This book explores the mechanisms that have driven the evolution of televisual comedy from the classic sitcom, a genre deeply rooted in its theatrical origins, toward a more mature stage of television's history. It analyzes four comic series--Scrubs, The Office, The Comeback, and Ugly Betty--revealing how each separates itself from the traditional sitcom archetype and shows increased awareness of the comic genre. Throughout the author focuses on two cardinal themes: the relationship between comedy and euphoria; and the relationship between comic texts and reality.

This book explores the mechanisms that have driven the evolution of televisual comedy from the classic sitcom, a genre deeply rooted in its theatrical origins, toward a more mature stage of television's history. It analyzes four comic series--Scrubs, The Office, The Comeback, and Ugly Betty--revealing how each separates itself from the traditional sitcom archetype and shows increased awareness of the comic genre. Throughout the author focuses on two cardinal themes: the relationship between comedy and euphoria; and the relationship between comic texts and reality.

Introduction: independents change the channel -- Developing open tv: innovation for the open network, 1995-2005 -- Open tv production: revaluing creative labor -- Open tv representation: reforming cultural politics -- Open tv distribution: struggling for an independent market -- Scaling open tv: the challenges of big data television -- Epilogue: open tv and the future of the networked era

Covering 40 years of TV series, this book concentrates on what is likely to be on today in prime time, including network, cable, and local independent programming.

The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition. Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.

Despite its global reach, longstanding popularity, and immense profitability, sitcom has been repeatedly neglected in theoretical work on television and media. This book demonstrates that this lack needs to be sorely addressed, by dragging analysis of sitcom up to date, with a wealth of contemporary examples, a range of new approaches to the genre, and examination of the roles sitcom and comedy play within society. The book takes as its starting point the variety of ways in which sitcom has traditionally been explored. A chapter on genre examines the history and development of sitcom, and the institutional structures which produce it. There is also analysis of differences between sitcoms produced in a range of countries, and what happens when a programme gets sold abroad and remade. A chapter on representation explores the debates about the ways in which sitcom chooses who to make jokes about and why, and whether this matters. And a chapter on performance argues that this is a vital, and underexplored, aspect of sitcom's funniness, and interrogates the ways in which comic actors make their performance funny. With specific case studies on Will and Grace, The Office, and The Cosby Show, as well as analysis of a broad range of contemporary and historical examples throughout, this book will be of interest to students of sitcom and comedy, as well as those of television and popular culture.