ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Car Share to examine how it depicts music as a resource the characters draw on to make sense of their lives. In depicting how pop music can function in a liberatory fashion for characters carrying out repetitive work commutes, Car Share demonstrates that the sitcom's circular episodic nature is a suitable structure for the comic exploration of the repetitive. Each episode takes place in a single day and is split into two halves, with the first depicting John and Kayleigh's commute to work and the second, their journey home. The show's final sequence mirrors that of Kayleigh first entering the car; there she first introduced a reluctant and reticent John to Forever FM, and she shows him—again through music—that he retains the ability to forge meaningful new bonds. The message of the song is itself "pure and simple" as is Kayleigh's intended statement through its usage.
