Freeze-framing at the end of a sitcom

I used to be fascinated by this. Generally, it happens right in the middle of the last joke or a pratfall when the camera just pauses. "Who's the Boss?", in particular, used to have some great freeze frames right when the end credits popped up and the audienced clapped.

• Yeah, those were the days. Now sitcoms just have the credits run at the bottom while the two breakout characters do something "funny".

• Sometimes, if I'm at the end of a good date, I like to laugh at my date's joke with a tilt of my head, a big smile full of shiny teeth--and HOLD. I imagine my name appears in a chubby font, followed by a scrolling list of crew members and "Filmed in Fromt of a Live Studio Audience."

• I used to do a similar thing, R2. At any random moment, I'd pause and pretend credits were rolling. Sitcoms today are shitty in that respect. What happened to a good ol' closing-credit segment (complete with freeze)?

• Police Squad! used to end with a "freeze frame," but only the actors "froze". In one, a suspect escaped while the leads were standing there frozen, with stupid looks on their faces.

• There was a show on over 25 years ago called Police Squad that spoofed the freeze frame endings. I loved the show but it was before it's time and didn't last very long. The Naked Gun Movies were spun off from the series.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DA_3rJqHWYjs

• Sounds almost exactly like fu ...

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• I was always slightly disturbed by the way Suzanne Pleshette's face would get freeze framed at the end of the opening credits of The Bob Newhart Show.

• Married with Children had some great freeze frames too

• [quote]Yeah, those were the days. Now sitcoms just have the credits run at the bottom while the two breakout characters do something "funny". I recently started watching RAISING HOPE and I hate how at the end they begin scrolling the end credits before the scene is even over. It's very distracting! I also miss when shows would have an opening scene which would segue into the theme song/opening credits. Now they just have the opening scene which ends simply with the title card, and when the show resumes after the commercial break, they do the cast/crew credits then, which is also very distracting.

• I am the QUEEN of the freeze frame!

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• Police Squad used to do this too.

• It was cheap.

• I'm going to mention that Police Squad used to parody these freeze frames. I've read through the entire thread before responding, and see that no one else has brought this up yet.

  PPSM

• On "Angie", we didn't freeze frame at the end of the show, but the final credits ran over stills from the episode. I thought that was nice, because it allowed the audience to get a great look at how stylish Robert, Debralee, Doris, and our guest stars were.

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• The amount of commercial time in your average episode of a sitcom has increased to 8-10 minutes, which means that many shows used their closing credits to wrap up storylines now because they have less time within each episode. Having these active credits also keeps viewers from flipping the channel, leading them into the next show. I'm pretty sure that most shows on network TV now have no break between the credits of one show and the opening of the next.

• R11 and R13, did you read the thread before you posted? Hey, "Police Squad" used to use the freeze frame too! I'm surprised no one mentioned it yet.

• Remember on the Facts Of Life, when Mrs Garrett had left and they had the original cast back for a "Special Episode" and the first year cast pretended that they didn't know Jo, even when it was abundantly clear they DID know Jo. Boy I hope someone got fired for that.

• R17 -- after that episode, I didn't sleep again for all of seventh grade.

• "A saint a real saint never does anything, a martyr does something but a really good saint does nothing and so I wanted to have Four Saints that did nothing and I wrote Four Saints in Three Acts and they did nothing and that was everything. Generally speaking anybody is more interesting doing nothing than doing anything." Gertrude Stein, "doing nothing"