Watch an episode of a popular sitcom and an espisode of a popular soap opera. which one makes more use of stereotypes? Why is this?

Friends & Eastenders Friends uses stereotypes such as 'the womanizer' 'the geek' 'the spoiled one' 'the free spirit' 'the joker' and 'the obsessive one' - and in some way or another the audience can atleast relate to some part of one of the characters. With these characters, you see little change over the series as they generally make up characterisitcs as they go along, in order to keep the show fresh, yet thet still stay on track to the originial characterisitcs of the character. In Eastenders, they use more subtle steroetypes, yet they are a more diverse characters and have more characteristis of them. The reason for this may be that, the writers of the show try to prolong the characters storylines and have interesting and shocking events happening to them. It is generally thought that sitcoms are most likely to use stereotyoical charcters as they are easy to mock, and easy to replicate. Whereas, soaps tend to move away from these as they create more interesting storylines and are able to prolong characters.