Yesterday, I rewatched the episode of Modern Family where Mitch and Cam get married. I started wondering if there’s ever been a sitcom wedding or birth without sitcom wackiness. I assume they exist, I just can’t think of them.
What would be the point? The purpose of a sitcom is to milk 3-5 laughs (or at least polite chuckles) every minute of screen time, mostly through ‘wackiness’, cutting insults, and misunderstandings. Or, in the case of the yes-they-actually-made-this “Heil Honey, I’m Home!”, finding the giggles in the madcap schemes of fascist leader and genocidal maniac Adolf Hitler and his boo, Eva Braun.
Stranger
True, there probably wouldn’t be much point to a sitcom wedding or birth played straight, which explains why what the OP is asking for is rare. But that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be any examples, so I think it’s a reasonable question.
After all, some people watch some sitcoms not so much for the laughs as for the “comfort food”—the chance to spend a little time with characters they’ve come to know and love and may even think of as a sort of surrogate family or friends. So for such people I can kind of see the appeal of watching those characters celebrate a happy occasion, even if nothing particularly wacky happens.
I could have forgotten, but I don’t recall any wackiness on Modern Family when Haley had her twins.
Parks and Rec avoided most of the “everything goes wrong” sitcom tropes when it came to weddings and births:
Andy and April - It was a surprise wedding but there wasn’t any real drama behind it.
Ron and Diane - Happened in the cold opening at the clerks office
Donna’s - The whole joke was that there was NO drama because April did such a good job
Ben and Leslie - This was the only one that had a usual “everything goes wrong” plot
All the births happened offscreen, except for April and Andy’s, which was all straightforward other than them still being in Halloween costume.
I’m not sure if this counts since the whole scene was stupid enough that I know at least one person that gave up on the show after it, but on Grace and Frankie Mallory had a baby without it involving all kinds of wacky/contrived problems. The stupid part was that she went into labor and a few minutes later she pulled the baby out of her pants. Like she was walking and it just…fell out of her. But, if memory serves, everything else was ‘normal’.
I don’t even think there was some pressing reason within the show for them to do that. Even if they wanted her to have the baby at the house, they could’ve done it on a bed or the floor or something. But other than that, I don’t recall it being an ‘everything goes wrong’ thing.
Sideshow Bob’s wedding to Selma was surprisingly wackiness-free.
House M.D. had a wedding of Chase and Cameron and it wasn’t wacky.
Do I remember correctly?
If we’re thinking of the same series, starring Hugh Laurie, I don’t think it’s considered a sitcom.
What IS a wedding? Webster’s defines it as ‘the joining of metals with heat.’
“The process of removing weeds from one’s garden”
I am not sure if there has even been a drama series wedding without serious complications- usually a last minute cancelation.
IIRC it lasted like a couple episodes?
I think Ted and Georgette’s wedding was serious, not played for laughs: Georgette called him on his continual backing down. The clear implication was that “This is it, Ted”. That’s pretty serious - and Ted agreed and they got married right away.
Sure, there were some jokes along the way, to get the wedding done right away in Mary’s apartment, but the fundamental theme was serious:
“Do you love me, Ted?”
And his answer was “Yes”.
I thought it marked a major development in both characters: Georgette showing she wasn’t just a soft ditzy person, and Ted showing that he wasn’t a vain buffoon.
Roseanne went in the other direction when Darlene & David’s daughter was born: the baby almost died. It was a pretty serious episode. Come to think of it, I think their wedding was when Dan had a heart attack.
The new version “The Connors” had a similar episode with the oldest daughter having her baby premature and the family spending time in the ICU with her and the baby.
Niles and Daphne’s weddings (religious and civil) on Frasier were drawn-out, setback-strewn and comical, while the birth of their first child was handled briefly but seriously IIRC.
If I remember correctly didn’t Coach have Hayden and Christine (I think that’s the characters name) get married? Usual hijinks happen and it ends up with Christine hanging on to a chandelier swinging back and forth. That’s around the time I stopped watching it.
Daphne’s baby was delivered by a veterinarian, which is where everyone ended up after Ronnie’s wedding ring ended up in the pate that Eddie ate. I’d say that ranks at least medium on the wacky scale.
Huh, thanks. I’d forgotten that.