I was thinking about Silver Spoons on Tuesday. You know, Silver Spoons starring Ricky Schroeder and Alfonso from Fresh Prince, not to mention the fabulously dreamy Kate who was even dreamier on Buck Rogers. Anyway what came to mind was that stately Spoon Manor was a sprawling castle from the looks of it on the intro, but everyone always hung out in the same room, right at the front door.
That’s not surprising in itself given that sets cost money, but what else occurred to me was that it seemed like most of the other sitcom houses I could think of shared the stage left front door. One after another, I thought of sitcom houses with the door on the left: Kate and Allie, Good Times, Sanford and Son, Golden Girls, Who’s the Boss, Small Wonder, Full House, Mr. Belvedere, Growing Pains, the list went on and on. Of course exceptions immediately popped into mind, like Seinfeld, the Cosby Show, Diff’rent Strokes, and Family Ties. But it seemed like for every right-hand door I could name there were three or four left-hand doors. I began to wonder if there was some reasoning behind left-hand doors: is it somehow cheaper, or do they put the cast snack table on the right according to hallowed tradition stemming from medieval theater days?
After a while I had to discard this whole notion as a case of selective memory. I started to realize that I could name just about as many right-hand doors as left. Even the turbolift door to the Enterprise bridge was on the right (classic and TNG). Nonetheless, every time I remembered a right-hand door I felt a little dispirited, like a novel discovery was slipping from my fingers, and I wished it would go away. “Curse you ALF set” I would think.
Now as a social scientist, I know there’s something to be learned in this. I now know how my fellow social scientists feel when they see their theories melt away when subjected to empirical testing. So the lesson might be the importance of a value free scientific method, rigorous hypothesis testing, and consideration of alternative hypotheses, all of which guard against the introduction of personal bias in scientific investigation of the social world. But since I think that’s all so much hokum, I think the lesson is probably that it might be unnatural that I remember so many fictitious houses as well as any I actually grew up in and that I spent half my waking hours as a kid watching TV.
