conuly

For one reason and one reason only, which is to criticize their set design.

We're supposed to believe that the protagonist of the series is a recently sober waitress, single mom. One kid's dad is nonexistent, the other is there but he certainly doesn't pay any child support. Her own family is definitely not helping out - indeed, she has to help her mother, who is also recently sober!

Dialog establishes that her nonsober life was pretty chaotic - evictions, jail time, the works.

And their house is fucking amazing. Three bedrooms for a mom and two kids, which to my NYC eyes is astonishing, and everything matches. None of the furniture has cigarette burns or scratches or crayon marks, nothing is missing a drawer pull or, indeed, a drawer, all their windows have curtains - matching curtains, even! - and all their lights have lampshades, none of their comforters are frayed around the edges, there's no food or drink stains, the doors all close properly....

You know, it occurs to me that I may be revealing a bit more about my own childhood home than perhaps I want to, so I guess I'll stop here. But seriously, set and costume design have some questions to answer, because they really didn't think any of this through. I can see such a tidy house from a waitress who is diligent about estate sales and thrifting - though probably none of it would match, it would be eclectic in a classy way. Or I can see nice furnishings from an alcoholic with a bigger income who was managing to keep a fingerhold on being functional in a way that this family clearly wasn't before the show. But c'mon!

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Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

armiphlage

The Simpsons' house is outside the reach of all but the wealthy now.

From:

crystalpyramid

Are they supposed to live in one of those areas where the big expense of homeownership is maintenance not property taxes and mortgage? I know there are lots of places like that, weird as it seems to me too.

The stains thing seems fairly bizarre. Kids stain everything. How old are the kids? I could imagine a family doing a fast fashion thing to keep up with appearances. Comforters are cheaper than you think, if you're okay with bright uncomfortable microfiber things from Target or Walmart. I was surprised when I outfitted my daughter's bed. I'm still sleeping under the comforter I took to college twenty years ago, of course.

I feel like the relationship between poverty and keeping up appearances can be complicated. I remember helping a family in the projects and being impressed by how much nicer their apartment was than any home my family had ever had. But it seemed like they were working hard to compensate for being in the projects and maybe they had multiple adults working on that. While we didn't try as hard to keep up appearances, or maybe we just weren't as good at it.

From:

shadowkat

Clearly Roseanne or the Connors, it's not? I swear the most realistic sitcoms were probably Roseanne, The Connors, All in the Family, Married with Children, and The Office.

I had the same response watching a lot of rom-coms and sitcoms set in NYC. Although to be fair to Friends, Chandler and Joey's apartment was realistic. So too were the apartments in Seinfield.

From:

hannah

The increasing sterility/showroom quality to set design, unless someone's pushing hard, is a fairly dismal trend.

From:

conuly

The size of the house can be excused by the fact that you need to have room for the cast and crew to walk around.

I don't know how to excuse the furniture - none of it is even ikea crap, it's all nice stuff.

(I don't think we're supposed to think that the protagonist was capable of thinking about keeping up appearances until very, very recently.)

From:

conuly

The set design in Malcolm in the Middle wasn't so bad, mostly because they filmed inside an actual house instead of a set.

From:

conuly

It's absurd.

From:

lemniskate

Especially when they show the other apartments in other episodes - they are ranging from eh to completely gross. With the kind of furniture and appliances you would expect from someone starting from rock bottom. At one point Bonnie's boyfriend/Christie's bio dad lives in an apartment in their complex, and it's not terrible, but even it's not as nice as Bonnie and Christie's. and in another episode, a former stripper/former addict that Christie is helping rents an apartment in their complex that is awful. Electrical is buzzy and unsafe, no cable, a tv with a coat hanger for an antenna - and THAT makes much more sense.

From:

dewline

https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-doom-spenders/

https://macleans.ca/society/confessions-of-the-working-poor/

From:

archersangel

this reminds me that the show the middle had rather realistic house (i didn't watch much) the dad worked at quarry & i forget what the mom did.
one episode the dad was trying to fix the roof, with a tarp (maybe?) and a neighbor said he had left over roof shingles and gave him them.
in another episode, they had a dryer that ran too hot and got a "new" one because a tornado deposited it in their yard, or something.
in some other episode the mom got a deal on a dining room table, but didn't check the measurements & it was a table for a doll house.

From:

hudebnik

When we bought our house in 2001, the lawyer (you can't buy or sell a house in NYC without a lawyer) looked at the address and said "This is an Archie Bunker house; there are thousands of them in Queens. I'm going to describe it to you: there's a small shingled front porch, with a door into the living room, which segues into the dining room, and there's a short pass-through hallway on the side into the kitchen, curved so you can't see from the dining room into the kitchen. On one side of the living room is a staircase up to the floor with the bedrooms and the bathroom, and on one side of the kitchen is a staircase down to the basement."

All of which we saw, in one episode or another, of "All in the Family", and it does describe our house perfectly. The biggest difference is that the stairs to the second floor were on the right-hand side (as seen from the front door) of the Bunkers' living room, and the left-hand side of ours. Oh, and our front porch was enclosed sometime between 1910 and 1940 (you can still see the shingles), while the Bunkers' wasn't.

That said, I'm pretty sure it was a constructed set (we never saw the left-hand wall of the living room, because that's where the cameras were most of the time), but one carefully informed by actual Queens houses.

Yes, Chandler-and-Joey's apartment was realistic, and seriously did not belong in the same building with Monica-and-Rachel's! Although I guess one can understand in-universe why the characters spent most of their time at Monica-and-Rachel's, because it was more spacious and pleasant than any of their own homes.

Edited Date: 2025-10-19 11:49 am (UTC)

From:

crystalpyramid

Ha, good rationale for the size of the house. I guess it's just easier to buy nice stuff than go to a bunch of thrift stores and find something realistic.

From:

shadowkat

I'm not sure Monica and Rachel's apartment exists anywhere in NYC - for the amount of money the characters were renting it for? (Keep in mind Chandler was supposed to making more money than either Rachel or Monica.) There are apartments that are that nice - but they are on the high end, and not stabilized. Not unless you are living outside NYC. They were living in Manhattan.

(you can't buy or sell a house in NYC without a lawyer)

Or any real estate property for that matter. Condos and Co-ops also require them. It's pricey to buy or sell property in NY - you require the broker's fee, the lawyer's fee, the building inspector's fee, then there's insurance, maintenance costs, and the property taxes are among the highest in the country. (They are actually worse outside the city, apparently.)

Edited Date: 2025-10-19 02:17 pm (UTC)

From:

shadowkat

Yeah, I'd agree it was realistic. So too were the early sitcoms of the 1970s - Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley...

Recent situation comedies are less so for some reason?