If television is “eye candy” a situation comedy (sitcom) is its tastiest morsel. Sitcoms allow viewers to develop long-term relationships with a stable cast of characters, whose conflicts, flaws and problems are depicted as endearing, amusing and almost always resolvable in twenty-two minutes or less. The program’s “situation” remains virtually unchanged throughout the run of the show and typically revolves around the characters’ home or work or a combination of the two.

Arising from the venerable traditions of farce, vaudeville and radio serials, sitcoms meet television’s need for new and inexpensive material. Primary sets are built once and used for years. Actors are signed to long-term contracts so that a “hit” show is not threatened by a key player’s departure. Four to ten writers, who become familiar with the situations, character and tone of the show, craft the season’s scripts. By the 1970s, networks and producers learned that sitcoms with a hundred or more shows “in the can” could be sold for re-broadcast to distributors for lucrative syndication fees.

Sitcoms generally portray the white middle class. In the 1950s and 1960s, popular sitcoms featured silly adults (I Love Lucy, CBS, 1951–61; Gilligan’s Island, CBS, 1964– 7), family life (Leave it to Beaver, CBS, ABC, 1957–63; Ozzie and Harriet, ABC, 1952– 66; Donna Reed, ABC, 1958–66), supernatural powers in suburbia (I Dream of Jeannie, NBC, 1965–70; Bewitched, ABC, 1964–72; My Favorite Martian, CBS, 1963–6) and a sanitized Second World War (McHale’s Navy, ABC, 1962–6; Hogan’s Heroes, CBS, 1965–71). Sitcom plots often had broadly physical humor, or played out the small triumphs and misunderstandings of everyday life for their humor. Through comedy, people’s foibles are humanized; sitcoms reassure audiences because no problem or person upsets the show’s status quo. The best early sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 1961–6), successfully combined work and home situations and offered an appealing portrayal of marriage.

In the early 1970s sitcoms like The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970–7), All in the Family (CBS, 1971–92) and M*A*S*H (CBS, 1972–83) addressed more serious subjects.

Thus, M*A*S*H’s creator Larry Gelbart changed sitcom’s conventions by incorporating both a major and minor plot in many shows. M*A*S*H plunged viewers, long weary of Vietnam on television, into existential musings over life and death in the Korean War.

In its prosaic setting of working-class Queens, New York, All in the Family explored previously taboo subjects, including homosexuality sexism and racism. A program that introduced the workplace as a surrogate family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, inaugurated television’s first successful professional woman. Starting in the late 1980s, three of the longest running sitcoms presented dichotomous class issues—The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984–92) offered an engaging portrait of an upper-middle-class African American family whereas Married…With Children (FOX, 1987–97) and Roseanne (ABC, 1988–97) portrayed the trials and tribulations of crass working-class white families. Successful sitcoms, such as Seinfeld (NBC, 1990–8), Frasier (NBC, 1992–) and Friends (NBC, 1994–)—evidence Americans’ teleliteracy by including large casts and intricate plots. Liberated from the constraints of the soundstage, cartoons like The Simpsons (FOX, 1989–) and South Park (Comedy Central, 1996–) twist and expand upon sitcom conventions. Sitcom has emerged as an acronym for Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage, connecting once again family and representation.