11-13-2014, 11:40 AM
Okay, now for the good stuff: 
If I had to pick an all-time favorite scene, this is it. This is what I would show to someone who had never watched the show before. It's funny, it's clever, and it summarizes each of the four guys and their personalities, perfectly. So, you get humor and you get characterization.
(I think this might also be kind of a test of who your fave character is, because I always thought of this as a Howard-centric scene, yet Sheldon has his famous Drake Equation recitation here, too.)
I like verbal humor and absurdism. That's why Seinfeld is the creme de la creme, to me. I don't want any "big events" happening in a sitcom. I don't need "story arcs." I sure as hell don't want weddings, babies, or deaths. I want to be carried away by the escapism of it all.
I don't watch a comedy to "see what happens next." I'm a "show about nothing" person; I don't need anything much to happen. You can construct a dizzyingly complex episode out of a seemingly simple situation. Seinfeld took the most trivial situations and spun them into these wacky, farcical scenarios that kept snowballing and snowballing. Early TBBT also does that, to some extent.
I like wordplay and puns and verbal acrobatics. That, and sort of a wacky, light-hearted surrealism where things are sort of enjoyably bizarre. That's what I want, from a comedy. I don't give a single flying crap about anything else, provided the characters are fun and vivid and lovable. I like an environment where nothing very bad ever happens to anyone, and if something bad *does* happen, it doesn't have much impact and it's not meant to be taken seriously. I want to feel HAPPY when I watch a comedy.
I don't need to see the characters going through personal crises. I hate this "as the years roll by..." approach. I don't need to watch the characters aging in real-time and going through all the milestones of an average life. I don't want to follow the characters from youth into middle age, along their life's trajectory. I want things to be very "here and now."
Does this make any sense?
But yeah, if someone asked me "What do you want from a sitcom?" I would say light-hearted absurdist humor, especially verbal humor, and to me that implies that the plots are always going to be pretty farcical, with nothing depressing or majorly game-changing occurring.
If I had to pick an all-time favorite scene, this is it. This is what I would show to someone who had never watched the show before. It's funny, it's clever, and it summarizes each of the four guys and their personalities, perfectly. So, you get humor and you get characterization.
(I think this might also be kind of a test of who your fave character is, because I always thought of this as a Howard-centric scene, yet Sheldon has his famous Drake Equation recitation here, too.)
I like verbal humor and absurdism. That's why Seinfeld is the creme de la creme, to me. I don't want any "big events" happening in a sitcom. I don't need "story arcs." I sure as hell don't want weddings, babies, or deaths. I want to be carried away by the escapism of it all.
I don't watch a comedy to "see what happens next." I'm a "show about nothing" person; I don't need anything much to happen. You can construct a dizzyingly complex episode out of a seemingly simple situation. Seinfeld took the most trivial situations and spun them into these wacky, farcical scenarios that kept snowballing and snowballing. Early TBBT also does that, to some extent.
I like wordplay and puns and verbal acrobatics. That, and sort of a wacky, light-hearted surrealism where things are sort of enjoyably bizarre. That's what I want, from a comedy. I don't give a single flying crap about anything else, provided the characters are fun and vivid and lovable. I like an environment where nothing very bad ever happens to anyone, and if something bad *does* happen, it doesn't have much impact and it's not meant to be taken seriously. I want to feel HAPPY when I watch a comedy.
I don't need to see the characters going through personal crises. I hate this "as the years roll by..." approach. I don't need to watch the characters aging in real-time and going through all the milestones of an average life. I don't want to follow the characters from youth into middle age, along their life's trajectory. I want things to be very "here and now."
Does this make any sense?
But yeah, if someone asked me "What do you want from a sitcom?" I would say light-hearted absurdist humor, especially verbal humor, and to me that implies that the plots are always going to be pretty farcical, with nothing depressing or majorly game-changing occurring.