In TV shows, if a couple have an argument, or have to sleep separately for some reason, or if someone stays over, the sofa is always used as the place for them to sleep. In really small homes, this makes sense, but it happens even in places where there obviously is a spare bedroom.
The most recent example was in Grimm, where a character has a two-storey house with a large kitchen, living room, dining room, study and hall on the ground floor (that we’ve seen so far) and on the second storey there is, apparently, one bedroom. (Two people live in the house). Otherwise why would someone sleep on the sofa? For weeks, while complaining about it?
Anyone else ever notice this? I’m struggling to think of concrete examples, but I know I’ve noticed it before even in actual mansions.
The spare bed doesn’t actually have sheets on it, just a flimsy coverlet. They keep meaning to buy new ones, but nobody ever comes to visit. And, the sheets they use when they sleep on the sofa (who does that, anyway?) are from an old twin bed and they’re too small for the full- or queen-sized bed in the guest room.
Or, it means they don’t have to build another set.
That’s what I think too. Though I wouldn’t have thought very slightly changing the existing bedroom set would be so difficult. It also allows for characters to walk in on each other, and so on.
However, it defies reality. Hence me calling it a TV trope.
Sleeping on the sofa makes some sense. Perhaps the bed in the spare room is covered in stuff or there is some other reason this isn’t an option. But the TV show/movie cliche I never understood is the one where every bed in the house is taken, so the character takes a blanket and prepares to sleep in the bathtub. First of all, you can’t lay down in a tub, and also, it’s going to get really cold. It would be more comfortable to try sleeping on the bare floor.
A lot of people who have an extra room use it for other purposes such as an office, a rec room, a home theatre, a workout room, a hobby room, a library, general storage, etc rather than make it a spare bedroom.
There’s also the narrative reason. Having somebody sleeping on a couch conveys that they are an unwelcome guest or a husband who offended his wife. A person sleeping in a bed in a spare bedroom looks too comfortable to convey this point visually.
In the example I’m thinking of, none of the real world reasons would count. We’re talking weeks, and they are expecting this situation to continue. It’s the same in many other shows.
And hell, anyone I know who has a spare bedroom can use it for guests even if they also sometimes use it for other purposes.
I understand the in-show reasons for doing it, but I’d respect a show more if it didn’t default to them - if they could manage to have someone be annoyed about sleeping in the guest room and feeling like a guest, maybe, instead of the sofa making them sleep badly for weeks in a house where there must be more than one bedroom. It breaks the fourth wall a little otherwise.
We have a spare bedroom. It is used mostly for storage. When the GF’s sister or bum son stays over, I would prefer they use the spare room but usually opt for the couch.
That’s about where we are at my place. Two bedrooms for a couple, bedroom 2 is storage and potentially hobby stuff now that I’ve sorted it out about enough to get a work table in there. Around half our books are also in that room. So is the upright freezer and some pantry shelves (no room in the kitchen).
When I was half of a we and we had a spare room and separate sleeping was appropriate I chose the sofa over the spare room because there was no TV in there.
This thread really is not going the way I expected. I thought there’d be someone saying that maybe the extra bedroom is used for something else, but everyone? Every single respondent? What’s up with that? Did anyone read the OP?
My home has a spare bedroom. But it doesn’t have a bed in it, I use it as my DVD library. Admittedly I live in a small home, which the OP already accounts for, but it’s not infeasible that larger homes have a similar situation.
I agree completely, though that technically wouldn’t be a narrative motivation, but a semiotic (or symbolic) one. (A narrative reason proper would be that they use the guest room as an office or something.)
I read it and I just reread it three times. I don’t see where you mentioned the idea of a potential spare bedroom being used for some other purpose. You OP seemed to assume that any house that is large enough to have an available room would have a spare bedroom. So most of us are pointing out the main reason why this wouldn’t be true.
I don’t know about TV, but at the moment, while our kitchen, laundry room and computer/junk room are being renovated, our spare bedroom is filled to the brim with boxed up stuff, including the bed.
So if I was to sleep somewhere besides my bed, it would be the couch. Normally, it would be the spare bedroom though, like you suggest.
I LOVE sleeping on my sofa. I curl up under my velour throw and go out like a light during David Letterman. If I go upstairs and try to sleep in a real bed, I’m wide awake for hours.
They even borrowed this on Downton Abbey last night; following a fallout with his wife Lord Grantham sleeps in his dressing room in spite of living in a mansion with more than 100 rooms.
Though the White House also has many guest rooms and Bill Clinton claims that after his post-Monica Lewinsky fallout with Hillary he slept on a sofa in his office. (Not the oval office but his real office, where he said the sofa is extremely comfortable.)
Yeah, exactly that’s part of what I was talking about, and has some good examples. But I was also thinking of overnight guests and couples having to sleep separately for reasons other than arguments.
I never claimed that I had mentioned that. Where did I say that?
What I mean is, my OP is talking about TV shows where there clearly is a spare bedroom. The characters do not have hobbies, and they do have lots of money and space. I stated in the thread title that this is a TV trope, something often seen on TV but not necessarily in real life. This is Cafe Society. I was not asking “what do you guys keep in your spare bedrooms?”
And all these responses are making it sound as though Americans pretty much never have a spare bedroom that they let guests sleep in - it’s so, so common for spare rooms to be stuffed with stuff that that MUST be the reason for TV show characters sleeping on the sofa - it’s completely logical, not just a TV trope. They find it perfectly reasonable to sleep on an uncomfortable sofa for weeks (like the example in my OP) rather than clear out one of those bedrooms. I find this pretty hard to believe, TBH, but that’s what you guys are making it sound like.
(At least, the responses up till then. Sampiro gets what I meant).
In the TV Tropes link, shows like the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Frasier (Niles’ apartment) are mentioned. Are you guys seriously claiming that those men were exiled to the couch for practical reasons? They actually didn’t have spare bedrooms in a home that was an actual mansion and a home that had a special room for wrapping gifts? It seems more likely to me that it was done for in-show/symbolic reasons.
I never claimed that I had mentioned that. Where did I say that?