The classic sitcom can be expected to star a wacky cast of characters undergoing funny situations. They are all safe, familiar stories, right?
These works take that assumption and twist. The Subverted Sitcom utilizes sitcom aesthetics: it probably has a humorous, familiar cast and characters along with a familiar premise. Newer works might even use Retraux or Stylistic Suck to achieve the old-timey sitcom 'look'. However, it'll soon reveal itself to not be as wholesome as apple pie. Maybe it is devoted to exploring, darkly parodying, or deconstructing Sitcom Tropes, portraying them as cruel or even horrific or evil, sometimes even played for Black Comedy. Maybe all is not as it seems, and the familiar repetitiveness of the sitcom is actually a cover for something more sinister beneath the surface. And do you guys hear that laughter?
Works that riff on the Dom Com specifically are likely set in a Stepford Suburbia or a Town with a Dark Secret: something is not quite right in this picturesque little suburb. If a show does this for only one installment, it is also a Sitcom Homage Episode. If the sitcom is revealed to be an actual Show Within the Show, the characters may have found themselves in a "Truman Show" Plot.
To qualify for this trope, the sitcom aesthetic must be subverted, ie. a work looks like a classic sitcom before the rug is pulled out from under the audience. It does not refer to Horror Comedy, which plays horror for laughs (here the laughs may or may not give way to further horror), nor does it refer to sitcoms with a fantastic element (see Fantastic Comedy for that), nor is it about sitcoms set in a World of Jerkass. It is, however, a Sister Trope to Subverted Kids' Show, which mixes dark material with children's show aesthetics for a similar effect.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The first chapter/episode of School-Live! sets up the story as a cute, funny Schoolgirl Series about a group of teenage girls' hijinks in their beloved school club. The First-Episode Twist shows that the setting is actually a Zombie Apocalypse, the club members are survivors holed up in their school, and the whole cutesy setup was the result of Yuki's mental breakdown while trying to cope with the whole situation.
Fan Works
- In Chapter 12 of Learning How to Be a Princess, the characters wake up in a pleasant Modern AU Fic where everyone has normal roles, but the characters are trapped in their roles and odd happenings eventually give way to the revelation that it's the Lotus-Eater Machine Luz accidentally trapped everyone in. Amity openly compares the weird way that time moves in there to the way sitcoms skip over irrelevant moments.
Films — Live-Action
- Inland Empire: The Show Within a Show Rabbits is a domestic sitcom set in a family kitchen, with a Laugh Track, where a Nuclear Family of rabbits are increasingly menaced by eerie phrases and the sense that something is coming for them.
- Natural Born Killers: Mallory's childhood trauma is depicted through the '50s sitcom I Love Mallory, which presents her father's physical and sexual abuse as well as her mother's neglect as the bleakest of Comedic Sociopathy.
- There's a scene in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World when Scott goes home with Wallace and the chat became a sitcom, even with some Laugh Track between dialogs. However, when Wallace became serious with Scott about fighting for Ramona and telling Knives that should break up, he stops a cassette where the laughs came from and the Sitcom facade is over.
- The short film Too Many Cooks begins as a standard cheery sitcom theme song that introduces the residents of a charming house in the suburbs. But then the song keeps on going and going, with more and more characters being introduced with no end in sight. That would be unsettling enough by itself, but then it abandons the sitcom entirely, moving on to other genres. And then the audience gets a macabre spree killing of the many characters before it loops right back around to cheery sitcom at the end... or did it?
- The Dutch film Krazy House is about a religious home maker who finds that the workmen in his house are actually Russian criminals searching for loot stored somewhere in the house. Along the way, he has several lapses out of reality, most prominently resembling a 90’s style family sitcom.
Live-Action TV
- The first season of The Good Place is a straightforward sitcom with philosophical aspects (given they are in the afterlife). However, the finale reveals it to be a Genre Deconstruction: all the hijinks have just been Michael pitting the main four characters against each other in various cruel situations as a form of torture.
- Kevin Can F**k Himself begins as a standard sitcom about a goofy jerk of a husband, Kevin, and his exasperated workaholic wife, Allison. Allison is first depicted as a total nag and the Butt-Monkey of the show, but once she leaves the sitcom scene, we see her more sympathetic and troubled perspective. The show becomes more of a drama as Allison undergoes Sanity Slippage and plans to kill her husband to end her pain. This is illustrated in the different cinematography between the sitcom reality and Allison's reality: the former is a brightly lit multi-cam setup reminiscent of most classic sitcoms, while the latter is a desaturated single-cam setup reminiscent of a drama.
- The Monk episode "Mr. Monk's Favorite Show" has Monk try to solve the stalking and attempted murder of Christine Rapp, who played Kathy on Monk's favorite cheery sitcom The Cooper Clan. After figuring out that Christine herself is the murderer, he gets knocked out by her. He has a dream about being part of the family on The Cooper Clan, where he basks in the joy before asking the young Kathy if she has anything to tell her parents. Kathy admits some typical sitcom secrets, like her dog breaking the family vase and her reading her sister's diary...but Monk's actually talking to Kathy as if she was adult Christine, calling her out for cheating to win an award and killing the blackmailing fan who had helped her rig the votes. Kathy gets grounded for her murder, and all the other children in the Cooper family begin speaking from the perspective of their adult actors who have all turned to lives of miserable decadence and addiction. And the Laugh Track just keeps going, much to Monk's annoyance...then the mother starts calling out for Monk to help her, seguing into Natalie calling for help as she fights Christine in the present day.
- Saturday Night Live: A sketch
featured host John Mulaney as the creator of a 1980s sitcom called Switcheroo, which seems to be a typical "Freaky Friday" Flip comedy about a boy and dad switching bodies and trying to hide the secret from the mom. Then we see more clips of the sitcom, which put more and more focus on how the boy has sex with the mom while in the dad's body. The interviewer gets creeped out talking about the series, but the creator nonchalantly defends his decision to focus so heavily on the sexual implications of this premise (while also revealing some disturbing childhood facts). The creator mentions an episode in the reboot where the dog and the mom switch bodies while implying similar gross things, as well as an upcoming crossover with Dateline. Needless to say, the sitcom wasn't popular in-universe and the cast members are all in group therapy (except for the son, "little Andy Cunanan" who left the business).
- An In-Universe version on the Scrubs episode "My Life in Four Cameras". JD imagines his life as a more traditional sitcom with a studio audience and a laughtrack. Through a series of Contrived Coincidences and wacky misunderstandings a terminal patient is saved, a cafeteria worker gets to keep his job, and Turk and Carla's relationship problems are completely solved. Then the patient starts coughing and flatlines, causing the fantasy to break. The show returns to its usual artistic style and JD must face the fact that terminal patients die, budget cuts cause people to get fired, and relationship problems require long-term work.
- WandaVision begins homaging early sitcoms, with newlyweds Wanda Maximoff and Vision moving to the suburban town of Westview, New Jersey and getting to know the neighbors. However, because this continues off from Avengers: Endgame and the viewer is aware both are superheroes (and that Vision is dead), there is always the nagging feeling that something is not quite right. Indeed, a couple of moments early on imply some surreal horror is going on behind the scenes. It turns out that in her grief, Wanda converted the entire town into her personal sitcom as a coping mechanism, even recreating her own version of Vision (because Tyler Hayward wouldn't let her bury the real one), and S.W.O.R.D. tries to snap her out of it (or more specifically, Monica Rambeau is, due to Hayward having other ideas).
Music Videos
- The music video for Eminem's "My Name Is" shows a TV show called The Slim Shady Show - starring Marshall Mathers, in which Slim Shady is introduced as a bullied, dark-haired geek in a Stepford Suburbia, but quickly becomes a peroxide-blond Psychopathic Manchild doing horrible things like driving drunk, stealing his friend's girlfriend and getting dragged out of a strip club for streaking (an allegory for how Eminem found his evil alter-ego through a Creator Breakdown). There's also a pastiche of the opening of The Brady Bunch, with Slim Shady heads appearing in a grid around a logo reading "The Shady Bunch".
Web Animation
- The Stockholms is a Black Comedy Bank Robbery and Casual Danger Dialogue based sitcom parody, with no actually threatening situation, most of the time. But it turns into a subverted sitcom during the last two episodes, when Jasper is replaced by the more dangerous and turned-to-psycho Willy, who actually hold hostage the other principal characters. Jokes become rarer in these episodes (although they do not disappear completely). And the last episode contains a failed attempt of murder over 8-years-old Yong Sun, Willy's Cruel and Unusual Death (although some viewers may consider he deserved it as he was a dangerous criminal) and Jasper brutally shoot dead by the police in front of his new family.
Western Animation
- BoJack Horseman utilizes this in some episodes, as the main character is a mentally unwell washed-up sitcom star. His intimate familiarity with sitcoms is often paired with dark events.
- "Escape from LA" starts like a sitcom, even swapping out the normal tune for a cheery sitcom opening, because BoJack is living his idealized life with Charlotte and her family. It starts with a usual sitcom plot: Charlotte's daughter Penny tries to find a date for the prom and BoJack agrees to help her. But the episode later reverts to the show's more somber tone: BoJack influences some minors to drink and ends up taking one of them to a hospital when she gets sick. This culminates with BoJack nearly sleeping with Penny and Charlotte walking in on them just as they are about to. As a result, Charlotte kicks BoJack off her property and their friendship utterly broken beyond repair.
- During his Mushroom Samba in "Downer Ending," BoJack imagines he's back in the 1990s filming his cheery old family sitcom Horsin' Around. However, the scene quickly turns surreal. BoJack (as the Horse) repeats the line "This is all I am and all I'll ever be" to a cheering studio audience, with Ethan quipping "You said it, old man!" in a disturbing deep voice. Then, four-year-old Sarah Lynn's request for the Horse to make her a "penis butter and vajelly sandwich" elicits audience "awww"s before she transforms into the adult Sarah Lynn screaming the same request at BoJack, "I said, 'Make me a penis butter and vajelly sandwich... BIIIIIIIIIITCH!!!!." Then the whole set falls apart and BoJack faces an elderly Todd asking him which path he'd like to take in the future.
- Close Enough: In "The Perfect House," Emily goes open house shopping to get a break from Josh's antics, and discovers a fantastic house that a goofy dad named Dave and a child actress named Caitlin are also checking out. During their tour, Dave and Caitlin begin morphing into a typical sitcom family, complete with a Laugh Track and a sitcom intro for a show called Open House, but Emily seems to be the only one aware that this house isn't really theirs. It becomes clear that the house is some sort of void that Emily can't leave, and Josh can't contact her until he also gets stuck in the house. The only way for Emily and Josh to break the spell is to be as family-inappropriate as possible. They escape, but Dave stays in the house to avoid confronting his angry wife.
- The DuckTales (2017) Sitcom Homage Episode "Quack Pack". The show is generally an adventure show, but this episode inexplicably has the characters in a sitcom — there's a laugh track, everyone has exaggerated personalities, and they're undergoing the standard sitcom plot of taking a family photo. However, the characters begin to notice A Glitch in the Matrix, become horrified by the Sitcom Tropes in play, and soon discover that they are trapped in a constructed sitcom reality entertaining an explicitly human audience after Donald wished to have "a normal family".
- The adult cartoon Harley Quinn (2019): In "Bensonhurst" Harley goes home to visit her parents — who are parodies of Al and Peg Bundy — in their suburban home. When her mother opens the front door the scene switches to a pastiche of old sitcom openings: it introduces the Quinzels through a vintage establishing montage over a hokey theme song about "togetherness". Harley and Sharon get standard sitcom photos, but then her father (who has ties with the mob) gets violent images and the segment introducing her brother cuts to a jar of ashes, showing that her family is deeply dysfunctional.
- Young Justice (2010): The episode "Nightmare Monkeys" briefly dips into this. Garfield has been hallucinating allegories for his past traumas throughout the episode, and at one point imagines himself inside his dead mother's sitcom, Hello, Megan! When he tries to talk to the characters, they unsettlingly tell him that he isn't supposed to be there, before morphing into their adult forms, shocking him.
