3 sitcoms to watch during exams

Along with the onset of the holiday season, the end of November signals the ominous dawning of exams.

During this time, many students revert into a studying-induced hibernation; huddling up for hours at home and in libraries, pouring over unending course materials. Sweatpants, negligence of humanly-acceptable standards of hygiene and hermitry is not at all uncommon.

Naturally, with solitude follows an all-consuming desire to procrastinate, usually taking the form of binge-watching Netflix shows in-between guilty glances at homework materials.

However, tumbling down the Netflix rabbit hole is tricky business. If you’re not careful, you might stumble upon a compelling drama that could prove difficult to peel away from. The key is to find a show that can take your mind off exams, but one that won’t enslave you to your laptop for hours at a time. So, essentially, a sitcom. Here are three worthy selections.

Happy Endings

Ironically, NBC’s Happy Endings was met with a rather un-happy ending, as it was cancelled due to tepid viewership numbers through three seasons of syndication. However, this run-of-the-mill Friends knockoff has all the makings of a quality exam binge-watch.

The show follows the lives of six friends in their mid-to-late twenties trying to make it in a big city (like I said, Friends knockoff). Each episode starts with the introduction of a whimsical day-to-day challenge — such as preparing for a first date — and like most sitcoms, each conflict is resolved with a tidy little bow on top after 22 minutes.

Although the storylines are somewhat mundane, clever joke telling by ex-SNL member Casey Wilson and over-the-top wackiness by Damon Wayans Jr. provides just enough of an incentive to stick around, without it being too addictive to hold your attention for much longer than one episode at a time.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Like Happy Endings, Brooklyn Nine-Nine is yet another sitcom centred around an ex-SNL cast member in Andy Samberg. As a self-described “21st century Sherlock Holmes,” Samberg plays a boastful detective serving in the New York Police Department. Each episode follows Samberg and his squadron as they tackle and inevitably solve (except in the case of the Pontiac Bandit) strange cases.

Flanking Samberg is a star-studded cast. Comedian Chelsea Peretti plays a spaced-out and occasionally competent secretary, while action star Terry Crews plays the part of a lily-livered lieutenant. The cast delivers a convincing performance that does justice to its well-written scripts with spot-on comedic timing and joke delivery.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine is currently in its second season of syndication, airing weekly on Sunday nights on Fox. Each episode stands up individually, even on repeated playthroughs, making each 22-minute segment an ideal interruption to your lengthy study sessions.

Friends

If all else fails, you can always fall back on the granddaddy of binge sitcoms. Inevitably, at one point or another, you’ve seen every episode, but there’s always time in the day for Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe and Ross.

Here’s the thing about Friends —  the viewer feels included in the show’s story. From the title to its habitual reliance on everyday settings, the show provides a carefully construed alternate reality. When the six friends gather to play trivia in Monica’s purple apartment, you feel like you’re there too. When the six friends convene in Central Perk after work, you feel like you’re there too.

It’s not true escapism, far from it. It’s fake and you know it. But when all of your real friends are too busy studying to grab a coffee, you can at least simulate the experience with an old episode of Friends.