Classic TV series Cliches - Page 2

Re: Classic TV series Cliches

Bad example. Every adult heterosexual male with a pulse likes Penny. (Sheldon fails to meet at least one of these criteria - and possibly two or more of them. )

Regards,

Joe

Re: Classic TV series Cliches

A couple of general comments, now that the thread has been going for a bit:

I'd wouldn't consider shows like The Simpsons, Family Guy and Futurama to be examples of the cliches that they themselves are spoofing. A normal show falls back on cliches because the writers are geting lazy or because they just don't care about being original. These shows invoke the cliches to point out the fact that they are cliches. They aren't really what I had in mind when I started the thread.

Similarly I don't think things that have simply been common themes in all of literature (and much of human existence) really count as "TV cliches". Having a character go blind for the length of an episode and then recover his/her sight is a cliche. Mother-in-law jokes have been around as long as mothers-in-law, and for the excellent reason that there are often tensions among husbands, wives and in-laws. Same thing with hard-to-find gifts, car trouble, many workplace issues. These are all things we experience in our own lives and writers in all media and in all genres quite naturally write about them. We don't all end up trapped in collapsed buidings with our mortal enemy. (Even those of us who have a mortal enemy. )


This is another category I would quibble with. These are practical solutions to practical production problems. What else should they have done? The actress is pregnant, but the character isn't. What do you do besides finding a reason for the character to go away? Depending on the overlap between the pregnancy and the production schedule. You can sometimes get away with heavy clothes and strategic placement of desks and other objects. But if the actress is going to be heavily and obviously pregnant during a major part of the schedule, you either make the character pregnant as well or you find an excuse to keep her off screen until after the baby arrives.

Same with the seating positions. You'll find the same problem with stage plays, for much the same reason: the audience has to be able to hear the actors and see their faces. (This is especially critical for comedies, where the reactions are often the funniest part of the joke.) Sitcoms are like stage plays in many respects, and work within some of the same constraints. (Even though close-ups can be inserted in editing, the audience's laughter depends on what they can see "live") Dramas can usually avoid this problem because there is no audience to deal with and they can do many takes from different angles and ensure a close-up for each character on key lines.

But even here, it is not always possible to do "natural" seating at a table. TV dramas sometimes don't have the time or the money to shoot all the angles they'd like in such scenes, and so they stage them in "unnatural" ways in order to simplify shooting.

I don't think it is really a "cliche" when two shows hit on the same solution to the same production problem, or who are simply working within the constraints of the medium. It is a little like saying that a hai-ku of seventeen syllables is a "cliche".


Now this one is self-evidently true.

Regards,

Joe