Structure
The series' plots were fairly typical of sitcoms with Andy getting himself into a situation and having to find a solution. The unique aspects were several unusual devices that defined the show.
First was Richter's voiceover which essentially narrated the plot, as well as Andy's thought processes in each episode. Secondly, and connected to the first was Andy's imagination, which was presented onscreen as if it were reality until it was revealed in a smash cut accompanied by the sound of rewinding audio tape. This is often used to demonstrate alternatives to what actually happened for a given event.
A theme of the show which uses these techniques was its original working title, Anything Can Happen; a thought which Richter imparts to the audience in the narration of the opening teaser of the series premiere.
Read more about this topic: Andy Richter Controls The Universe
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
—Donald Davidson (b. 1917)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)