Before about 1987 American sitcoms were - generally speaking - very different. Regardless of premise or intended demographic, most sitcoms (and, again, this is a broad generalization) have focused on a reliable comedic structure of set-ups and payoffs. From I Love Lucy to Diff'rent Strokes, sitcom writers have been careful to explore a recognizable home/workplace/general environment through sharply recognizable, very funny characters. The same writers were also usually careful to lay out the gags and jokes very clearly. Each setup usually leads to some kind of hit or payoff.

By the late 1980s, however, sitcoms were undergoing a reckoning. Audiences and many longtime writers seem to have grown tired of decades of well-worn tropes and structures and begun to deconstruct them. In 1987, Married... With Children debuted, a sitcom that followed an aggressively dysfunctional family that hated each other. Their causticism was the joke. Then, in 1989, The Simpsons debuted, handily satirizing all the sitcoms that had come before it, offering a semi-surreal, yellow-tinged parallel sitcom universe where everything was a little off.

1989 also saw the debut of Seinfeld, the show that pretty much slammed the door on old-fashioned sitcoms. As the show's creators, Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, have repeatedly said, "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing, and they mandated that none of its characters get sentimental, cuddle, or learn lessons. The show was based on Seinfeld's own brand of observational humor and petty complaints.

Glenn Charles co-created the hit 1982 sitcom Cheers (along with his brother Les and Jimmy Burrows), and he clearly remembers the shift from punchline-based sitcom humor to Seinfeld-inspired observational writing. which he eventually took over. In 2012, Charles spoke to GQ magazine about the sea change and I felt that comedy in general suffered as a result.

Stand-up comedy had long moved away from traditional setups and punchlines by the late 1980s. Indeed, as noted in the film The Aristocrats, comedians rarely took to the stage to tell traditional jokes anymore, as the practice was seen as a holdover from the borsch belt comedy of the 1950s and 1960s. Jerry Seinfeld's style of humor was self-deprecating and based on small personal inconveniences that everyone could relate to. This is why so many Jerry Seinfeld jokes start with the phrase "What's the deal with…?" Seinfeld saw something in the world that he considered inherently illogical and found humor in its absurdity. Life, he declared, is somehow meaningless, and the structures around us should be thought of as equally meaningless.

That humor was carried over to "Seinfeld," and the "Cheers" writers didn't like it. Glenn Charles didn't like that petty complaint was the point. There was no comment offered with observational humor, just that the comedian noticed something. Charles was particularly angry when Seinfeld's style of humor took over the rest of the comedy. He said:

“For better or for worse, I see more of the Seinfeld influence (on comedy) now... not jokes, but people airing very personal, subjective issues, and sometimes things get shut down without even a joke. We would never do it until two in the morning.

Indeed, looking at older sitcoms, one can see that they are typically more "lettered". The structure is tighter from scene to scene, and all the characters have miniature arcs. There is romance, drama and story in Charles' traditions. Seinfeld bucked those traditions, presenting characters who couldn't study and couldn't have arcs.

But "Seinfeld" at least knew that its characters were horrible people. The last episode of the series put everyone on trial for their crimes of selfishness and pettiness. They finished the series in prison. One might wonder how Charles feels about that.