| rdfs:comment | - You know how car accidents are a serious matter? And crashing into a building would be a big deal? Not so in TV Land. A trope often seen in sitcoms, usually played for for a tiny bit of drama, a lot of laughs and shock value all at the same time. You have a new driver... or maybe an old driver... or a drunk driver...Maybe even somebody who isn't even old enough to drive in the first place. Doesn't matter the situation, for some reason their vehicle is magnetically drawn to the house, and comes bursting through the front door, just as any character normally would. The shot usually ends with some witty one-liner from the front passenger, along the lines of "that went well", while the horrified occupants of the house stare in well... horror.
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| abstract | - You know how car accidents are a serious matter? And crashing into a building would be a big deal? Not so in TV Land. A trope often seen in sitcoms, usually played for for a tiny bit of drama, a lot of laughs and shock value all at the same time. You have a new driver... or maybe an old driver... or a drunk driver...Maybe even somebody who isn't even old enough to drive in the first place. Doesn't matter the situation, for some reason their vehicle is magnetically drawn to the house, and comes bursting through the front door, just as any character normally would. The shot usually ends with some witty one-liner from the front passenger, along the lines of "that went well", while the horrified occupants of the house stare in well... horror. A few notable thing about this trope is the fact that no one is ever harmed, the car always stops right after it enters the house, and of course, the house is usually fixed by the next episode. No one is ever killed by standing near or against the wall that just got crashed into. The car never continues on into the the rest of the house (leading us to believe that hitting a house will suddenly trigger the braking reflex in said poor driver). And the family will rarely have to stay in a hotel, while they wait for a contractor to fix the gaping hole in the front of their home. By the next episode, everything's fine. Exceptions to this would be a subversion. Obviously this differs from Real Life, where a car plowing through your front living room might cause a few headaches. And it's not always a house. Sometimes it's an office, a hotel, a bar or another public place. But the same rules apply; no lasting damage or repercussions. The rarer incarnation of this trope is when a character with perfectly decent driving skills purposefully drives into the house. Usually still played for laughs though. Sitcoms of The Eighties and The Nineties drove this trope into the ground, but due to the constant recycling of Sitcom plots, the trope still pervades. See also Drives Like Crazy and Standardized Sitcom Housing, which contributes to this trope's appearance. Examples of Car Meets House include:
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