Sitcom Law

[Spoilers ahead]

Q: What's the number one rule of a sitcom?

A: The characters don't change.

Take The Office (British version). Ricky Gervais put the nail in the show's coffin by having his character become tolerable.The American version on the other hand is still plodding steadily into the future on the back of Michael being zany... over and over.

So how does The Big Bang Theory handle this? The Leonard and Penny romance was only ever going to work if either of the following was to happen. 1) Leonard became normal or 2) Penny became severely nerdy. This has been solved by having them sleep together anyway and ignore any of the logic that would make this possible. I think it helps that the audience are more interested in what Sheldon will say next rather than any other aspect of the show. The romance is almost inconsequential and certainly the least engaging aspect of the show. But then Big Bang Theory has always played free and loose with its "plot", so I guess it doesn't matter.

The question then becomes: How long can the show continue to run on the back of Sheldon's "issues"?

Supernatural Season Five

It's finally back! Supernatural is one of the few shows that I've made the effort to follow from start to now. The fifth (and I hope final) season began right where the last one left off. Lucifer is risen and the brothers are left to pick up the pieces of their own mess. The writers did well to inject humour into what could have quickly descended into depression. Overall it's pretty much exactly what we expected: very watchable.

One little thing... I'm not sure why Dean gets to give Sam such a hard time, since he started this whole mess and Sam was really just an enabler...

Oh well, looking forward to the next week's installment!