How It's Used

“All of the above shows [My Name Is Earl, The Office, 30 Rock, and Scrubs] are single-camera sitcoms. In the most basic sense, this means that the action of each is captured with—count it—one camera. The look is cinematic and slick (like such single-camera forebears as The Munsters and M*A*S*H) rather than theatrical and energetic (as with I Love Lucy and Seinfeld and much else filmed in front of a studio audience). But in contemporary TV-land, the term is also a byword connoting hipness and edge and wise-assed sophistication and charismatic oddity. Arrested Development, the ne plus ultra of the form, existed in opposition to all those familiar multicamera sitcoms with a couch in the middle, a laugh track on top, and a squareness that goes to the bone.”

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