Morals

One thing a lot of recent comedies have in common is that they have completely discarded the Seinfeld rule of “no hugging, no learning.” That was a reaction against the way so many comedy shows used to end every episode: a serious scene summing up the moral, followed by a joke (“treacle-cutter”) to remind us that this was still a comedy. But in the dark age of TV comedy that was the early ’00s, the avoidance of this kind of scene was taken to an extreme, with comedies becoming amoral and heartless. So now there’s been a backlash against the backlash: many comedies try to have some kind of lesson-learning moment near the end, that clearly gives some kind of moral to the episode, or an emotional connection between characters. The writers of The Office even mention on a commentary that they are closer to the Full House format of comedy storytelling than the Seinfeld format.

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