The Character Arc, or, Why I Hate Sit-Coms

I'm one of those people who cringes at the very sound of a laugh track. I find it insulting: “What, you think I don’t know when to laugh?” And though I have loved many a sit com, from "I Love Lucy" to "All in the Family" to "Modern Family," I sort of hate myself for it. The problem isn't really the laugh track. It's not the slapstick humor. The problem for me is character arc. Or actually, the lack thereof.
     The most exciting thing about any novel, play or feature film is character development. The theory is that at least one character must change in the course of the narrative; ideally that the main character’s flaws (that is, the need for a character to change) must serve as an engine to the story’s movement, and the subsequent events of the story must then influence the main character, prompting these changes. For example, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Their character flaws, which give the book its title, move along the plot and are changed (though not entirely erased) by the events of the narrative. Elizabeth and Darcy’s respective traits of prejudice and pride block their natural coming together and must be overcome to engineer the happy ending that we, as readers, are awaiting.

     By definition, in a sit-com the characters barely move from their established routines of behavior and only engage in the most glacial, minor arcs of character development. For example, in "Seinfeld," Elaine finds a new job and George gets engaged without ever budging from their essential selfishness, immaturity and lack of insight. If any of them really changed, it wouldn’t be Seinfeld anymore. This is why I dislike sit coms. The sit-com is the anti-novel. If you enter the world of the novel at any point, the characters should have changed, they will be different. You will have missed something. Sit-coms depend on the idea that it doesn’t matter if you miss an episode. How can the character arcs develop in any but the most incremental way if you can miss an episode and it doesn’t matter? Without wanting to be stuffy, I defer to Chekhov, who famously said, “"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." If this is true of a single prop, how much truer of an episode?
     Fairy tales also lack character arcs, although they do contain problems related to character that must be resolved in satisfying resolution, with the good inevitably rewarded and the wicked inexorably and mercilessly punished--dancing in red-hot shoes, having their eyes pecked out by magical birds, or being melted by a bucketful of water. The youngest son begins the story as inherently good, generous and clever, better than his older brothers. He does not learn to be different. They also do not improve. The youngest son’s outward circumstances change as his behavior and the events of the fairy tale conspire to reveal his inner worth—but he himself does not change. However extreme the makeover, it remains external. Cinderella remains the same good, gentle, devoted, beautiful girl, when she is weeping in the ashes and again when she is twirling resplendently in the prince’s arms at the ball.Which is probably why, although I love fairy tales and will defend to the death their importance to children and to our culture as a whole, I'm not rushing off to re-read The Blue Fairy Book.
     Although not a folk tale, The Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale for this reason: no one really changes. The inside joke for the reader is that the Scarecrow is already intelligent, the Tin Woodsman loving, and the Cowardly Lion brave at the beginning of the story—they don’t change, they just acquire the props that allow them to believe in themselves. As for Dorothy herself, she is the same brave, sturdy, cheerful little Midwestern girl from start to finish. She doesn’t change any more than Toto does. The biggest transformation in Oz from page to screen has nothing to do with Technicolor , it’s the introduction of a true character arc: Cinematic Dorothy is running away from home seeking glamor and adventure. Through her misadventures she learns at last that “there’s no place like home.”Now that is a transformation. And we need no laugh track to point it out.
What about you? Do you love sit-coms? Hate fairy tales? Do you care about character arcs? Do tell. ✪