Men can't create good sitcoms.
I believe that there's a scale of offensive to performative for men, and every man you know falls somewhere on that scale, they don't remain there for life though. Think about the transition from offensive misogynistic humor everywhere in 2020, to the performative young men of 2025.
At 14, they craved connection with their peers and making women the butt of all their jokes was the way. Now, at 19, they realize they can't have sex with their best friend, and they repackage themselves into what they think will get women to have sex with them.
That's not to say misogynistic humor has fully vanished off the face of the earth, I'm just using one group of males to make my point clear. They're traveled across the spectrum of offensive to performative.
Now to connect this to my point about men not being able to create good sitcoms, every male writer and producer will fall somewhere on that scale, the offensive will attract other offensive men, the performative will attract other performative men, and that gives you two categories of sitcoms written by primarily men.
1- Making anyone who isn't a man of a certain status the butt of their joke (women, younger generations, people of color, mentally ill people, disabled people, really anyone who is viewed as odd) 2- A diverse cast where the only punchline is how diverse they are
A diverese cast is good, but the way it's done in performative sitcoms is not. Their differences are played up, the plotlines are shallow, and struggling minorities are always saved by someone "normal" (white, male, able-bodied).
This can widely apply to any art created by men, but I didn't want this post to be too general so I made target sitcoms specifically.
Another reason men can't write sitcoms is consistency, unlike other forms of media where changes are encouraged, sitcoms can't make too many developments to characters or setting. Characters should grow and learn, but they should remain consistent enough throughout the sitcom so that your viewer doesn't have to think too hard about their actions.
My favorite sitcom is abbott elementary, which does this very well. Characters grow and develop, but their dynamics and sense of self remain consistent throughout the show. You can hop from season to season and still see the same people, just more mature.
This isn't exactly realistic, which is why it isn't favored in a lot of media. Real people's morals and character can change drastically because of eye-opening or traumatic events, but if this were true for sitcom characters you'd be forced to think, which is the last thing a sitcom should make you do.
Men fail with this consistency, because of the spectrum I brought up earlier, they bounce here and there on the spectrum based on their friend group, and they influence one another, so they will never be able to maintain the consistency needed to call a show sitcom.
In sitcoms by men, you'll find characters behaviors drastically change, you get frustrated, there's useless plots for shock value, pairings that make no sense, and no safety in dynamics, because characters can be best friends in an episode, and sworn enemies in another.
For the reasons I listed, men can't make good sitcoms, and by extension, geniune art.
