6 TV Comedies That Took A Ride on the Dark Side
Alf should have been a cautionary tale. One of the silliest sitcoms of all time ended on a strangely dark note when the furry visitor from Melmac is captured by the U.S. military for, we assume, a series of horrific medical experiments.
Since the series got canceled before Alf could escape a nightmare right out of Stranger Things, we only can imagine his Area 51 fate. The creators of Alf likely didn’t intend such a despondent ending, but we can’t say the same about these six other sitcoms that decided to explore the wretched underbelly of life.
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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
You can’t say It’s Always Sunny didn’t warn us things would get bleak -- in the first season alone, Charlie fakes a cancer diagnosis and the gang finds a dead guy (in an episode titled “The Gang Finds a Dead Guy”). From plotting to kill a homeless guy to cannibalize him to a grandfather who took kids to white supremacist rallies, comedy doesn’t get more miserable than the ironically named Sunny.
The Office
Many episodes of The Office are downright silly, making the show’s turns to darkness all the more disturbing. It’s not just about awkward cringe -- there’s genuine despair when Michael Scott reneges on his promise to pay college tuition for a group of underprivileged students. And were the writers just bored in later seasons when they picked apart the marriage of Jim and Pam? This is why we can’t have nice things.
Bojack Horseman
They might as well as called this show Trigger Warning. From multiple characters’ self-loathing to an entire episode devoted to a eulogy to drug-induced self-destruction, Bojack dared us to get through a full half-hour without suffering a panic attack. Why did it take an animated show to get this real?
How I Met Your Mother
HIMYM is the most inexcusable show on this list, mainly because it didn’t earn its painful ending. You can’t do five frivolous seasons of The Brady Bunch and just have a drunk driver kill Jan out of nowhere. Similarly, seasons' worth of goofy antics from the pals on How I Met Your Mother didn’t prepare us for a finale that answered the show’s titular mystery, then killed off Your Mother with cancer. “SHE’S DEAD, KIDS! So is it OK if I date now?”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Reality forced Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s hand here. As viral videos of police brutality dominated the national consciousness, how could the show pretend that none of those issues affected the kooky cops serving under Captain Holt? The sitcom was damned if it did and damned if it didn’t -- and it did when Rosa quit the Nine-Nine to protest systemic problems inside the NYPD. We’ll give Brooklyn credit for not shying away, but reflecting reality changed the show and not for the better.
Seinfeld
So you’re not down with the Seinfeld finale? Give the show this: While Seinfeld was always dark (George pretty much murdered his fiancee, after all), it wasn’t afraid to follow that bleakness to its natural conclusion. Seinfeld always dared you to like Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine even when they committed objectively thoughtless and cruel acts. In its finale, it hammered home the point, convicting the gang for their sins of indifference. In case you thought Jerry and Larry David were kidding with that “no hugging, no learning” mantra, the series finale rubbed our faces in it.
