9 Sitcom Character Types
#1 Too Good For Her Own Good
I’ve done this as a YouTube video. Or you can read the script. Which do you prefer? Leave a comment below.
Why are people watching sitcoms? One word: characters.
What will make someone read all the way to the end of your spec script? Again, characters.
If I could have one more word, I’d have: relationships. But you can’t have relationships without characters, so let’s focus on characters.
Are your sitcom characters working? What’s the problem with them? Maybe they say funny things, but don’t have much reason to be in a scene. Maybe they are dominant or at least important but not funny. What’s wrong? Why aren’t they funny?
Your sitcom characters need to be funny, but they are not vehicles for funny lines and jokes. They are people with dreams, deep desires and dreads. And this why they keep banging into each other: because they have competing, conflicting or incompatible desires – which is funny. This is why they give out terrible advice: because they assume that everyone else wants the same thing as them, but they don’t – which is funny.
It’s not about who they are, or even what they are like. It is first and foremost about what the character really wants. That is the engine of the character. That is the source of motivation: desire… and fear.
Your characters don’t want things, or achievements. They want the abstract nouns those things bring: security, respect, freedom or love. Normally only one.
So let’s take this out of the conceptual. And cheat. I’m going to be using Enneagrams.
I have no idea how the Enneagramsters arrived at their conclusion, but they somehow boiled everything down into 9 basic personality types. Maybe there are nine. Myers-Briggs has 16 types. I prefer Enneagrams because they are great for thinking about basic needs, desires and fears. But I’m going to change the names to help us thinking bigger.
Today, we’re going to start with:
Type 1: the Goodie (or the Goodie Goodie)
The Goodie’s greatest need is to be good and morally virtuous. And they want to make things right. They are terrified of being exposed as being corrupt, evil and defective. They are conscientious – and often the angel on the shoulder of the other characters.
This is Arrested Development’s Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman). In a family of crooks and freeloaders, he wants to do the right thing. And it’s important that he’s not like his venal, lazy family who flout the law and help themselves to the family money. Another character like this would be Benton Frasier in Due South, one of my all-time favourite comedy dramas.
The Goodie is not a protesting activist. They are not trying to change the world. An activist may be pro-nature but have no personal scruples at all. They might be pursuing social justice in order to win respect. The Goodies aren’t like that. They literally and actually want to be good and do good.
That’s it. We don’t need any more than that. It’s up to you what kind of goodie they are, but in general, characters like this are awkward because they implicitly hold everyone to account.
Let’s create a goodie in a sitcom set in a restaurant. Let me introduce you to Pam who is too good for her own good.
Pam is a young waitress who has just finished school. The world is her oyster but, like an old oyster, the world stinks. But Pam isn’t going to be part of the problem. She is good. That means she’s scrupulous about declaring her tips: because it’s the right thing to do. Sure, some would say she’s naïve, but she’s adorable. Whenever she is asked for advice, her advice is always: do the right thing, own up or tell the truth. You do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. That never wavers.
Pam’s problem is that being a ‘good person’ means she doesn’t want to dump on her less ethical colleagues who all have problems and flaws of their own. She has to make compromises for them. So when she has to lie for one of them, she will need extensive training and roleplays. She will be exhausted because the prospect of lying – and then having lied – will give her sleepless nights. And then her worst nightmare is realised: she is exposed as a liar and she is utterly mortified, offering to work extra shifts in order to atone for her sins. Each week, she has to make compromises because her co-workers just aren’t as good as her. And that’s why Pam is funny, and we love her. Go, Pam.
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