characteristics of the TV sitcom

The aspects of  TV sitcoms that give you a deeper understanding of how sitcoms work are the parts of narrative fiction programming. Narrative fiction programming has three parts series, serial,and episodic these are some of the features that are in sitcoms. Series shows what happens over many years or a long period of time in a show and has an ending inwhich the show is actually over. An example of this would be watching a character in a sitcom grow up and change, eventually leaving the house hold in which he grew up in such as the characters of "Boy Meets World" where Cory in shown going through high school and college and leaving his home to move to New York. Serial (occasionally happen) happens in a sitcoms as situations become more complicated for its characters such as falling in love or moving on to college. Things in the sitcom start to carry over from episodic to serial, many shows have both elements and often develop a questions as to what exactly is going on between the cast or two characters. In episodic the show ends usually where it began and if a character dies he or she will more than likely never be  mention in later episodes again and they are likely to teach you lessons. Things in episodic seem to be predictable and the characters never seem to age.
A sitcom that I enjoy very much is "The Simpsons" which uses the characteristics of episodic part of narrative fiction programing. The reason that it is mainly an episodic show is because the characters never seem to age or grow up or really learn from one episode to the next. Though there is a lesson in each episode the characters never move on from what it is that they learned. Examples of this would be those of Bart and Lisa who are still in elementary and never seem to past the fourth and fifth grades, the other example is the father Homer who always finds himself getting into sometime of trouble but yet time and time again in other episodes he doesn't seem to learn much from the mistakes that he had made before. another reason as to why the show is episodic is because the plot is very familiar to people and is very predictable because they seem to get stuck in similar situations time after time. In some ways it may also be considered serial as well because some of the characters in the show get married and it seems to change what is going on in the show, such as when Milhouse's dad gets a girlfriend and it seems to change the drift how the character is living. This may go on for a few episodes but eventually the character will break up and it will not ever be mentioned in the show again. 




simpsons pictures found on google.
 http://images.dvdsetshop.com/Upload/uploadfiles/the_simpsons_2.jpg


http://cmm61.webs.com/the-simpsons-tracey-ullman-show.jpg