Sitcom Characters and their unpleasant behavior

[heavens-champion 1,893]

Have you noticed that a lot of sitcom characters are complete jerks? Seinfeld comes to mind. Seriously, it's like Sitcom directors want us to want the characters to wind up in jail.

[Hazard Time 1,127]

It's probably because the lowest common denominator of humor resides in shock humor, AKA "I can't believe they actually did that!"  The situations are so unreal and the reactions so disproportionate, that the end result is absurdity.

[PlzDelete 2,455]

Yup! Though there are some sitcoms I like for example Frasier but other than that I absolutely LOATH sitcom characters... especially Disney and Nickelodeon sitcoms...    

[heavens-champion 1,893]

55 minutes ago, PuddingPonyPal said:

Yup! Though there are some sitcoms I like for example Frasier but other than that I absolutely LOATH sitcom characters... especially Disney and Nickelodeon sitcoms...    

I can see why you dislike Disney sitcom characters. One-shot characters in the Suite Life of Zack and Cody were real jerks that didn't get much comeuppance. And that "doesn't bother me when you say it" line was so annoying. If only they got interrupted in the middle of it.

One-shot jerk character: Doesn't bother me when my---

Madison: AH, SHADDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One-shot jerk character: ... Got it.

[Prospekt 10,984]

I watch Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, Seinfeld, Frasier, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and that's about it. All older sitcoms, none of which are popular among my generation. All the newer sitcoms have more bland characters that just aren't consistently funny.

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

Much of comedy in today's shows are cheap, and frankly just overused.

Tropes like the girl who's tough/skilled enough to beat up a guy, and she uses that to terrorize the male characters. Or the parent who's protective of their child, but when they're the ones getting attention, they get all cocky about it. More generally, abusive/harassing and hypocritical characters.

Or, on the opposite end, those who're constantly the butt end of jokes; it can be by an abuser, a jerk/creep, or an unlikely series of painful (sometimes potentially lethal) accidents.

As smartly pointed out by Hazard Time above me, you're mainly just supposed to laugh at how absurd/exaggerated the situation is. But truth is, some of these "twists" are so overused, you can pretty much see them coming from lightyears away.

[Megas 27,047]

It depends on the show, with a show like Seinfeld where everyone is an asshole, it usually works, not to mention, the absurdity of some of the situations they’re in ...

Then you get characters like Megan from Drake and Josh, or Sam from iCarly, characters that are so awful and yet never get their comeuppance, and are usually celebrated for it. How the writers thought they were so popular i’ll Never know, just about everyone I knew who watched these two shows wanted to bash their brains in with a sledgehammer