Long-lost relative turns up.

A woman, living alone (not even looking for a husband!) has a job at a TV station

The tool salesman who goes overboard in some way often against the advice if his more knowledgeable coworker or wife then gets counsel from an older, wiser neighbor, then makes amends.

Mistaken identity.

"I have to dress like a woman to get a good job!"

or a rent controlled apartment in NY

Former homely girl from HS who was bullied goes to HS reunion & nobody recognizes her. She stealthily lures all state quarterback turned town sheriff to darkened patio, slips a laxative in his drink & he poops on himself during his big speech. (My secret revenge plot I’ve carried for 58 years)

"What's Happening!!" when Rerun (Fred Berry) tries to bootleg a recording of a live Doobie Brothers concert.

Man the Doobies were such judgmental narcs

Theo and his friend on the Cosby show have an opportunity to hang with Stevie Wonder in his studio, but they can only take one of them; the two friends had to choose: THEO: You go, man. It's fine. FRIEND: No, you go, Theo! THEO: Naw, it's okay, you go. FRIEND: Okay. [Goes in; audience loses it]

SPY Magazine created an eye-opening grid of hackneyed sitcom plots in the late '80s. Kind of the original TVTropes. @kurtandersen.bsky.social

Vacation goes horribly awry. Brady Bunch goes to Oahu, Bobby finds tiki idol, bad luck ensues: Greg’s surfing accident, Alice’s back goes out doing hula, something fell on Bobby, & the tarantula on Peter. (There are no tarantulas in HI) They return the tiki idol, somehow Vincent Price was involved.

The Cheers episode where Fraiser is trying to bang Rebecca but everybody keeps showing up at his house

I was thinking Frasier too, but my example was all of the opening and closing doors in The Ski Lodge!

The Frasier writers really know how to put together a classic farce

That was the best episode.

when the irresponsible troublemaker kid and an adult with responsibility - camp counselor, principal, parent, whatever - have to trade places so they both learn how difficult it is to live the other's life

Wife thinks hubby is inconsiderate, hasn't planned anything for their anniversary, thinks he's cheating, end of the episode he has an entire romantic evening planned for them.

That one where the deranged & paranoid doctor killed his wife and kept jabbering to everybody about how some one-armed dude really did it and how some evil cop was following him all around the country trying to nail him. Hilarious!

The movie version was pretty good too.

It was. TLJ's deadpan comedy chops! Audiences ROFL.

Absolutely. 😊

Thinking of the hood family member that comes to visit trope reminded me of this classic. m.youtube.com/watch?v=EP5-...

Teenage boyfriend having dinner at girlfriend’s house and dad being overbearing about boyfriend’s intentions with his daughter

The married couple who have nothing in common and really don’t get along that well.

Every episode of King of Queens, Married with Children and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Drunk and gets vulnerable. www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LPq...

Clip show

"He's (or rarely She's) right behind me, isn't he/she?"

Scheduling two dinner dates simultaneously (at adjacent apartments or different tables at the same restaurant) and excusing yourself from one to "use the facilities" then going to the other. Repeat multiple times.

Having to choke down too much food and getting the two conversations mixed – with obviously hilarious results.

Getting conked on the head and getting amnesia and getting your memory back after getting conked on the head again

HAM!

High school reunion

The boss comes over for dinner!

or a prospective client

Two characters ‘finally’ kiss and the studio audience goes bat shit crazy.

A celebrity randomly makes an appearance, the studio audience goes wild, celebrity makes a one-liner and the characters never mention that interaction again. I saw Kevin Gates in a Walmart once and tell everyone lol

Fresh Prince did this all the time, but at least they switched it up a little with Hillary somehow knowing the celebrities but never mentioning it to anyone. Like how she was good friends with BBD

This is more structural, but nothing beats a solid "3-4 completely separate subplot on storylines in a collision course with each other." Yeah, that's almost every sitcom. But sometimes it's done so seamlessly that it feels like watching a magic trick.

"I'm housesitting for my boss" "Our relationship has gotten stale" "I don't want my weird relatives staying in my home" "A famous burglar just escaped from prison" Guess which house those storylines collide in!

Telling off your new boss on a matter of principle only to have them say, “Actually I was going to offer you a promotion.”

Have to get stuck on the subway

There is some problem that can only be resolved if a main character does something entirely against their nature. So all of the other characters devise a ridiculously elaborate scheme to trick the person into doing the thing. No one considers just asking them to do it as a favor or to help out.

When some character you've never heard of and who has never been mentioned before appears and the protagonist says this person practically raised them and swears they are the most important person in their life. After that episode the character never appears again and is never mentioned again.

Breaking into work to retrieve a resignation letter

or to someone's home to get an answering machine message.

Nothing, nothing, nothing will ever beat "job in the candy factory with a gradually accelerating conveyor belt."

Surely everyone can be quiet long enough so that my souffle in the oven won't collapse. Surely

Should the teen daughter lose her virginity?

An alien who loves to eat cats ate a slimeball (a Melmacian snack) which came from a bag on his spaceship: He finds the bag also contained a Melmacian cockroach which escapes from the bag. Bug spray made it grow huge & attacked the alien, & it was ultimately killed by being sprayed w/ perfume.

Reasoning with the bully before fighting underdog

The only competent & sensible member of the family/crew has a sequence of increasingly ridiculous troubles that send them into an uncharacteristic spiral of ‘cannot cope’, but the rest of the family/crew notice and come to their rescue with wacky hijinx.

The intervention for a mildly annoying habit that doesn't merit an intervention

Somebody is stuck in something.

peak

I just wrote a whole list of them Friday! atomictango.com/media/tv-dej... #TV #television

Anything that involves eavesdropping, bonus if it leads to a misunderstanding.

So, every episode of Three's Company

That’s the gold standard.

The robbery that everyone remembers differently, with each character’s story told in flashbacks.

Oooo! Rashomon effect! 😊

Leverage had the best/ funniest of these I've ever seen

Thanks for the tip.

At least they (the writers) were stealing from the best. #Kurosawa

The inevitable car gets wrecked by an inexperienced driver and everyone tries to hide the car

Waterpark

The "amnesia" episode. "WHO AM I?" "WHERE AM I?"

Just konk yourself on the head a 2nd time, everything goes back to normal then!

Bad boy convinces another bad boy to eat chili made from his dead parents

I'm so excited I'm so excited I'm... so... scared

“DONT LET THAT DOOR CLO…”

date meets parents or pretending to be more successful than you are to impress your parents when they visit

Hawkeye and Trapper John/BJ Hunnicut so something crazy/silly/ possibly unethical. They perform surgery and insult Frank.

the Dream Sequence

Random episodes where the fourth wall is totally gone, although often at least one character is still themselves. Growing Pains did this and it was genuinely trippy for kid me. SPN had one of these as well

Christmas episodes where the supernatural explicitly exists, and this never impacts anyone’s life again. Though actually my favorite examples of this are from dramas (ER and My So-Called Life)

It’s either It’s a Wonderful Life or a Christmas Carol, every single time

Festivus

"these young people of today are misunderstood", esp early 70s/90s version youtu.be/86aQcKVRkX4?...

Anything to do with thirty something woman who gets pregnant as a teenager, has child without ANY parental/partner help and raises her perfectly while juggling multiple partners. It's like every cliche was written on index cards, thrown in a bag, and three were randomly chosen each episode.

One of the boys gets offered drugs.

A very special episode

Every harem romance 😆

Gilligan’s wacky antics cause hilarity easily resolved in 24 minutes.

Cosby. I thought they'd never find Theo's comb. Also, a white truck driver and his monkey getting into adventures and fighting crime was once a thing. Yikes.

This was even better because Claude Akins played the monkey

He had experience in this!

Two dates / same night

They go to Hawaii. There's waterskiing and a shark. Maybe a spider and/or a cursed idol. None of those on location Hawaiian tax subsidies disabused me of the hardened underworld McGarrett and Danno had to deal with on the regular. I never would find out what poi was till decades later.

Named after the sound you make when you try to eat it.

Burglary episodes: Fresh Prince Uncle Phil (🕊) listened to Will and hired a returning citizen as a handyman. The 'house' was robbed, automatically blaming the handyman but Uncle Phil's assistant swiped them. 🗣 y'all live in Bel-Air. $4,737,711 homes, average value. How? How?!

Drugs are bad m'kay?

The guy who's not even a doctor has to deliver a baby

I also always loved that even though Gilligan & crew were on an uncharted island, THREE of their doppelgangers wound up there

Teen daughter gets pregnant 1-hour special.

When you get the Gibbons Kids on The Gong Show but your morbidly obese, backflipping best friend secretly enters too!

“Smile, You’re on Mars Camera” Gilligan’s Island. So stupidly funny from start to finish. “There’s Chicken People. On Mars!”

Omg I love this one 🤣 I have the entire series on DVD

I would too if only for the hotpants

Truly a great episode. No irony

Twin sisters or twin brothers mix-up hi-jinx

I’ve always enjoyed the various retelling of Flowers for Algernon.

Which shows besides The Simpsons did that?

Stargate Atlantis did a heartbreaking one

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia did one as well.

Also Futurama

Where all the main, maybe not so hot looking, male protagonists had hot wives/girlfriends. One of my crushes…

"The one person who could get us in trouble just walked in. Now we have to do elaborate series of hiding and dodging antics so we don't get spotted." Bonus points if they get away with it.

V randomly I thought of an episode of "Small Wonder" where Dad decides to cash in his "I built a convincing android child" chip to get promoted & move to Japan, but Wife & Son don't want to move & Annoying Neighbor wants the promotion, so everybody's fighting to prove Vicki is or isn't an android.

Marcia gets hits in the nose. Date might have to be cancelled. Alice loses her apron.

Every episode of Hogan's Heroes. "...hijinks ensue at Nazi POW camp"

I miss the "cool hidden lair with an entrance under a mechanized prison camp bunk" setting