The Episodic Sitcom

One virtually universal aspect of all sitcoms is their episodic nature. This refers to the tendency for each installment of a sitcom to comprise a self-contained story that is introduced and resolved in the same broadcast. Each episode of a sitcom is constructed so that whatever may have happened in the last episode is almost always irrelevant to the current narrative, allowing any viewer to understand who the characters are and what is happening even if they have never seen another episode. At the end of each episode everything returns to the status quo so that the next week's episode can unfold with the premise and context unchanged. Although many sitcoms habitually include some kind of lesson or "moral of the story" in most episodes, in order for the episodic structure to persist individual characters cannot undergo any significant development, something that would upset the ability for for the show to begin from the same point each week.



Examples of this episodic structure can be found in one of my favourite shows, the British sitcom Black Books which ran from 2000 to 2004. The show was co-created by and stars Irish comedian Dylan Moran as Bernard Black, owner of Black Books, a small bookshop in London. Over the course of the series there are some small changes in the context, like Bernard’s best friend Fran becoming unemployed when her nicknack shop goes out of business, but for the most part each episode ends with any changes that may have happened reverting back to normal, sometimes without much explanation. At the end of the episode “The Big Lock-Out”, where Bernard is locked out of his shop (and thus his flat) overnight by a new security door that is paradoxically difficult to open from the inside and impossible to open from the outside, the problematic door is miraculously gone by morning with only the explanation that it seems to have been stolen.

The Security Door