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28 TV Shows and Tropes That Overstayed Their Welcome

Looks like you’ve got yourself a bad case of car-through-the-wall

28 TV Shows and Tropes That Overstayed Their Welcome

May 14, 2024

Dumb dads, nagging wives and alcoholism are a lot more funny on TV than in real life.

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CRACKED.COM ONS RS! anny Awful Sitcom Tropes The pansexual perv In sitcom logic, straight is normal, and gay is sassy, outlandish, or just a token of corporate progressivism. Pansexuals, however, are just presented as immoral deviants. Instead of the simple concept that they might find the whole spectrum of gender attractive, they're apparently attracted to everything-so we have Dean Pelton's Dalmatian fetish in Community. — Source

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CRACKED COM Awful Sitcom Tropes Funny sexual abuse When Archer's frenemy Lucas died, it was already icky that the joke was that he abused a passed- out Archer, because being gay apparently means emasculation. But then you add the abuse aspect of it, and it's literally just a rape joke. Now, black comedy is awesome (what did the guillotine say to the billionaire?), but that's just lame. — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes will they or won't they Today's fluid, less committed relationships may be displacing it, but Andy and Haley in Modern Family or Annie and Jeff in Community have helped keep this ages-old trope alive. Seinfeld got it over with fast, when Jerry and Elaine hooked up in Season 2. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Topical Humor

arno C Awful Sitcom Tropes Topical humor If we have to look up who some 2000s politician was, we simply won't rewatch a show, however funny it may have originally been. Today, Atlanta, Rick and Morty, Insecure, BoJack Horseman, or Black-ish also try topical humor, but they give it more cerebral spins to make audiences reflect about current topics. We'll see if it stands the test of time. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Party strangers When sitcoms feature parties, you have no idea who these people are. You know the main characters, but all the other people mooching on food and drinks are complete strangers, barely even interacting with the main gang of, yes, friends. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes LOL sex work Sitcoms cannot help but treat sex workers as amoral grifters. What's the alternative, empathy? Don't be silly. Just look at the Friends episode where Monica accidentally books a sex worker for Chandler. There are good jokes (it is Friends, after all), but the way she's treated is shockingly hostile. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes The nagging wife A super-cool wife easily becomes a one-dimensional manic pixie dream girl. But can't wives just be two- dimensional? From Home Improvement to Modern Family, the shrill, killjoy wife is a sitcom staple. Thankfully, the half-sitcom, half-drama Kevin Can F**k Himself has done a lot to nag this trope away. DETROIT XXL 5 and Be - LIONS I CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Car through wall Have you noticed that many sitcoms have cars smashing through walls? Now you have. What's with that? Surely it can't be that many? Here's a non-exhaustive list of this overused comedy gimmick: Full House, Family Matters, Silver Spoons, Everybody Loves Raymond, Wings, The Suite Life of Zack And Cody, and Two and a Half Men. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes

CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes Celebrity cameos Remember the Matt Lauer cameo in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt pilot? Yeah. Add to that Michelle Obama in iCarly, Donald Trump in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Quentin Tarantino in All American Girl, Bob Dylan in Dharma and Gregg, or Elon Musk in The Simpsons and Rick and Morty, and you'll agree that celebrity cameos in sitcoms can be highly obnoxious. — Source

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CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes The Jim Halpert John Krasinski looking at the camera was a perfect straight man gesture, creating complicity between the mockumentary format and the audience. After every show started following The Office's template, however, it grew tiresome, as they just had to have the smartass glancing at us to tell us how dumb everyone else was. — Source

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CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes Killing off the mom Because of Reagan or neon spandex or something, '80s sitcoms just had to get rid of the mom. Full House, My Two Dads, Diff'rent Strokes, Punky Brewster, Empty Nest... Those were all about the fragmentation of the family by doing away with the one member keeping it together. (Either that or a sitcom mom serial killer.) — Source

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CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes Next-episode amnesia In a classic Seinfeld episode, George gets a cushy job and ends up dating Michelle Pfeiffer's sister, just by doing the opposite of his every instinct. By the next episode, he's back to being loser ol' George. Sitcoms tend to avoid hard continuity, but it is tiresome to see characters learn life lessons and forget them the following week. — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Loud audience Canned laughter, burn in hell. Studio audiences are always overly enthusiastic, way too loud, and cackle after the blandest of jokes. We'd mention an example, but come on, you know it's The Big Bang Theory. Now for a good example of actual audience participation, listen to the person loudly going oh my god in an old episode of Titus. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Sitcoms

CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes The mid-afternoon brunch At the risk of sounding like some kids these days and their avocado toasts boomer, today's shows have gone hard in substituting the bar of the old- school sitcom for the mid-afternoon brunch. Girls, Broad City, or You're the Worst all feature this trope. — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Hilarious alcoholism Sitcoms usually depict alcoholism as a fun quirk, like Norm in Cheers. Mom went overboard in trivializing alcoholism as an excuse for wacky sitcom hijinks. If it had been a dark comedy, it could have worked- but that'd require Chuck Lorre to have any vision. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Locked in a room Bottle episodes are in every TV genre, but they can be very predictable in sitcoms. Sitcoms with episodes in which their characters end up locked inside a room include Friends, Saved by the Bell, All in the Family, Night Court, and The Office. If it's an elevator and a pregnant woman is about to give birth, even better worse. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes The overblown misunderstanding We get it, you can't have a situation comedy without situations, but must every misunderstanding be blown out of proportion like it's the ending to Batman V Superman? This was pretty much the entire narrative force behind Three's Company, but Friends and Modern Family have also relied strongly on it. — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Dumb dad Some sitcom dads are hilarious and loving, and their dumb shenanigans can be classics. But a lot of the time, the joke is just that men are emotionally stunted and intellectually incompetent. This denigrating, decades-long trope has remained alive in shows like Modern Family, The King of Queens, and Man with a Plan. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Awful Sitcom Tropes Young people with huge apartments Friends handwaved the issue with rent control, but it was still a major offender. Similarly, apartments in How I Met Your Mother were huge, which makes us think sitcoms are set in a utopia where housing is cheap (and you date someone different every week). CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM Awful Sitcom Tropes Monkeys They're like humans, but hairier, dumber, and zoo keepers will stop us if we try to throw poop at them, which is just a double-standard. Sitcoms that have featured monkey business for easy jokes include Full House, Friends, 30 Rock, Family Matters, The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Community, Malcolm in the Middle, and Community. — Source

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Battlestar Galactica 2004-2009 FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE The human Angels race is on the exist and run from a Bob Dylan space army of AI run might be amok. God? CRACKED COM — Source

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28 TV Shows and Tropes That Overstayed Their Welcome — Source

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28 TV Shows and Tropes That Overstayed Their Welcome — Source

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Family Matters FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE Chicago cop After subjecting tries to cop to a decade of sci-fi torture, balance the quirky neighbor needs of his becomes many family international members; no hero, kisses quirky cop's daughter. neighbors to speak of. CRACKED.COM — Source

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Saved by the Bell FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE A Disney show Quirky kids called Good marry in Vegas, having become Morning, Miss Bliss, about a super hot adults (and the focus popular teacher of the show). helping some Miss Bliss was quirky kids. not invited. CRACKED.COM — Source

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DOCTOR WHO 1963-1989 FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE Odd couple Odd couple must defeat an ancient travel planet that is through kidnapping humans and space and turning them time to learn into cheetahs in about the order to consume their real world! energy. CRACKED.COM — Source

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ROSEANNE 1988-1997 FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE Grieving wife Bossy wife reveals goofball struggles to husband actually died a year ago. manage her Oh, and the goofball whole series has husband been a work of and feisty fiction. Okay, see ya in 11 years, kids. bye! CRACKED.COM — Source

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fe licity FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE DITON 0 OTR Girl follows Girl time-travels, creates the boy of alternate her dreams realities in order to test-drive to the big two different city. relationships. CRACKED.COM — Source

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