What really kills a sitcom
Actually it's fine when the will-they won't-they couple gets together
Ross and Rachel. (“Friends,” shudder, but it’s the obvious example.) Niles and Daphne on “Frasier.” The biggest sitcom-lifespan truism is that when the pair with romantic tension become a regular old couple, the show is done.
I’m not convinced. The counterexample that comes to mind is “Waiting For God.” Tom and Diana are a couple of sorts from the get-go, but only hook up in S3E6, “Scandal,” when Diana drunkenly propositions Tom. Their coupledom doesn’t have much of an impact on the way the show plays out, apart from that they sometimes live together. I guess it brings about a couple duller scenes involving vacuuming but on the whole, the pre-couple eps and post- are about the same.
If anything does mark a turning point, it’s the departure (due to the actor’s death) of randy but consent-aware Basil, and more to the point, his replacement via sudden arrival Jaime, Jane’s Irish grandfather. Also bawdy but not remotely the original that Basil was, he merely serves to remind the viewer of the absence of Basil.
Same with “As Time Goes By” — does Lionel and Jean getting together change anything about the show? Not really — they live in the past, whether coupled or merely considering it. And the whole point is that they’d already slept together years ago, so it’s a bit who cares.
Also a supposed show-killer: changing the actor who plays a character. Not so! Second Rose is vastly better than First Rose on “Keeping Up Appearances,” to the point that Season 1 is almost unwatchable.
No, what actually destroys a sitcom is the loss of important characters, or the refusal to let characters follow their natural evolutions, often but not always getting older. “Are You Being Served?” persists in having Miss Brahms be the naive maiden even into the sequel, “Are You Being Served? Again!,” by which time the actress herself approximately the age of Mrs. Slocombe in the original. Same goes for boy wonder Alistair in “As Time Goes By” — his boyishness is central to the character, but the actor himself drifts deeper into middle age, and this isn’t addressed.
It’s not that actors aren’t allowed to get older — as I recall from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Mary does not simply play a young 30 for seven years. It can be done! But MTM is a great, and ATGB, Judi Dench’s dameness notwithstanding, is not.
And — not new information for the world, but new in my own viewing — I’m in Season 7 and “Benidorm” has just lost the Garveys. That means no Mick, which is disappointing for me for idiosyncratic reasons, but also no Janice, no Michael, and most of all no Madge. Madge, of “frig the whole lot of you” notoriety, was the true center of “Benidorm,” and without her, without the family dynamic around her, it’s unclear why one is even watching these people to begin with. (I mean I am still watching, but now just for completist reasons.)
It’s perhaps no coincidence that the Garvey-less show is now filled with easy moral messages and tender family moments. Yes, it’s a good thing the show is now using transvestite (?) character Les/Leslie as a vehicle for acceptance and understanding (even if the show itself seems unclear whether it’s that Les is a drag performer or Leslie is a transgender woman), and has moved away from scenes where the gender non-conformity (or, really, others’ discomfort with it) is the joke. Yes, I’m happy that everyone’s gentle and kind (except when stabbing one another with knockoff Botox from China, leading to a new and unsubtle level of problematicness that arguably exceeds anything from the earlier eps, except one thing, aaaah), but does “Benidorm” need to be quite so heartwarming?
But the existence of a couple is fine! Think Patsy and Edina, straight women both but the effective spouses at the center of “Absolutely Fabulous.” A couple can be a comedy duo, and that’s fine. Sitcoms aren’t love stories, and also please, no “Friends,” it is the worst, please make the billboards all over my city promoting the worst of all possible reruns go away.