Poemas de Alejandra Pizarnik.

There are three different types of sitcom: the actcom, the domcom, and the dramedy (Taflinger 1996). These differ in story elements, character roles and motivation. In the actcom, which is the original and most common type of sitcom, the plots are not character-oriented. Instead, they are action-oriented, and they usually revolve around personal crises. The characters are not complex and they are “consistent and predictable in action and thought”. Furthermore, characters are the leaders of actions and they are expected to solve problems. In other words, they are “central to every plot” (ibid). On the other hand, supporting characters have a secondary role in all plots; they do not lead actions and they are often dupes. The aim of the themes used is to provoke laughter rather than communicate ideas. Most of the episodes appear to be variations on a few central themes: the family, gimmicks, places and occupations in which there is a great emphasis on verbal and physical action (Taflinger 1996). The settings, Taflinger (1996) states, are “strictly backgrounds to action, with little sense of personality, either of their own or of the characters inhabiting them”.

In contrast to the actcom, the domcom is an expansive type of sitcom with various events and a great sense of seriousness. It entails more participants, including guest actors who are usually invited to appear in different episodes. Furthermore, the domcom has plots that are character-oriented in which the characters and their growth and development are central issues. The domcom is particularly concerned with domestic problems and crises, the problems, complications and solutions to which are mental and/or emotional. The first part of an episode is similar to the actcom, but everything changes at the point of crisis in which the action is superseded by character and thought as “the consequences of the action on the character are examined” (Taflinger 1996). Unlike the actcom, the characters in the domcom are complex. The role of the main characters is to foster spiritual and moral values, bearing in mind the personal growth and experience of their children who are the supporting characters who always cause problems but suffer the full consequences of their behaviour (ibid). The themes in the domcom revolve around the children growing up and their ability to cope with their social world. The setting is usually a home or an apartment.

The dramedy (often called the black comedy) is the most serious type of sitcom. The aim of this format is to make fun of some serious situations and present different humourless themes: war, death, racism, etc. (West 2003). In the dramedy, the plots are thought-oriented and characters are faced with social problems, such as crimes, or obstacles that are beyond their expectations. The characters in the dramedy are similar to those in the domcom in terms of complexity. Taflinger (1996) stresses that the characters in a human dramedy are “intelligent, witty, imaginative, and clever” and they care for the problems of others, and have a moderate view of life, society and rules. On the contrary, the characters in an advocate dramedy are argumentative and dogmatic, and they care for themselves and ignore others. They believe that their thoughts and actions are superior. The settings in the dramedy are designed to establish the appropriate atmosphere for the characters to deal with the problems they face.

TV sitcoms generally share the same features. In old sitcoms, all episodes were shot in front of a studio audience. The studio was designed in a particular way that enabled the audience to watch the show being made. However, in new sitcoms, canned laughter is used in place of a studio audience. The episodes usually take place in a home or workplace. There is a fixed structure in most sitcoms in which the problem arises in the first act, is developed in the second act and solved in the third act when the characters learn a lesson and become happy again. Other types of sitcoms have different structures in which the problem and solution exist in the same place in an episode and the problem is resolved in the next episode (Stafford 2004: 3).

Chile (1999:169) presents a brief explanation about some of the common characteristics of sitcom, based on Grimm (1997: 380):

The sitcom is typically a style of drama, in which exposition, conflict, climax, and denouement all take place within [a] thirty-minute episode. Generally, each episode depicts a specific comedic situation in the main characters’ lives, with subsequent episodes building on previous ones, thus giving the viewers a general idea of characters and the relationships between them. Sitcoms are usually videotaped before a live audience, and are later aired on television in weekly instalments.

In spite of Chile’s description of the sitcom and its features, Mills (2009: 49) argues that the comic impetus of the sitcom is its most important and discernible feature, and the different aspects of the sitcom, which are commonly used when defining the sitcom format – its length, its domestic setting, its character types, and its shooting style – are “understood as conventions through which that comic impetus is expressed and demonstrated rather than tropes which define and characterize the genre” (ibid).

The previous section presented a brief discussion of sitcom as a television genre, its definition, and its features and types (actom, domcom, and dramedy). The following section provides a detailed examination of Seinfeld, which can be classified as an actom.

4.3 Seinfeld

Seinfeld is an American TV sitcom that aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998 and lasted nine seasons (see table 2). The show was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld and was shot in Los Angeles. It was produced by Castle Rock Entertainment and distributed by Columbia Pictures Television (now Sony Pictures Television). The series revolves around Jerry Seinfeld’s Manhattan life in which he interacts with his three closest friends: his best friend George Costanza, his ex-girlfriend Elaine Benes, and his neighbour Cosmo Kramer. He also interacts with some acquaintances. Jerry plays a “fictionalized version of himself” in which he, as a stand-up comedian, critiques and makes fun of peoples’ behaviour, attitudes and reactions (Devendorf 2009: 199).

Season Primetime

1 (1990) Thursday at 9:30 pm

2 (1991) Wednesday at 9:30 pm (January 23, 1991 - February 13, 1991, June26,1991)

Thursday at 9:30 pm (April 5, 1991 - May 23, 1991) 3 (1991–1992) Wednesday at 9:30 pm (September 18, 1991 - December 4,

1991,January29,1992)

Wednesday at 9:00 pm (December 11, 1991 - January 15, 1992, February 5, 1992 - May 6, 1992)

4 (1992–1993) Wednesday at 9:00 pm (August 12, 1992 - January 27, 1993) Thursday at 9:30 pm (February 4, 1993 - May 13, 1993) Thursday at 8:00 pm (May 20, 1993) 5 (1993–1994) Thursday at 9:00 pm 6 (1994–1995) 7 (1995–1996) 8 (1996–1997)

9 (1997–1998) Thursday at 9:00 pm (September 25, 1997 - May 7, 1998) Thursday at 8:00 pm (May 14, 1998)

Seinfeld won many awards, including an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993, a Golden Globe Award for Best TV-Series (Comedy) in 1994. In 1995, 1997 and 1998, the show received the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series (Classic-tv.com). Furthermore, the show was considered to be the greatest sitcom of all time, and it was the third highest rated sitcom on TV when it ended, behind I Love Lucy and The Andy Griffith Show (Winzenburg 2008: 57). Table 3 provides the rating given by Nielsen Holdings N.V., a global information and measurement company that measures what consumers watch or listen to across all devices.

Season Episodes

Original air dates

TV season

Nielsen ratings

Season premiere Season finale Rank Rating Viewers (in millions)

1 5 July 5, 1989 June 21, 1990 1989–90 N/A N/A 19.26 2 12 January 23, 1991 June 26, 1991 1991 18.07 3 23 September 18, 1991 May 6, 1992 1991–92 #42 17.66 4 24 August 12, 1992 May 20, 1993 1992–93 #25 13.7 20.91 5 22 September 16, 1993 May 19, 1994 1993–94 #3 19.6 29.59 6 24 September 22, 1994 May 18, 1995 1994–95 #1 20.6 30.06 7 24 September 21, 1995 May 16, 1996 1995–96 #2 21.2 33.19 8 22 September 19, 1996 May 15, 1997 1996–97 20.5 32.48 9 24 September 25, 1997 May 14, 1998 1997–98 #1 21.7 38.03 (32.15)

Table (3) Seinfeld season rankings in the U.S. television market, excluding The Finale (76.26 million viewers) and Clip Show (58.53 million viewers).

The last episode of Seinfeld is 75 minutes long, and in it, Jerry, Elaine, Kramer and George are put in jail in Latham County, Massachusetts because they made fun of a fat man who

was being robbed and they did not help him. During the trial, different characters from previous shows (e.g. The Bubble Boy, the Soup Nazi, Babu Bhatt) are brought back as witnesses to testify against the ‘New York Four’ who acted selfishly when the man was robbed. After Judge Arthur Vandelay’s utterance: “I can think of nothing more fitting than for the four of you spend a year removed from society so that you can contemplate the manner in which you have conducted yourselves”, the four characters are put in a jail cell where they make jokes about George’s shirt buttons and recall lines from previous episodes. In the last scene, Jerry plays the role of a stand-up comedian wearing an orange prison suit and uttering the last line of the series “Hey, you've been great, I'll see you in the cafeteria!”. The final episode was not shot in front of a studio audience in order to keep the plot secret, and it was the first episode since the seventh season that opened and ended with Jerry performing stand-up comedy (Sims 2012).