the family will also take their closest friends, two co-workers, several distant relatives, and five neighbors.
When children graduate and go on to another school, the favorite teacher…
(Which is incidentally in Hawaii as a ratings boost), the family arrives at the plush hotel and learns that their reservation is for a no-star hotel with a similar name on the other side of the island.
If the family of 4 is sitting down to eat a meal…
…decides to transfer and will be their new next door neighbor.
If the family of 4 is sitting down to eat a meal…
The two kids will sit together on one side and the parents will sit on the ends, leaving the other side of the table free of chairs.
Any smart, clothes-savvy guy will invariably, at some point in the show, be mistaken for…
…being someone’s gay friend.
Whenever someone yells, “Hey, don’t open that!”…
It scares the person into dropping the package, breaking the ancient ming vase inside.
Two antagnoists get locked together in a storage room overnight…
If they’re of the opposite sex, they end up making out. If they’re of the same sex, one will reveal a horrific childhood experience that will bond them together forever.
If a huge hurricane/tornado/blizzard is heading toward town…
…The pregnant character, three weeks from her due date, goes into labor.
And the midwife will be…
…a male main character completely unsuited to delivering a baby any time, ever. He will hook up with her by the end of the series.
A male character is forced to pretend to be a girl for some reason. He is baldly unable to conceal the fact that he’s a dude to the audience. Everyone in TV land is duped, especially…
…his girlfriend who lives in the dorm room next door.
Whenever the mom has to go out of town by herself and leave the household in the care of the dad…
The place ends up a complete disaster as Mom expected but either a female relative or usually nosy/annoying next door neighbor or a cleaning service team will straighten the place out just before the Mom returns and thus she will be left feeling …
Unneeded, and therefore unimportant.
And whenever a sitcom character feels unneeded and unimportant, all the other characters get together and decide to…
… reminisce (clip show!) about all the problems they have faced together.
A main character meets a famous (in the TV show’s 'verse) person that they’ve been moony about since forever (read: only in that episode) and…
…that person is the “real life” version of the actor playing the character, and they get mistaken for each other.
In order to make the “dumb kid” not seem so dumb when he’s ready to try for other roles, it turns out that all his bad grades are because…
he has whatever learning disorder has been on Oprah most recently.
Three things that are true about nerds in high school are…
that they are always willing to help a pretty girl with her homework or science lab even if it took away from their chess or D&D playing.
The next two most popular TV nerd activities are …
Klingon Boggle and Halo.
(Yes, I watch Big Bang Theory) 
When someone gets fired from their job…
A friend will have to trick them into accepting money (I’m thinking Friends) and someone in their immediate circle will have the inside track to a position in the exact field that their friend specializes in. The interviewer will be someone the person has had a recent conflict with, but all will be resolved by the next episode.
For Halloween, the main couple will dress as…
…something where the wife’s costume is tight and shows as much leg as possible (cat, Goldilocks, etc.) and the husband’s costume loosely covers him from head to foot (dog, bear suit, etc.).
A sitcom husband somehow lucked into two tickets for the Super Bowl. All episode, he looks forward to the game, and wonders who he should take. Other characters make their pitches as to why they should go with him. But in the end, Husband doesn’t get to the game because…
He decides to go to this wife / children’s Very. Important. Event. Because family is SO much more important than sports.
The sitcom husband gives his two tickets to…