Sitcom Fatigue Threatens Creative Opportunities
(Nina Huaracayo/The Santa Clara)
Sitcoms are ubiquitous in American culture, and perhaps the greatest example of this is “The Office.” If you took a poll around campus of 100 college students, I think you would be hard-pressed to find more than a couple students who haven’t at least heard of the series.
During its original 2005-2013 run, “The Office” achieved decent ratings, but it welcomed a massive wave of new viewers—including me—due to its presence on Netflix during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Nielsen estimates, U.S. viewers streamed over 57 billion minutes of “The Office” in 2020 alone.
The series was the first of its kind I had ever seen, and I was drawn in by its cast of likable characters and combination of comedic storylines with workplace situations, tied together by its “mockumentary” style. And from there, I was hooked onto a host of other popular sitcoms in the years to follow.
But, there is yet to be another series to achieve the same success and reinvent the sitcom formula. While popular, sitcoms like “Parks and Recreation” and “30 Rock” followed the same workplace “mockumentary” formula.
Ever since then, it seems that major studios are content to run this “mockumentary” concept into the ground. When you really think about it, “Abbott Elementary” is just “The Office” in a school, “Superstore” is the same in a supermarket, “St. Denis Medical” is the hospital version and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” repeats the formula again in a police department.
And if this doesn’t convince you that studios are trying to repeat, NBC even created a spinoff of “The Office” called “The Paper,” set in the same universe and even featuring the return fan-favorite character Oscar Martinez.
I am a fan of all these shows, having watched a number of episodes from each and enjoying the different spins that they try to put on the genre. It does seem to me, though, that they are taking simply too many elements that made “The Office” so special in the first place.
Something that remains a fixture of these shows is the “will-they, won’t-they” dynamic between the male and female leads, which has, frankly, overstayed its welcome. There is yet to be a sitcom in the last few years that I am aware of which actually subverts this dynamic. After multiple seasons of tension and back-and-forth, they always end up together.
A goofy, eccentric authority figure also appears as a mainstay in the modern sitcom. And yet, no matter how hard these shows try, everyone seems like a copycat of Michael Scott. I noticed this especially after watching “St. Denis Medical.” The hospital president, Joyce, was just Scott in a different font, replaying many of the same tired relationship tropes and ego-driven plots that “The Office” originated.
The closest thing that I could compare this trend to is the classic aphorism of “reinventing the wheel.” When these sitcoms continue to draw in millions of viewers, why change up the winning formula?
As short-form content becomes more popular, sitcoms have to step up their game to keep audiences’ attention. In my opinion, continually replaying the success of “The Office” through the “mockumentary” style will not be enough.
One of the most popular online series that comes across my feed is known as “Bistro Huddy,” which features a cast of characters working at a restaurant. The catch? They are all played by comedian Drew Talbert wearing a varying number of wigs and clothes. In the short time this series has been running, it has accrued Talbert over 6 million followers on TikTok.
So, when one guy with some wigs can create a series that is drawing the attention of the younger generations, then the sitcom genre is, at the very least, at risk of losing its episodic nature and devolving into short-form hell.
As studios continue to consolidate and merge, as Netflix did with Warner Bros. at the end of 2025, opportunities to create new original shows will continue to dwindle. For sitcoms to keep adapting to the modern media landscape, creators need to come up with plotlines that put their own spin on the classic formula rather than repeating the same one.