The Unsituated Comedy

This article examines how multiple American situation comedies from the past decade are considerably less situated, with settings, characters, narratives, and humor characterized by a sense of fluidity and movement. As we detail this new subgenre, which we dub the unsituated comedy, we outline the situation of situation comedy, tracing its central role in the construction of the traditional sitcom, and how the emergence of unsituatedness can trouble some of the assumptions and ideological conventions commonly associated with American TV comedy series.