... how would we fill up the program?
I won't claim that all sit-coms revolve around avoidable misunderstandings,
but certainly a great deal of them do. Someone overhears a telephone conversation
and misinterprets the meaning of the few sentences he or she hears, and of course
is then in need of what's left of a half hour program to finally iron things out,
along the way only making matters worse until somebody clears up the misunderstanding.
Numerous variations exist on this basic theme: There's the person who arrives
late to a meeting and doesn't get filled in on important details, the person who
has correct details on what has happened, but about the wrong people (or time,
or place), the person who receives the wrong message and (illogical as it may
be) assumes that it's the correct message and tries to act on it.
The permutations
are almost limitless, though of course tiringly repetitive. Come to think of it,
I don't think I've seen any sit-coms where the misunderstanding was based on something
sent via e-mail, though I'm sure that it's only a matter of time until that permutation
gets to television as well.
Go to: Down and Out from E-mail.