And I would also submit that while M*A*S*H was far from the first sitcom to tackle serious storylines, it was likely the first whose entire format was subverted into being essentially a drama halfway through, or probably a dramedy depending upon the strict definition of the term. But as Jason mentions above, what we classify a show as is more important than what it actually is, at least in this context.

Yet the series and its actors (and writing probably) were always nominated in the comedy category at the Emmys. So were someone going to do a sort of historical comparison using the shows you have cited above, M*A*S*H would seem like a good place to start.

In other words, it’s not that I don’t laugh at the shows below the diagonal: rather, that’s just not their “purpose” at the end of the day.

As far as “How to Make It in America” (per your Tweet this morning) I’d also put it below, making it more of a light-hearted drama than a “dramedy”.

However, I do know why I didn’t: its unique structure means that it has five different types of episodes, which means that in some ways it becomes five different shows in one. It creates a collective experience very different from any other show on television, which is why classifying alongside other one-hour dramas (yet alone other half-hour series) seems problematic.

Also, it seems HBO is developing T, a new 30 minute drama about “the gender transformation of a woman into a man”. (Variety).

One of the questions I have to be curious about is what keeps 30-minute dramas from existing: is it just the vicious cycle of network disinterest leading to writer wariness leading to a lack of scripts leading to network ignorance, or are there actually some 30-minute drama scripts out there that, when given network notes and taken to series, are altered in order to at least vaguely enter into the comic realm?

For me, the troubling example was Ally McBeal, a show that wanted to be both comedy & drama but instead of creating an interesting balance between the two, it swung wildly between serious and comedic tones. But for the Emmys, it was a comedy; for Fox, it was treated more like a drama. (Northern Exposure is an earlier example that was similarly confounding to many, but I found it more organically unified.)

The other element that is crucial on TV is the show’s length – it’s hard to think of any show since the 1950s/60s (Dragnet, Twilight Zone) that’s clearly a 30 minute drama, while over the last decade we’ve seen more 60 minute shows that skew comedic (and get classified as such by awards). But it’s pretty ridiculous that a show like Ally or Desperate Housewives is compared to a 30-minute comedy like 30 Rock which is all about jokes & pace over plot & character – completely different modes of storytelling and structure.