Comedy Pairs: Shows that are Linked Together

One of the things that I’ve noticed happens a lot in TV is that if you want to watch a comedy, then you’d better like the show that airs with it. Unless, of course, you are like me and watching multiple shows at the same time. Still, it seems that far too often, they air a good sitcom with a bad sitcom. Sometimes you are lucky and get two good ones or even get two bad ones that you can just ignore. But I thought that I would do this post on the subject in question.

You see, a lot of the times, there is a strong show that is used to be the lead-in of whatever new shows might be after it. There aren’t that many times where you’d see a newer show leading the hour. It can happen at times, but not too much. Normally the stronger show starts on the hour and the weaker or newer show starts at something 30.

Another thing to look out for with comedy pairs is something that I like to call the switch. This means that the one that starts earlier switches with the one that airs later so that the one that aired later is now airing earlier and the one that was airing earlier is now airing later. An example of this is when The Muppets was airing at 7:00 and Fresh off the Boat was airing at 7:30. (This is in Central Standard Time, in case you are confused.) At a point during this season, Fresh off the Boat was moved to 7:00 while The Muppets then aired at 7:30. What’s notable about the switch is that the show that now airs later is in every case I can think of where this happened (which isn’t many) ended up cancelled at the end of the season in question.

It is possible and likely that one part of the comedy pair will always be the same from season to season while another part will be changing from time to time each different season or even part of the same season in question. Once CBS found out what a rating hit The Big Bang Theory was, there were many different shows that would air after it. They would normally all get good ratings and stay around in the future because people didn’t want to abandon that show for something else since there was no other choice most times in terms of what to watch.

I don’t know what else there is to state on this topic. Normally, I’m annoyed by what there is in terms of comedy pairs as it normally isn’t the something I like for the whole hour. And it can be annoying as well because there normally aren’t comedies airing against each other. Well, sometimes there are. But that’s pretty much it for this post.