Iowa, emergency preparedness procedures were
studied after the crash, so emergency responders
could improve their readiness for crises.
Further Reading
Faith, Nicholas.Black Box: The Air-Crash Detectives:
Why Air Safety Is No Accident.Osceola, Wis.:
Motorbooks International, 1997.
“How Swift Starting Action Teams Get off the
Ground: What United Flight 232 and Airline
Flight Crews Can Tell Us About Team Communi-
cation.”Management Communication Quarterly19,
no. 2 (November, 2005).
Schemmel, Jerry.Chosen to Live: The Inspiring Stor y of
Flight 232 Survivor Jerr y Schemmel. Littleton, Colo.:
Victory, 1996.
Trombello, Joseph.Miracle in the Cornfield. Appleton,
Wis.: PrintSource Plus, 1999.
Richard L. Wilson
See also Air India Flight 182 bombing; Cerritos
plane crash; Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
Sitcoms
Definition Comic television series in which
regular characters and situations recur from
episode to episode
Sitcoms in the 1980’s focused on humor, friendship, and re-
lationships between friends or family members. They largely
discarded the broad physical comedy popular in earlier
years.
Early situation comedies, or sitcoms, had filled “fam-
ily viewing time” between 8:00p.m.and 9:00p.m.
with lightweight, escapist stories and likable, some-
what predictable characters. When the more irrev-
erent shows of cable television were introduced in
the early 1980’s, network television programming
changed in order to compete for an increasingly
sophisticated audience. Fresh and different ap-
proaches were needed. Innovative prime-time soap
operas, such asDallas, and so-called reality shows ap-
peared, convincing the networks to incorporate seri-
alization and greater realism into their new sitcoms.
With continuing story lines, more true-to-life plots,
poignancy, and even occasional sad endings, the
new shows remained funny but incorporated much
less slapstick humor.
The Domestic Sitcom Almost since the advent of
television, the networks had featured family shows
such asThe Adventures of Ozzie and HarrietandFather
Knows Best.The 1980’s family sitcom often retained
the depiction of a nuclear family with both parents
in the home. There were variations, however, such as
One Day at a Time(1975-1984),Who’s the Boss?(1984-
1992), andDiff’rent Strokes(1978-1986), which por-
trayed divorced parents or orphaned children. Even
these shows, though, used surrogate parental fig-
ures, such as a housekeeper or handyman, to main-
tain the two-parent model. The 1980’s family sitcom
retained another characteristic of earlier shows: The
families always lived in a nice house or apartment
with all the necessities for a comfortable lifestyle.
There were several major differences between
1980’s and traditional 1950’s and 1960’s sitcoms,
however. Family breadwinners, whether male or fe-
male, often worked at unglamourous jobs for little
pay. AlthoughGood Times, which aired in the 1970’s,
depicted an indigent African American family,Rose-
anne(1988-1997) was unique in featuring a Cauca-
sian working-class family in which both parents
worked at a series of low-paying jobs and were often
in dire financial straits. The show’s humor often
came from the parents’ ability to laugh at their cir-
cumstances.The Tortellis(1987) featured another
working-class family composed of a television repair-
man, his second wife, and his children from his first
marriage. It was a spin-off from another successful
show,Cheers(1982-1993), but it did not capture
enough viewers’ imagination.One Day at a Timepor-
trayed a divorced mother with two teenage daugh-
ters, and its plots centered on single parenting and
teenagers.Family Ties(1982-1989) was probably clos-
est to the American notion of the “ideal” family with
its middle-class parents and teenage kids with typi-
cal, and sometimes atypical, teenage concerns.
InDiff’rent Strokes, a wealthy white man adopted
the two young sons of his recently deceased African
American housekeeper and took them home to live
in his opulent Manhattan townhouse. The show be-
came quite popular in spite of its improbable theme,
and it produced a couple of spin-offs, one the highly
successfulThe Facts of Life(1979-1988).The Cosby
Show(1984-1992) was one of the most successful and
influential sitcoms of the decade and perhaps of all
time. Portraying a middle-class African American
family with two professional parents and five gener-
ally well behaved, intelligent, and respectful chil-876 Sitcoms The Eighties in America