Tonight I sat down and watched a rerun of CBS’s hit comedy, How I Met Your Mother. It was the Halloween episode from last season. I hadn’t seen it before, so it was new to me. The episode was funny, as usual. Though I’m watching and there was a moment in the show that struck me as unprecedented in the history of the 3-camera sitcom.
First it must be noted that How I Met Your Mother is barely a three-camera show. Sure its shot as such, but a lot of the humor is created in the editing room. It isn’t just a barrage of one-liners and quips.
That being said, the noted scene took place at the bar. They’re sitting at a booth with two people on each side. The booth itself is perpendicular to our view through the camera. Anyway, the character Ted approaches the booth and says hello to the gang. Here, the camera cuts to a reversal where we’re now looking from behind Ted toward the booth. What we see is a wall on the other side.
I found this endlessly fascinating. This suggests that when we, the audience, are watching the show normally, we’re apparently staring through what is actually a solid wall. Growing up on sitcoms we’ve all become accustomed to how the universe works. When people sit at a table, they only use three sides. When they sit at a couch, they’re facing the camera. Apartments are crazy big. But this notion that we’re actually suppose to be looking through a wall is totally new to me. I guess I’ve always assumed that on the other side of that plane (being the cameras sight-line) was more room. At the bar set it was just more of the bar. This apparently isn’t the case. Deep down I actually envision that all three-camera sitcom characters live in a world where every room they enter is only half-decorated. We see that half, but on the other side of the camera lies a barren, concrete and steal exposed nothingness. It’s too bad this, apparently, isn’t the case.
I’ve been watching The Class since it launched in September based on the combined strength of the first three episodes, which I watched all at once. Since then, I’ve discovered that those three episodes had used just about all of the comedy allotted to this by-the-numbers sitcom from the Internation Joke Distribution Fund.
