without seeing it my guess would be a scene change with a bunch of motion blur on it
rather than using a dissolve youd have to bring the joining section of your 2 clips into after effects and drop them into a new comp, position the outgoing clip in the centre of the comp and the incoming clip to the right, or left.. your choice
check motion blur on both your layers and enable motion blur on the whole comp
once youve done that you just have to keyframe in the ‘motion’ of the clips so they move at the same time to the right or left, one clip goes out of shot, and the new one comes in
assuming you get the timing right on the keyframes the motion blur effect should handle most of the work for you, and there you go! you have your sitcom effect
~Peter Berthet
Sydney, Australia