Brooklyn 99 had a few episodes in the last couple of seasons that dealt with issues like BLM and distrust of the police, that were pretty bleak. Like a black officer being passed over for promotion after he reported another cop for racial profiling, and being told that he’ll never know for sure if the lost promotion was because of that report.
I just learned about the Diff’rent Strokes episode where Arnold is groomed by a child molester, so that’s a thing.
Plus isn’t there an episode of Facts of Life where Tutti almost gets abducted by a pimp?
What is up with 80s sitcoms?
MASH had a number of dark moments, but there is one that stands out to me. Hawkeye and a South Korean woman with a baby are hiding from some North Korean soldiers. The baby gets fussy and Hawkeye tells the woman to keep the baby quiet. After the soldiers pass, Hawkeye gets up to leave. The woman is crying, she smothered the baby to death to keep it quiet. I saw this episode a few years ago, the scene where Hawkeye realized the baby was dead was edited out.
They liked to have “Special Episodes”. Apparently for a little while, these were ratings magnets.
Those were “very special episodes”.
Damit, I was just drafting up a response along these lines! There was also the episode of the Facts of Life where Natalie endures an attempted rape.
But does M*A*S*H count as a dark comedy (being set in a war zone and all)?
I would say no, they also went for lots of belly laughs too. Dark comedies keep the humor a lot more subtle.
Once Trapper and Blake left, it was pretty much a Dramedy.
There were so many moments that weren’t light comedy. Mulchahey needing to do an emergency Trache comes to mind. Injured prisoners with a hand grenade, etc.
Here’s a list with a few of them. Family Ties, for example, had Mallory get felt up by a skeevy older man, and had Tom Hanks play an alcoholic.
There are dark themes, but IMO the tone of the overall movie is quite light. FWIW, Wikipedia calls it a “fantasy comedy”.
It’s probably one of the reasons NBC decided to pass the show on to Netflix. I’m a big fan of absurd comedies, and Kimmy Schmidt really did it for me. Despite the bleak premise, I never really thought about it too much because it was so silly, but I suppose every flashback to their time in the shelter was making light of a pretty dark situation.
I thought it worked because her resilience is central to the narrative more than the specifics of what she endured. I just didn’t find it all that funny, not because of the subject matter but because of the jokes. I didn’t think it was terribly unfunny either, just mediocre. But I admire the spirit of that show. The intro makes me happy as hell.
The Fresh Prince of Bel Air had a few such moments. Will’s father abandoning him yet again being up there. But the one that stuck with me is when Will gets shot and he has to talk Carlton down from seeking revenge. I don’t know. It’s something about the happy-go-lucky Carlton almost becoming ‘that nigga with a gun’ that hit me hard.
Oh, it’s about 95% comedy in my opinion. Maybe 85%?
Dramatic moments are quite rare. I find it very amusing.
Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” surely is a comedy and IMHO one of the funniest movies ever and Wilder’s best, but maybe you can call it a tragicomedy or even a dark comedy, given the premise: a lowly office drone is forced by his bosses to lend out his apartment for them to live out their affairs (aka having sex) with their mistresses. The darkest moment is when Shirley MacLaine’s character attempts suicide in this apartment.
It turns on a dime near the end from Blackadder’s antics to escape the big push, to the realization that he’s not going to escape: the transition occurs (as I recall) at the end of a speech from Darling:
Rather hoped I’d get through the whole show, go back to work at Pratt and Sons, keep wicket for the Croydon Gentlemen, marry Doris.
I didn’t expect Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to get so emotional at the end.
Number 2 on that list is the one I remember: On All in the Family, when Edith almost gets raped. Very different in tone from the rest of the series. I found it jarring.
I have to wonder the point of such an episode, since it leans hard into the trope that most rapists are nefarious strangers rather than people the victim knows, and it doesn’t seem to be giving women any useful advice, just sort of demonstrating how arbitrary and terrible reality can be.
Whereas with Diff’rent Strokes you can at least argue there’s some merit in children being able to recognize the signs of being groomed by someone they think they can trust.