on friends and sitcoms

I grew up watching television. Everybody did. We all go through times when we scoff at it, we call it an opiate- we might even have a phase when we haughtily claim not to even OWN a television (which is pretentious-code for being poor), but it is a part of us, a small nagging presence or a ubiquitous cultural filter. It's made it hard for me to enjoy the rhythms of adult life.

I grew up on 90s and 00s tv sitcoms- and I'm sure this is true of other decades as well- but these shows spend the majority of every 22 minutes focusing on groups of attractive young adults hanging out socially. Seemingly every night. They have a single, major narrative to their lives each week, and spend no time in the bathroom, at work, at the gym, commuting 45 minutes every day, et cetera.

It's a paradox of relatable glamor, of mundane fantasy. It all has to be entertaining and fun and well-lit and ripe for product placement and studio laughter and quips, but it has to appear to be in our grasp- if we squint our eyes it could be a real coffee shop or bar that just happens to be missing a fourth wall. I think subconsciously I was taken in.

And then I grew up, and here and there I would have groups of friends. Eventually they would splinter at life's natural attrition, people move, people get married, people get new friends. It takes an enormous amount of will and an even bigger amount of favorable circumstance to maintain a group of sitcom friends- with any luck you can find a workplace that vaguely resembles a workplace sitcom instead.

Is it any wonder then, that my new solution is to try and do comedy every night? A group of people compelled to flock to the same places, to find the same laugh-track patterns, to define themselves in terms of a common narrative?

Of course, like my favorite sitcoms, I think it's healthier to work in at least one moment of maudlin sincerity each week. But otherwise I'll keep at it until I don't need a day job to conspicuously fail to mention, until I look at the people on the screen and find them ordinary.

I guess I'll still have to go to the bathroom, but I can edit that out for more local ads once I'm syndicated.