So this is why I loved Roseanne as a kid because it was relatable. Even though life in a low/middle-class family in Australia was quite different culturally then, I still related well to it because they seemed real. They didn’t dress in the best clothes. Their house looked natural and real to what I knew, etc.”
7 – The Playboy Womanizer
One user said, “I think I saw a blog once that described how several of Barney Stinson’s schemes to get laid qualified as sex crimes.”
A second user replied, “I got into a discussion with some friends about creepy womanizers in sitcoms, mostly who was worse, Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother or Dennis Reynolds from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
“I firmly believe that if Glenn Howerton played Barney, everyone would look at the character way differently. But because it’s Neil Patrick Harris doing it, it’s just considered wacky hijinks.”
8 – Child Characters Always Have Huge Rooms
“Their nice bedrooms!” one person exclaimed. “The kids’ rooms are always HUGE! And so greatly decorated. I used to draw floor plans for my dream room at age six!”
Another replied, “Drake and Josh’s bedroom always fascinated me. It’s like a whole studio apartment. “They had two full sleeping areas, office space, and a whole living room… in their room AND a fridge! So there was never a reason to go anywhere else in the house.”
A third said, “For me, it was Hey Arnold‘s room. The full glass ceiling that you could access the roof. Still my dream room!”
9 – Relentless Pursuit Gets You The Girl
One user stated, “If you are persistent enough, the girl will fall for you. You need to keep showing up at her house and job unannounced.”
Another user said, “A generation was taught no means yes, but only if you stalk me. My husband calls this trope, ‘kiss her till she likes it!’”
A third user replied, “I feel like I need to add a scene from Gone With the Wind, given the number of people questioning Rhett Butler’s inclusion herein. He literally starts kissing her against her will, and she wakes up the next day in bed smiling because she came to like it.”
10 – The Incompetent Dad
“The incompetent dad,” one replied. “The dad is always portrayed as an idiot that can’t do anything without the wife telling him how.”
A second person said, “That’s because most family sitcoms in the 1980s-2000s were set up as a star vehicle for the comedian playing the dad.”
“And a goofy idiot is an easy sell for laughs. Ray Romano, Tim Allen, Jim Belushi, and Kevin James (just as a small example) already had established comic personas as brash buffoons, and their sitcoms were designed to showcase them. The wife characters were there to be foils for the husband’s hijinks, just beautiful plot devices for the most part.”
11 – Broke Characters Living Seemingly Comfortable Lives
“Malcolm in the Middle managed this the best,” said one. “Them not having any money was a critical component of the show, even when it wasn’t part of the plot.”
Another user stated, “The house and yard always being a mess was years beyond anything that had been shown on a sitcom. I don’t know if any sitcom has come to that amount of realism since then. Even Married with Children had a clean house, though it was always a joke that Peggy was sitting around doing nothing.”
12 – Turmoil Within Married Couples
“Every married couple hating each other and treating each other like trash. Yikes,” said one. A second user said, “Addams Family was designed to subvert that trope from the start.”
“You have a family that, from the outside, looks bizarre and monstrous, but they have a very supportive, healthy family dynamic. Find someone who looks at you like Gomez looks at Morticia, and your relationship will be off to a great start.”
“I love how realistic Hank and Peggy from King of the Hill are. They occasionally frustrate each other and have minor conflicts, but they’re together 100% on the big things. I think that’s what successful real-world marriages look like,” replied another user.
Source: Reddit.
