“Well, I don't think I’ll be here In 10 years, but...”
“That’s what I said.”
When did work stop being funny, or even fun?
Workplace dramas have been consistent ratings draws from
the 50’s to the present, giving people windows into a variety
of exciting, high-adrenaline careers.
But the comfortable, relatable workplace tv comedy
has a much more fickle history, one that closely mirrors our evolving
relationship to capitalism and our place in that system.
Fundamentally, our willingness to spend 22 minutes joking
around in someone else's office has a lot to do with
how we feel about our own jobs.
“It sounds an awful lot like what I do here every day.”
Early workplace sitcoms promised that work gives you purpose,
fulfillment and colleagues that feel like family.
“[Crying] I treasure you people.”
A more secure economy in the 90s led to focus instead on fulfillment
outside of work, until the economy faltered in the 2000s,
and Americans re-discovered the power of the office sitcom.
But one with a more critical edge.
“What is going on?”
“Brian came in this morning and started making cuts.
I can’t go back to teaching high school math!”
Now though, is the workplace sitcom finally dead?
Here’s our take on the rise and fall, and rise and fall of workplace comedy.
How it tracks the shift of the American economy, and how it reveals our secret
feelings on what it’s like to be a cog in the capitalist machine.
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Early sitcoms were much more interested in family life and careers.
“This crying is getting on my nerves.”
“Why didn't you say so Fred, little Ricky's only
crying because he thought you liked it.”
Then, as the baby boomers started going to work in the late 60s and early 70s,
TV producers saw a market for shows that focused on this new generation,
young, single and career driven.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show focused on a strong independent woman
at a news program in Minneapolis, navigating the complexities of being
a woman in the workplace.
“I'm doing as good a job as he did.” “Better.”
“Better!” “And I'm being paid less than he was
because…” “You’re a woman!”
There was plenty of conflict to keep the comedy flowing,
but Mary loved her job and her boss supported her.
The whole team acted more like a family than a group of coworkers.
“What is a family anyway, they're just people who
make you feel less alone, and really loved.”
The hit show, which won the Best Comedy Emmy three years
in a row and launched multiple spin offs, shaped the spirit of office
sitcoms to come, while off screen in the 1980s an
economic boom made America more enamored with work than ever.
A wave of shows about workplaces
like Designing Women, WKRP in Cincinnati,
and Murphy Brown may have touched on the petty frustrations of work,
but they celebrated the office as a place of community,
self-actualization, and fighting your way to the top.
“When you see that brass ring, go for it, and never
let anything get in your way.”
Most of these sitcoms centered on middle class offices,
but a few did explore working class jobs.
Starting in the late 70s, Taxi followed cabbies at a dispatch center,
while beginning in 1982, Cheers centered on
the employees and regulars at a Boston bar.
The characters on these working class Shows were more critical of their jobs.
“That's one good thing about being a cab driver,
you never have to worry about getting fired from a good job.”
But they shared the same admiration for the power of the workplace to
bring people together, and in the end, still formed a family through the job.
Elements of these sitcoms haven't always aged well from a modern lens,
they sometimes parroted Reagan-era messages about empowerment
through capitalism, and laughed off wildly inappropriate workplace behavior.
“You know, I always wanted to pop you one. Maybe it is my lucky day.”
“You disgust me. I hate you.” “Are you as turned on as I am?”
“More!”
They also struggled with some major blind spots when it came to race.
Nearly all the main characters were white,
and even a show like Designing Women, which featured a black central character,
often dipped into offensive stereotypes for laughs.
“I am not eating octopus, walking around in my stocking feet or taking
a bath with my neighbors, no matter what those little people say.”
Overall though these shows resonated to a degree,
that they were many
of the most popular comedies on TV. They also provided a platform for
discussing important issues, especially gender equality.
The Mary Tyler Moore Show became the first sitcom to discuss contraception.
“Don’t forget to take your pill.” “I won’t!”
And in its first season, Cheers won awards from Glaad for challenging
stereotypes about gay people.
Murphy Brown was so influential that it earned condemnation from
Vice President Dan Quayle,
after it was revealed that Murphy would be raising a baby as a single mother.
“In searching for the causes of our social ills,
we could choose to blame the media,
or an administration that's been in power for 12 years.
Or, we could blame me.”
The workplace comedy in the 70s and 80s revealed how America saw itself during
those decades, as a nation finding its way to success.
We were ready to work hard, but we were still a good-hearted
family who were in it together, and success was our inevitable reward.
Then came that reward that everybody had been working towards.
As the Cold War ended, the US entered the 90s
as the undisputed world power, enjoying a soaring economy.
“Our economy is the healthiest it has been in three decades.”
Terms like work-life balance popped up in conversation,
jobs became less central to identity, and TV comedies about other people
working could feel a little mundane.
By the mid 90s, the most watched sitcoms
were less focused on work friends than real friends.
One of the defining cultural hits of the decade,
Seinfeld, was famously a show about nothing,
but that nothing really took place at work.
“Boys, I'm retiring.” “From what?”
When it did, characters job hop from one pointless gig to another,
their success or lack thereof just part of a random, meaningless lottery.
“Well, I’m sorry, there's just no way that we can keep you on.”
“I don't even really work here.” “That's what makes this so difficult.”
This feeling of zany dysfunction and characters who didn't
care about their jobs, carried through to actual
workplace 90s sitcoms like Spin City, Just Shoot Me and The Drew Carey Show.
“Oh, you hate your job? Oh my God why didn’t you say so?
You know there’s a support group for that,
it's called everybody.”
And the decade's biggest most influential shows, Friends and Frasier,
followed casts of characters who held good jobs,
but somehow spent most of their screen time chatting in coffee shops.
Work problems took center stage in one-off episode plots,
or factored into a story arc about characters
chasing personal fulfillment, instead of just money.
Characters sought the bravery to pursue a rewarding career that wasn't as much
of a financial sure thing, or worried if they had sold out.
“You don't think this is the selling out of Frasier, Crane?”
“Oh, certainly not. You sold out a long time ago.”
In the late 90s and 2000s, plenty of shows featured characters
with high-powered or interesting sounding careers,
but the jobs were mostly background for exploring relationships.
Even when co-workers were major characters like
Grace and Karen on Will and Grace, they spent far more time on hijinks
than doing their jobs.
“I'm Karen Walker, I'm supposed to be Grace's assistant.”
Girlfriends made a point to establish Joan as a highly skilled lawyer,
but the workplace scenes were still typically
centered on drama in her social life.
For 10 years, only three workplace comedies were even
nominated for Emmys, Allie McBeal, The Larry Sanders Show and Scrubs,
with Ally McBeal and Scrubs focusing on sex lives more than work.
Just as a show like Sex in the City centered Carrie's job as a sex columnist,
mostly so it could explore romance.
The workplace comedy was dead, a victim of an economic boom
that taught a generation that working should be like going to the bathroom,
an embarrassing necessity you never talk about in public.
“Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.”
“I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob.”
If the economy had continued to flourish,
maybe the workplace sitcom would have stayed dead.
But the 90s era of optimism ended with the Dotcom Crash and ensuing recession.
After 9/11 proved the US wasn't invulnerable after all,
rising Chinese economic power,
the gutting of manufacturing that followed NAFTA,
the housing crisis and skyrocketing inequality pushed Americans
into the arms of a new kind of workplace comedy.
One that was mad as Hell. In 2005, The Office brought its
cringeworthy critique of work life to American network TV,
taking inspiration from the even more cynical 2001 British original.
“You’re fired, Keenan. Drunkard. [Laughs] Hypocrite warning.”
When the employees at Dunder Mifflin had no hope of finding meaning and
fulfillment in their jobs, and the absurdity of
work no longer felt so fun and innocuous as it had in the 90s.
Now, employees lived in fear of being defined by the
brutal banality of the office.
“If I advance any higher in this company then this would be my career.
Well, if this were my career, I'd have to throw myself in front of a train.”
Corporate hierarchy was a pain. Bad bosses drove people to desperation.
“Michael, you are the reason I drink.”
And humors centered on comparing the workplace unfavorably to prison.
“What was prison like?” “Not terrible, boring.
We do the same thing every day. But at least we get outdoors time.”
“You got outdoors time?”
Over time The Office grew more schmaltzy and optimistic.
Like in old school workplace sitcoms, the co-workers still eventually
became a family, and found themselves through the workplace.
“Everything I have, I owe to this job.”
But their company, Dunder Mifflin,
was still a malignant drain on their psyches.
And part of why the characters bond so deeply is through
this shared burden of corporate toxicity.
The toxic workplace presented in The Office soon became a
popular feature in shows like 30 Rock, Ugly Betty, and Party Down.
In 2007, workplace shows represented all but one of the
comedy nominees at the Emmys.
But even as the workplace sitcoms surge back into the zeitgeist,
these shows residing a very different geist.
They emphasize that the nonsense of corporate structures is poisonous,
symptomatic of broader, more troubling trends in society.
“I’m the new vice president of East Coast Television and
microwave oven programming.”
Mary Tyler Moore’s plucky TV producer may have loved her colleagues' quirks,
but her spiritual successor Liz Lemon is constantly
tormented by infuriating co-workers, and the
cold demands of capitalism.
“You have to fire 10% of your staff.” “What?”
“We have to synergize backward overflow.”
A few sitcoms,
like Parks and Recreation starting in 2009,
still express positivity about how caring about your work
really can help people.
“We fought, scratched and clawed to make people's lives a tiny bit better.”
But even the miraculously driven and devoted Leslie faces an uphill
battle against incompetent or malicious co-workers,
a hopelessly bureaucratic system, and a public who hates the government.
“You choose a thankless job, you can't be upset when nobody thanks you.”
And other characters on the show resonated with audiences
for their anti-work ethic.
“I want to do things, I want to not do things.”
Meanwhile, 2010s workplace comedies like Veep and Silicon Valley revealed
that even elite workplaces are filled with incompetence and stupidity.
As the overgrown boys of Silicon Valley fail upwards,
the show reminds viewers that while the tech industry is the field
assumed to be filled with logic and intelligence,
it's just as often ruled by ego and immaturity.
“They spent $200,000 just to –”
“Yeah, that's nothing. Peter would spend millions just to mildly annoy Gavin.”
Success is more about chasing fleeting
trends and the whims of rich people than being good at your job.
And the show's creators have emphasized
that their comedy didn't really have to exaggerate much,
because portraying the tech world as is, is already pretty ridiculous.
In recent years, economic inequality has destroyed the kind of middle-class jobs
where Mary and Murphy found meaning, and shows like Superstore and
Kim's Convenience map the indignities of low wage service jobs.
“If jobs were fun, they wouldn't pay us to do it.”
It's a climate where viewers increasingly
want their entertainment to confront the harsh truths of worker exploitation,
rather than turn workplaces into heartwarming, found families.
Meanwhile, millennial shows like Broad City, Girls, Insecure,
and Search Party follow the 90s model
of focusing primarily on friendships and personal fulfillment,
and use work as occasional fodder for absurdist episodes.
Unlike in the 90s though, that trend doesn't reflect job security,
but the lack of it.
In a gig economy where young people are implicitly taught to view reliable
paid work as some kind of privilege that's out of reach.
“I've been kind of obsessed with getting paid,
and I was wondering if that's happening today.”
“Checks unfortunately delayed till Friday, bummer.”
As TV jobs have fractured to match the splintered realities of capitalism,
the audience for office sitcoms has fractured too.
The last time a workplace comedy cracked the top 30 rated shows was
almost a decade ago when Two Broke Girls snuck its way to 28th.
It's a lot harder to get 20 million people
to buy into the office as a source of fulfillment.
And as the genre's audience shrinks, so does this influence.
People are changing the channel, and who can blame them?
Watching the American Dream die is just not that much fun.
“Every day feels like I've died and gone to hell.”
Those workplace comedies that do resonate today,
while still not reaching anywhere near the viewership of years past,
are putting their characters to work in more outlandish places,
while weaving in cutting social critiques.
Space Force marks the chaos of the United States government,
and the irrational work environment it creates.
“How many times can a country waste the entire lifetime earnings
of thousands of its citizens, without something really bad happening.”
Barry suggests that in late-stage capitalism,
even murder can be a slog, with annoying co-workers and unreasonable bosses.
“Well, what do you want me to do?
Go to John Wick Assassin hotel with help wanted sign?”
Ted Lasso has recently tried to restore faith in the workplace
by revolving around the sincere, caring, and optimistic UK football coach Ted.
Ted cares more for his players well-being than their job performance,
and this positivity seems to be winning audiences over.
“For me, success is not about the wins and losses.
It is about helping these young fellas be
the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”
Yet, as the show acknowledges Ted's nonchalance about winning
would make him hugely unpopular with real life fans,
and would hardly categorize them as a workplace success story.
Movies and television provide a reflection of what we value in society.
In the 70s and 80s, people saw work as a place to complete themselves.
“It's not about the paycheck. It's about respect.
It's about looking in the mirror,
and knowing that you've done something valuable with your day.”
But over time, people began to realize that their needs
didn't quite align with the demands of their companies.
“Now if I work my ass off, and Initech ships a few extra units,
I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation?”
The workplace sitcom’s gradual transition from celebrating
co-workers' trust and shared success to confronting inequality
and labor conditions reflects a broader shift in our society.
“What?
A corporation doing something unethical to protect its interest?
This is shocking!”
Americans spend over a third of our waking lives working.
More time than we spend eating, drinking, or talking to our family.
For many of us, work becomes a form of identity.
“You become, you get a job, you become the job.”
But anti-capitalist ideologies are on the rise among young people.
People are sick of feeling disrespected and under-appreciated at work,
while the cost of living continues to rise faster than salaries.
Before we can start laughing and
forming families in the workplace comedy again,
it's not just the TV formula that needs to reinvent itself.
Our real world workplace will need some major disruption too.
“Working feels bad,
and I don't ever want to work one more day in my entire life.”
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