Shows in which the sets changed from the pilot would be an interesting thread in and of itself. Golden Girls was another one.
Also, Golden Girls had a different set-up than the common one described in the OP – front door at the back left of the living room (as seen from the camera), no stairs, kitchen/dining on the right, bedrooms/bathrooms in the back. They had a deck of some kind … was it off the kitchen?
Three’s Company was another with the no stairs/kitchen on the left set-up, though the front door happened to be on the right of the living room (bed/bath all on left).
Two and a Half Men seems to have a unique, fairly complex layout among sitcoms – split-level home, front door at the rear of most camera shots, kitchen and piano (and I think a media room?) off to the right, deck off to the left (another door to the deck to the rear?), beds/baths on a second level off to the rear left
The Golden Girls house is one of those with a design that couldn’t really exist and also that the interior doesn’t match the exterior shots. The exterior shows the garage and driveway as being toward the right side of the house while during interior shots the garage door was out the kitchen toward the left. The other problem being that if you followed the hallway to the bedroom (4 bedrooms and at least 3 bathrooms), it extended into the area where the garage would be.
The lanai (Hawaiian word for porch, that’s what Blanche always called it) was toward the front of the house behind the front door.
Right or left, it’s all still linear, and that’s because there are two or more cameras shooting at once and they can’t get in each other’s shot. Stairs are not enclosed because then you can block more interesting shots with people on different levels. (Not that they DO, much, but you CAN.)
Compare the houses in Arrested Development, which actually look like real houses. They’re not a line, because there’s only one camera set up at a time, and it follows people in through the front door, through the atrium, stairs up stage right, kitchen down stage left, living room down stage right.
Although, in the “linear sitcom apartment” defense, some of it is an urban thing. Almost every Chicago apartment, townhouse or brownstone is set up in a line, with the front door at the front (or, more specifically, just behind the living room, the first door in the hallway), a row of rooms, kitchen in the back. If you ripped the side wall off my building, it would be much like a sitcom apartment.
Some are, some aren’t. Up until about 15 years ago it wasn’t feasible to use real buildings at all, since cameras were too heavy to use anywhere other than a purpose-built studio with a smooth concrete floor (or else you had to put them on a camera crane, which was usually too big to fit in a “real building”). Hand-held TV cameras existed, but weren’t quite up to broadcast standards and were not used much.
All this changed when lightweight CCD cameras became good enough to use for TV. Nowadays most dramas are done on location in “real buildings”, since it’s both cheaper and more authentic. But comedies are mostly still done in the studio, since the producer usually wants to record them before an audience. The layout of a TV studio set generally reflects the need for the audience to be able to see what’s going on.
A little poking around, and I find that artist Mark Bennett is a tad obsessed with sitcoms and has produced blueprints of quite a few TV homes based on how they’re portrayed on TV, mixed with a bit of the reality of how homes are actually built. It would be interesting to see his take on the “impossible” Golden Girls home.
The book is called TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes, and is available at Amazon, in case you want to play around with their “Search Inside” feature which will let you look at a couple pages.
In addition to the plans, he’s also written blurbs on the shows. For Leave it to Beaver, he writes “A nicely decorated house it is. Ward and June should be proud of the personal touches like the pictures of Pinkie and Blue Boy…the Cleavers keep their home in immaculate condition. Why, any father who forces his son to sell his first car because it clutters up the driveway and makes the neighborhood look less than serene is a wonderful neighbor indeed.”
You were allowed to use “front” doors at homes you visited?
Though my grandparent’s home had a front door on the street, you always walked through the yard, and came in off the ‘back’ porch. Pretty much everyone I know is the same way. In my family, and my circle of friends, it’s an odd occurance, and you’d get a VERY strange look if you used the “front” door. You’d probably be asked “What are you…? Company???” We’d hardly ever knock before entering as well… YMMV. Perhaps it’s a New England thing.
the answer is pretty standard… it relates to stage directions and the “4 th wall” of stage design.
Scripts are, for the most part written along the lines of Stage left, right and (occaisionally) rear) entrances, or access to the stage. Cosby/MWC had door on right, kitchen on left and stair case in back ground. This allowed characters to enter and exit the scene via conventional terms in terms of stage direction/scripting. Modern camera technology certainly does allow for a roving point of view, but we, as an audience are accustommed to seeing a conventional left to right stage, and ever conservative media people don’t like to mess with that. It allows for easy “linearity” in plot progression and character placement (spotting). If the camera was “all over the place” , it would be very confusing as to whom was doing what, and why. And we as an audience would start reaching for the remote, looking for something more familiar.
regards
FML