A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.
Emotionally, shows like 'Cheers' and 'Taxi' were classic sitcoms when I was growing up.
The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.