Third Places, Recessions and… The Death of the Hangout Comedy?

Categorically, traditional primetime television — particularly comedy — can be divided into two arenas: hangout and workplace. One is defined by leisure, capturing the camaraderie of friends, and the other by ambition, portraying the trials and triumphs of professional life. But what factors contribute to the oscillation of popularity between hangout and workplace television? 

In 1993, Marta Kauffman and David Crane pitched a series called “Insomnia Cafe” inspired by a now-defunct café of the same name in Beverly Hills. This series, which we would soon come to know as Friends, was heavily inspired by the youthful, carefree café culture of the early ‘90s. Friends became a steadfast cultural phenomenon, epitomizing the “hangout comedy” and reflecting the zeitgeist of its time (and fuelling us with lifelong nostalgia.)

Consumerism is the driving force that propels the hangout comedy. Even if the central action follows the individual misadventures of the characters, there's one constant throughout every episode: the crew always reconvenes in their classic meeting spot, usually a restaurant, cafe, or pub. In times of economic prosperity, getting drinks with your girlfriends Sex and the City-style is a perfectly attainable and realistic depiction of average consumer habits. Who doesn’t crave a cool martini with a side of hot gossip? Or a latte with a side of Smelly Cat?

In his book Medium Raw, Anthony Bourdain criticizes cafe culture, defending the American right to a cheap cup of coffee in a cardboard cup. When Starbucks came along, it carried with it the privilege of buying an overpriced coffee in exchange for a cozy “third place” to relax, work, or hang out among fellow young people (read: fellow Dido fans in striped scarves.)

“I like good coffee but I don't want to wait for it, and I don't want it with the cast of Friends. It's a beverage; it's not a lifestyle” - Anthony Bourdain 

Now, unless you’re grabbing a coffee from Tim Horton’s, the average cup will run you nearly $4 in Canada and - topping the charts - $4.69 in the States (and that’s without a tip!) For that price, you’d expect a comfortable couch, mood lighting and maybe some live music or slam poetry here and there. Well, you’d be wrong. Many customers pre-order their coffees and spend next to no time in the cold fluorescent world of their local Starbucks (can’t blame them). And, as much as we’d all prefer to opt for an independent coffee shop, it’s often just as (or more!) cost-prohibitive.

I couldn’t help but wonder… Is this (among a myriad of other creative factors) why And Just Like That can’t live up to its predecessor? Such a lifestyle feels flagrantly unrelatable now even more than it did in the early aughts.

The Workplace Show

As we moved past the ‘90s, the TV pendulum swung toward the workplace with series like The Office and Parks and Recreation emerging throughout the early aughts, successors of classic workplace comedies like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Murphy Brown. On the more dramatic side, we had Mad Men and House of Cards, shows that all reached peak popularity around the 2008 Great Recession.

In recent years, there has been a similar uptick in workplace television. Abbott Elementary, Ted Lasso, and The Bear have dominated the comedy scene and Succession has secured its place as the most significant TV drama of the decade. What’s funny is, while unemployment rates rise, what is it that viewers find so compelling about workplace TV? And, most curiously, is there a correlation between the economy and television genres? 

Are we in a recession? Who’s to say? No, really, who is to say? Mass layoffs are sweeping nearly every industry, the cost of living is through the roof and if I see one more “I applied to 100000 jobs and heard back from 1” post on LinkedIn, I will lose my marbles. Even if the unemployment rate is technically holding steady, it seems like everyone I know is job hunting and, more often than not, without success.

So, while audiences are down on their luck in the job department, do we see more onscreen careers? Conversely, when audiences are gainfully employed, do we see more onscreen leisure? 

I cross-referenced a graph tracking the US unemployment rate with critically acclaimed series of the time (namely those nominated for Emmys in their respective categories) and, sure enough, there seemed to be a correlation. It’s not a perfect science and certainly doesn't account for every show on the air, but it does represent a significant pattern in genre.

Some things to consider while looking at this graph…

• The first decade, between 1950-1960, was hard to source content for since most of the Emmy-nominated series at that time were either variety shows and were subdivided into categories that we no longer use such as Best Kinescope Show, and Best Live Show

• Except for the spikes around the 1949 and 1953 recessions, the economy remained reasonably steady until the mid-70s when unemployment rates began to rise beyond 9%

• Until the 70s, many of the popular television series denoted in the graph were about families since homemakers and children were the primary consumers of TV in its earliest days - it is hard to distinguish these specifically as “hangout” shows as not everyone in the onscreen families was able to or expected to have careers

• The theory took off in the mid-70s with the popularity of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was pivotal in the representation of working women on screen

• Some of these series had long runs, occupying years — decades, even— of economic fluctuations. I marked series from when they had begun to receive critical acclaim (nominated for or won Emmy awards). Again, not an exact science.

• Cheers is an outlier and I am counting it as both a hangout and a workplace show, as its central character works at the bar which is also the hangout spot… Perhaps this is what we can attribute to its long success!

So what does this mean?

After nearly 60 years, it’s hard to say whether this is a top-down or bottom-up influence, or, more likely, some combination of the two creating a feedback loop from television to audience. However, the high cost of living has made it challenging for the quickly evaporating middle class to participate in the leisure economy. Many do not have the means to have a “regular haunt” making Central Perk or Monk’s Café feel unattainable to the average viewer. So, can we surmise that a lack of third places in North American culture will directly contribute to the death of the hangout sitcom? Will there be even more workplace comedies in our future? Or, will TV creators have to circumvent traditional television genre frameworks to accommodate dated socioeconomic trends? 

Realistically, it’s already begun. The number of dramedies on the scene could preclude this trend from continuing. Single-cam sitcoms are less popular now, and therefore no longer limit physical production to one set. In some ways, the hangout spot isn’t a character of its own anymore, onscreen or in our personal lives.