Sitcom Terminology

[hatgirl]

Bill Prady is an executive producer on one of My Favourite Things, the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. We have a deep and meaningful relationship (i.e. I follow him on Twitter). Yesterday, he tweeted a series of TV Writers' Room vocab lessons:

• A story, the main story of the episode; B story, the secondary story; runner, smaller than a story, it "runs" through the ep.
• The final (hopefully strong) joke in a scene is the blow or the button.
• Taken from music, a joke or a few off-topic lines before the scene proper begins is a downbeat.
• The line before a joke is the setup. If the setup is phrased unnaturally to force you to the joke, it is bent and no good.
• Exposition (facts the audience needs to know to follow the story) is called pipe. A scene full of it is too pipey. Biggest mistake made when laying pipe: characters telling each other things they already know just because you need the audience to hear it. Classically bad setup for pipe: "Hey, tell me again why we're doing this."
• From the musician's term for a bad note, a hackneyed or overused joke is a clam. E.g. Snuggie jokes are now clams.
• List jokes often follow the rule of 3 -- 2 items to establish the premise, a third to (hopefully in a funny way) break it. "It was a cheap hotel. You had to supply your own sheets, towels and roof" (Rule of Three structure)

Jargon makes me happy...