Why Do Sitcoms Make Women Wait to Be Funny?

Cheers‘ Sam Malone enters his bar and our hearts as a snarky but hilarious grump. J.D. and Turk stumble into the opening episodes of Scrubs armed with one-liners, misunderstandings, and insane inner fantasies. Ted, Marshall, and Barney slide into How I Met Your Mother with their own established schticks — insecure romantic, dopey lawyer, and slimy womanizer, respectively. The Office‘s Michael Scott and Dwight begin Episode 1 as wacky characters ready to be laughed at. But none of these shows introduced their female characters with the same fleshed out respect.

So why do most comedies waste episodes – or even seasons – letting their leading ladies flounder, before letting them be funny in their own right?

It’s hard not to see this as a writer’s room problem. A show is only as good as its characters, and in all of these cases, it feels as if writers started these shows with a fully-formed idea for their male characters and nebulous ideas for their love interests and female friends.

And sure, comedies need time for the cast to establish chemistry with each other, and for the writers and directors to learn each cast member’s strengths and weaknesses. Creating good comedy can be a complicated, living process. But time and again, sitcoms start with strong ideas for the male characters, while the female characters only get to sing halfway through the season (or even later).

For every Elaine in Seinfeld there are a dozen examples of female characters who aren’t immediately funny. Cheers‘ Diane was allowed to start being her own imperfectly funny self after she broke up with Sam (the first time). Scrubs‘ perfectionist Carla and frazzled Elliot came into their own a few episodes after J.D.’s story was established. How I Met Your Mother‘s Lily was allowed to be a borderline alcoholic kindergarten teacher from the show’s first episode, but Robin wasn’t much more than a glorified love interest for several episodes. And The Office is one of the worst offenders: it took a full season before the series was anything other than the Michael Scott show; and several more before Pam, Kelly, and Angela were allowed to generate the show’s humor instead of reacting to it.

Even shows that have historically strong and hilarious female characters have suffered from this trend. Community‘s high-strung Annie and deceptively sweet Shirley became centers of humor as the series progressed, but most of the comedy in the show’s first few episodes is carried by its male characters — Jeff, Troy, Abed, and Pierce. Even the morally misguided Britta wasn’t truly allowed to get weird until later episodes, serving instead as a foil to Jeff. Likewise, Brooklyn Nine-Nine has given us some of the funniest leading ladies on television. But while the stoic Diaz and the too cool Linetti started as fully-formed characters, the sweetly serious Detective Santiago had to wait for that evolution. After several episodes, she was finally promoted from just being a love interest into being a fully-formed, bizarre character like the rest of the precinct.

Not every sitcom has this issue, though. Some come in with excellent, fully-fleshed out female characters from the beginning, and the common thread is almost always a strong female voice behind the scenes. Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt established Kimmy as the silly optimist we know and love from the first episode, largely thanks to co-creator Tina Fey’s influence. Similarly, Fey’s flustered Liz Lemon was a broken weirdo from the first moments of 30 Rock. Lucille Ball’s hectic Lucy in I Love Lucy, Phoebe, Monica, and Rachel on Friends (a show co-created by Marta Kaufman)… In all of these cases, their shows were made funnier and better by these characters, and you can point directly to having strong gender diversity in the writer’s room.

It’s also not as simple as just flipping a predominantly male role, something Parks and Recreation discovered during its first season. Despite the powerhouse presence of Amy Poehler as Leslie Knope, the show clearly wanted her to simply be a female Michael Scott. Leslie came off feeling hollow and cringeworthy, so in Season 2 Parks & Rec leaned into Poehler’s strengths. They removed the one-note, also gender-swapped love interest Mark, let Poehler instead be a positive powerhouse, and turned the show into a classic.

It does seem like showrunners are starting to learn these lessons, from Eleanor and Tahani on The Good Place, to Penelope and Lydia on One Day at a Time (which, of note, also has a female co-creator). Don’t force your female characters into the trap of one-dimensional love interest roles. Offer them the same respect as the male characters, and let them get weird immediately. Your shows – and viewers – will thank you.