Why do comedy’s become unrealistic the longer they go on?

Question

I've noticed lately with all comedy's on TV, things progress into a unrealistic matter as the seasons fly by. It's like the producers take a small part of the character and increase it by billions for more laughs. For example, remember the show Boy Meets World? The first few seasons it was very realistic, and the older brother, Eric, was a simple lazy slacking high school student who's carelessness didn't get him the best of grades. Flash forward to the later seasons, and he comes off as being dropped on his head 1,000 times as a baby born with a mental disorder.

Then there's Friends. Every character here was increased to an unrealistic point. Monica started out as a simple women in New York who wanted to be married. We all knew she was a clean freak, but it wasn't stated EVERY episode. Then she turned into some insane psychopath. And Joey had the same line of downfall as Eric - he became the dumb laugh.

So why is this? Why do producers feel like we laugh the most at stupidity?

Answer 1

Exaggeration is a major part of making something funny, but the media companys take everything to a new extreme. But, I suppose the main reason is that as a show progresses, they start to run out of new material, and they have to reuse old stuff. So they will go back to old episodes, find things that were funny, and put them in new episodes. Except now they have to exaggerate it to be funny, and so on. Just one more reason why we should turn off the TV.

Answer 2

I think they just run out of material. I loved Eric in Boy Meets World, but the problem with that show was that the characters grew up and got a little more serious. They couldn't do the same plots a year older so they had to change something.

Answer 3

They start running out of ideas. Take Seinfeld for example, it started off revolving around conversations and realistic interactions people would have. As years go on, the writers start to realize that there are only so many original and funny ideas as far as straight dialouge goes, so they start inventing ridiculous situations for the characters, which usually happens to the detriment of the show.

Answer 4

You can only push a funny idea, or situation so far.
If you keep trying to make it funnier, you will go stale fast.

Unfortunately this is what happens with most sitcoms, and they become very predictable, and mundane.

Answer 5

that is what happens in every show to keep things interesting. Look at smallville it was a weird show to begin with buy now it's so freakin weird!

Answer 6

producers look at the ratings of their show and other shows and compare them. They use this comparsion to determine what the majority of its viewers like to watch.