Entertainment: What Makes A Great Sitcom Character?

Sitcom characters have staying power because they articulate the way a segment of society feels — for the first time. For instance, Mary Tyler Moore’s character, Mary Richards, in the Mary Tyler Moore show articulated the way single women felt and wanted to feel. They had felt like second class citizens for so long because they were not married, that the Mary Richards character gave them a voice in society that they did not feel that they had before. There were no politicians or religious or other leaders that represented so many single women at one time. For that reason, Mary Richards is a sitcom character that will be around forever.

So, too are the characters in Friends. For the first time, the Gen X characters who struggled with relationships, jobs, and individuating themselves from their families, were represented in a way that the real Gen X liked and wanted to see more of. For this reason, Friends will be around for a long, long time.

Oddly — or maybe not — Southpark, the animated cartoon, will also have staying power. It’s characters are not smoothly drawn the way previously animated cartoon characters have been. Instead, like the characters themselves, they have a lot of raw edges. These characters are so gross and uninhibited, in ways that Roseanne and other “dark comedy” characters have never been, that they’ve crossed a line with sitcoms and made history. These characters said things that so many people think and say privately on blogs, but have never been articulated on television. For this reason, Southpark broke sitcom ground and will be remembered. What the Simpsons were trying to do, Southpark did with flying colors and there is no turning back. Even if the show is pretty disgusting.