Situation Comedy

A detailed Summary of Situation Comedy


Situation Comedy

Before writing this essay, I watched a old re-run of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and I read the chapter in the television textbook where a episode of "Leave It to Beaver" was broken down into Act One, Act Two, Act Three and Act Four. It was there that I realized that since 1951, with the premiere of "I Love Lucy", that most sitcoms follow a very basic, but successful pattern. I will demonstrate how this is accomplished in the sitcom week in and week out. The first act must establish the situation in the show. The second act must show the complication involved in the particular episode. The third act must show the confusion the actors or actresses go through, and the fourth must have the solution for the complication and the confusion.

In the first few minutes of a sitcom, the viewer will be shown something that catches their eyes. In most cases, that will establish the situation for which the episode will be based on. For example, in "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" we see that the shows main character, Will, gets slapped in the face by a beautiful woman, who at first hugged him. The show then cuts to a commercial having established the situation and knowing that the audience is puttin


After the commercial break, the audience will see the complication in that episode. In the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", Will finds out that Jackie (the female character) slapped him because he never called her after he left Philadelphia. Adding to that conflict, Will and Carlton are evicted from their apartment because of a party that was thrown by Will's friend Jazz. In the television textbook, a friend talks Wally into going to the carnival and leaving the cat with the Beav. On his way out, Wally leaves the yard gate open and the cat disappears. After the Beav and Wally's search ends up fruitless, the boys try to figure out a plan to disguise the real reason the cat is gone for their parents sense something is not right.

In this essay, I have demonstrated how almost all sitcom are cut from the same cloth, even though one was made in the 1950's (Leave It to Beaver) and the other in the 1990's (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). By that I do not mean that all sitcoms are the same when it comes to social, economic and political issues. But almost all of them including the "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" follow the four-act formula.

g down the remote control and waiting to find out why Will got slapped. In the

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Approximate Word count = 814
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts

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