Why’s the man on the sitcom always so f-ing fat while the wife has to be pretty hot?
Question submitted by molokovellocet:
The American multi-camera situational comedy is a respected and venerated part of our culture. From The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, to Cheers and Seinfeld, sitcoms have provided millions of viewers with - oh for fuck’s sake, I sound like a Discovery Channel commercial.
Look, what you need to understand is that all of the great sitcoms are produced by some of the most miserable fucking people who’ve ever walked the face of the earth: writers.
You spend hundreds of hours indoors parked on your fart-soaked chair hammering out a spec because you work with a girl who’s cousin is friends with a guy who tends bar at a dive where the wardrobe assistants on According To Jim hang out on Mondays after the read-through. So it’s an in, and you’ve got to work it. So you don’t bathe yourself, and you forget the dry cleaning AGAIN (sorry, honey!), and something’s burning, and your child is burning because they’re starving, and she’s taken it upon her four-year-old self to learn how to cook, but man, you are zeroing in on a KILLER Act One close for your imaginary new best-friend Jimbo Belushi, and you don’t want to forget it and STOP, DROP AND ROLL FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!
In other words, television writers are completely unfuckable human beings who spend all day mining their pathetic histories to come up with very-special-Thanksgiving gags for that second-most unfuckable group, stand-up comedians. And within this swirling cauldron of self-loathing and anxiety, everyone tries to come up with an edgy, groundbreaking scenario which inevitably winds up belly-flopping on that tried and true chestnut: fat guy with hot wife.
And why? Because, let’s face it, when you get that big break after strangling all those pigeons and crushing all those Ben & Jerry pints, and crying yourself to sleep in your cardboard monster-fort, do you want your co-star to genuinely reflect the type of woman you could MAYBE pull if their belly was full of Zima and you were slinging your best Monty Python impersonations?
No. Oh no. Fuck No. Line up the hot wife auditions, please.
Besides, network executives are horrible, shallow people who would never let you cast that wife part with anything less attractive than the hottie they would like to be, or currently are, boning.
Damn it, I guess I took the long way around to answer your question.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to put some more burn salve on my child’s back. She’s healing nicely, thank you.
—Question answered by Brilliant Orange.
Brilliant Orange is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
