Sitcoms do unbelievable things in the name of comedy all the time.
A man owns a monkey in New York City, a group of friends trade apartments based on a trivia game, Rachel likes Ross.
Ok, those are all examples from Friends, but regardless of the source, everyone understands there is a certain suspension of disbelief a viewer must maintain in order to laugh at the silly predicaments our sitcom characters find themselves in.
I will forgive a lot, especially in the pursuit of a laugh, but I cannot suspend my disbelief far enough to watch the wedding episodes of most major sitcoms.
Sitcom weddings should not exist. They are contradictory terms.
Weddings in sitcoms give us insight into wedding and sitcoms in a way that illuminates the antithetical nature of their existence.
With the casual revolution putting an end to most job’s formal clothing dress codes, the dying out of social clubs, and the dwindling participation in religious ceremonies, weddings remain the only place America still dresses up (post-Prom) and expects to participate in a formal ceremony, with strict rules of conduct (no talking, no wearing white, gift must be a certain value, etc.)
There aren’t many things that are sacred in our modern lives, but if any event comes close it’s weddings.
Sitcoms, on the other hand, often rely on heightening reality to get jokes: putting characters in improbable situations (read: sustained misunderstanding), making them draw improbable conclusions, and then acting in ways no human reliably would.
The problem is, you can’t heighten a wedding.
Weddings are the height of social events. They are often thought of as the happiest day in someone’s life besides the birth of their children.
This is a much finer line to walk than most sitcoms are used to walking, Trying to raise the stakes above and beyond the high stakes of someone’s happiest-day-of-their-life is risky.
It doesn’t help that shows often feel the need to do something memorable for The Big Wedding Episode which leads, more often than not, wedding episodes of major sitcoms leaping over the shark of reasonably-suspended-disbelief into the unsure waters of No Fucking Way.
Here, I’ve gathered the wedding episodes of some of the biggest sitcoms of all-time to see how they match up against each other on a meter of ridiculousness (no Rob Dyrdek).
Parks & Recreation: April & Andy
Season 3, Episode 9
“April and Andy’s Fancy Party”
Ridiculousness Factor: 6/10
Now, of all the characters included in this list, the most likely couple to get married the same day they thought about getting married would be April Ludgate and Andy Dwyer from P&R.
That said, this same-day wedding is still too much to swallow.
Here’s the summary:
“What if we got married tomorrow?” to which April replied, “Fine.” They were married at their dinner party (which was actually a surprise ceremony) in front of their friends and family.[1][13] With a great deal of help from new housemate Ben Wyatt they have learned, to a limited extent, how to live and act like working adults.
Even the basest dinner parties need more planning than this, if just to make sure all the people you want to invite can make it.
With all that said, we’re starting off this list with one of the less shocking ceremonies.
Scrubs: Turk & Carla
Season 3, Episode 22
“My Best Friend’s Wedding”
Ridic factor: 6.5/10
This episode is a good diagram of how sitcoms, especially the wedding episodes, ratchet up the levels of disbelief (sometimes confused for earned tension) to the point they become too much to take by the end.
Let’s go point by point.
- Turk wants more time off, so he works on the day of his wedding.
“If I work this shift I can finagle 2 extra days on the honeymoon”.
If anyone could finagle a good amount of time off at their job for a honeymoon I would think it would be a doctor? A surgeon at that?
Turk tells Carla this the morning of their wedding.
And sure, Turk is Turk, but Carla is Carla and I don’t think she’s putting up with that shit. And while she has Dr. Reid hit him for her, Turk’s response of, “worse case scenario, i’m a little late for the wedding” is good enough to end the discussion.
Funny, but too hard to believe in the context of Carla Espinosa’s fucking wedding day.
- Turk is late because the operation takes longer than expected.
We knew this would happen. The predictability and easy-to-avoid nature of this problem means our frustration as viewers is rising.
- Turk goes to the wrong church, thus the ceremony is cancelled.
Can’t the wedding wait longer for its groom? Not that he deserves it but no, and it’s not explained why.
Everyone makes up at the end of the episode AND THEN…. the writers couldn’t help themselves.
- Turk and Carla decide to stop by the hospital on their way to their honeymoon.
- The person Turk operated on turns out to be a priest.
- Carla and Turk get married in the hospital/ their place of work by the priest Turk operated on earlier that day.
I would rate it higher in ridiculousness but, similar to Andy and April, the expectations for Turk are heightened to begin with, giving him a little more leeway when ruining his own wedding.
Parks & Recreation: Leslie & Ben
Season 5, Episode 14
“Leslie and Ben”
Ridiculousness Factor: 7/10
2 seasons after Andy and April, Ben and Leslie’s wedding goes out of its way to try and make us forget the personalities of the characters we’ve spent 5 years falling in love with.
Hulu’s description of the episode underlines the absurdity of its premise: “determined to get married, Leslie and Ben struggle to throw a wedding in 2 hours.”
Why?
Why do Leslie and Ben need to throw a wedding in 2 hours?
Because they simply “can’t wait 3 months”.
Sure.
Leslie Knope, the most neurotic, compulsive planner of all sitcom leads, does not want to meticulously plan out her wedding day.
Maybe Leslie still would’ve chosen to get married in her workplace, yes it looks pretty, and no, the dialogue doesn’t let us down (“I love you and I like you” is still a catchphrase in our household), but Leslie Knope would not get married without planning her wedding.
It’s a complete betrayal of her character.
But maybe that’s the power of love?
No. It isn’t. Not when it comes to a wedding.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine: Jake & Amy
Season 5, Episode 22
“Jake & Amy”
Ridiculousness Factor: 7/10
Another work based sitcom working too hard to have its main characters get married at work.
In this case, a bomb threat (and actual bomb) result in Jake & Amy’s big day getting cancelled.
While the writers have Amy slap enough nicotine patches on her back to make Aaron Eckhart’s Nick Naylor overdose in Thank You For Smoking, they do so somewhat disingenuously: in order to account for why Amy Santiago, the second most neurotic, compulsive planner of all sitcom leads, would be so okay with all of this happening on her wedding day, they point to the patches.
A second explanation for why the couple is ok with still trying to have a wedding the day a real bomb cancelled their wedding, Jake says he’d marry Amy anywhere, even “on the G train”.
The writer’s then (a third explanation now) have Amy address the premise in her vows,
“I’ve been planning this wedding for the last 6 months and if you told me yesterday, everything that was going to go wrong? I would’ve had a panic attack that sent me into the ER”
But wait…
“But I’m here, and I’ve never been happier. Life is unpredictable, not everything is in our control, but as long as you’re with the right people you can handle anything”
That’s right, sentiment cures all in a sitcom wedding.
In this case, the dialogue at the wedding sounds like a wedding these characters would have, and while having a case to solve is at the core of Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s identity, it’s a Brooklyn bridge too far (sorry) to think Amy Santiago would insist on getting married the same day a bomb threat ruined her planned wedding.
The Office: Vance’s, Jim & Pam
Season 3, Episode 15
“Phyllis’ Wedding”
Ridiculous Factor: 7.5/10
During what may be the most tangential-character wedding on this list, Michael Scott does what might be one of the most unwatchable-due-to-cringe things Michael Scott has done this side of Scott’s Tot’s: he speaks up, and generally interferes with, the wedding of Phyllis and Bob Vance.
How Bob Vance doesn’t murder him is just one of the too-far stretches this episode takes.
While Phyllis includes Michael in her wedding to get more time off work (providing a reason being a formality done away with by the next wedding on The Office) and while one of Michael’s most essential qualities is his need to be the center of attention, trying to outdo a grandfather who stands up from his wheelchair to walk down the aisle, and announcing the couple (“may I present to you…”) before the officiant is one of the times The Office has Michael Scott going too far, even for Michael Scott.
Season 6, Episodes 4 & 5
“Niagra Parts 1 & 2”
Ridiculous Factor: 8/10
While I think Rolling Stone’s assessment that this was the moment The Office jumped the shark is debatable, I do think it betrays viewers trust in some key ways.
- Jim is not cutting his tie. Any other day, any other reason, sure, love is that strong. But not on someone’s wedding day.
- Eloping to a boat an hour before their wedding? Jim and Pam are way more practical than that.
- Why are the office staff IN the wedding? Sure, we love the staff of Dunder Mifflin Scranton, but Jim and Pam are cool enough to have their own friends fill out their wedding parties.
- Kevin’s shoes are thrown away so he wears kleenex boxes to the wedding. Even for Kevin…
- And then, as we know, the staff of The Office cosplay a viral video.
We had a chance to see a memorable Jim and Pam wedding, instead we were only reminded of a wedding between two people we’ve never met, in St. Paul, MN.
Jim explains, “I bought those boat tickets the day I saw that YouTube video” but that’s no excuse for having Kevin stand up in your wedding.
Friends: Ross & Rachel, Kind Of
Ross kind of marries Rachel twice, while never actually marrying her once. Fun.
Season 4, Episodes 23 & 24
“The One With Ross’ Wedding Part 1 & 2”
Ridiculousness Factor: 9/10
The second of 2 sitcom wedding episodes to make Rolling Stone’s list of “Jumping The Shark: 10 Great Shows That Took a Turn For The Worse” the end of season 4 of Friends was a shocker.
While Jumping The Shark tends to refer to the episode where a show, forever after, goes downhill, my goal is to argue that whether a show remains good after a wedding or not, sitcoms can never seem to get weddings right for the same breaking-of-suspended-disbelief reasons that entire shows lose the good faith of their fans.
And none may have done that on a bigger stage than the time Ross marries that lady from England, but instead of saying her name, he says Rachel’s name.
Because you know, the moment in your life when all eyes are on you, all ears are anticipating your every word, and you’re just repeating what the officiant says, is the moment that you absent-mindedly say the name of an ex.
Even if I as a teenager was rooting for it, that does not mean we can forgive such a ploy.
The outstanding majority of people who should not even be getting married in the first place don’t even sabotage their own wedding day, and those people are probably far less neurotic than Ross.
Season 5, Episodes 23 & 24
“The One In Vegas: Parts 1 & 2”
Ridiculousness Factor: 9/10
Not one season later and Friends is at it again.
This time, giving the viewers what they want and taking it away just as quick, because TV-gods forbid Ross and Rachel lose the will-they-won’t-they dynamic before everyone stops caring about it.
Ross and Rachel get married, but of course it doesn’t count because they were both blacked out in Vegas.
So naturally they didn’t mean it and it sets up another half-season of, wait for it, annulment drama.
Blacking out happens.
Blacking out and being able to partake in an entire wedding ceremony is reserved for the alcoholic-likes of Nicolas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, in other words, people actively trying to drink themselves to death.
Cheers: Woody & Kelly
Season 10, Episodes 25 & 26
“An Old Fashioned Wedding”
Ridiculous Factor: 10/10
The Ridiculous Wedding Episode to end all Ridiculous Wedding Episodes.
Listed as one of the “10 Episodes that Show how Cheers Stayed Great for 11 Seasons” by the AV Club, it may be the most over the top wedding episode ever aired.
Granted, it reaches a certain, Naked Gun level of baffling-absurdity-meets-physical-humor that allows viewers to almost forget just how many sharks have been jumped.
But don’t be mistaken.
Everything in this episode is over the top in a way Cheers, on a whole, is not.
Where do we start?
- Woody and Kelly have decided not to have sex until their wedding. Even for late early 90s is anyone buying this?
- The minister dies. Ok, maybe that in and of itself isn’t over the top but…
- For some reason, the gang from the bar remains in the kitchen the entire day of the wedding, which works out well because it’s there where they FIND THE MINISTER HAS DIED AND THEN THEY HIDE HIM. Yup. It’s your best friend’s wedding, and YOU HIDE THE BODY OF A DEAD MINISTER RATHER THAN TELL ANYONE HE DIED.
- Kristie Alley yells at the chef and forces the entire cooking staff to leave. Taking over their duties of course.
- There’s a dog outside and Rhea Pearlman gets attacked. At this point, the reaction everyone has to a fucking dog attack makes sense given that their reaction to finding a dead priest IS TO HIDE HIM.
Betrayal
Weddings are tension enough. They are delicate moments that don’t hold up to the heightening of most sitcoms.
They don’t need to be heightened. In fact, they fall over, now top heavy.
All these episodes offer funny moments, but all of these sitcoms offer funny moments nearly every episode.
The real shame of is that these wedding episodes betray their characters.
Short of parasocial interaction sitcom characters become our friends.
Parasocial Interaction (PSI) is a term coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956 to refer to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television.[1] Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusionary experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show host, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them.
Unlike our favorite dramas, comedies are light-hearted, and hanging out with their casts feels closer to the way hanging out with our actual friends feels.
Tony Soprano is one of the greatest characters of all-time. But I don’t want to hang out with Tony Soprano in real life.
So when a comedy uses a wedding to bend our characters beyond recognition, it’s a betrayal not worth its effort.
Instead of being like the weddings on this list, oh, future rhetorical wedding episode of a sitcom I like, be like the last episode of The Office and the 9th and 10th episodes of the third season of All In The Family.
The Last Office & All In The Family
In the last episode of The Office Dwight and Angela get married.
Sure, Phyllis carries Angela down the aisle, and Dwight swings her by the torso while dancing, but the quirks are minimal and in-character (if a bit exaggerated), and it makes all the difference.
The episode even goes so far as to call-back to the Vance wedding in Season 3.
As u/HellotoHorse pointed out on reddit,
In S03E15, Phyllis’ Wedding, of The Office Dwight says “The Schrutes have their own traditions. We usually marry standing in our own graves.” In S09E24, Finale, Dwight and Angela get married standing in shallow graves.
All In The Family goes a step further and offers no sitcom-quirky frills in its season 3 wedding episodes.
Instead of black outs, or last minute work weddings, Archie Bunker is mad his daughter is getting married to a Polish Catholic and doesn’t want to use a Priest for their ceremony.
What follows is a frank, and often funny, discussion of ethnic and religious insecurities in a blue-collar, white household in the 1970s.
By avoiding the heightened nature of most sitcom weddings, All In The Family gives us a feel of what life was like in the time it existed, and probably more importantly to it as a piece of art, gives us a story that enhances our understanding, and relationship to, its characters.