Not all humor is created equal.

Absurdist Humor

Absurdist humor asks the audience to laugh at something they don’t understand, because it doesn’t make any sense. I’ve always suspected that absurdist humor appeals primarily to children and dumb people. If they’re going to laugh at anything, it’s probably going to be something they don’t understand, so a lot of humor feels to them like absurdist humor.

It’s true that, for example, Monty Python (among my personal pantheon) indulged in absurdity, but they were also intellectuals, so there was something for everyone. They mostly chose to use it as a means of getting from one sketch to another, thereby relieving themselves of the burden of coming up with a solid ending, which is always a challenge in comedy writing.

Puns

Puns are a comedy gray area that asks the audience to laugh at a punchline because it sounds like a different word. Such things can work in one-liners and riddles, but sketch comedy is about situations, not the words used in them. Having a vampire say she doesn’t want to bite a man having a cookout because she doesn’t like steaks/stakes is bizarre. It’s a joke that lives within a technicality: steak and stake are two different concepts represented by words that sound alike. It’s humor that smirks at the audience and grovels for a chuckle for being vaguely clever.

You can get away with a pun here and there in sketch comedy by giving them to characters as “dad jokes” or bad comedy. This gives the audience a different context (the character’s choice of words matters) and permission to laugh at it as “bad” comedy even tho the pun itself might actually be clever. It can also work in a news sketch, where the joke is all about the words themselves.

• I personally had good success claiming that the Chicago Bears’ move to Hammond, Indiana, would result in a name change to the Hammond Eggs (ham and eggs).
• And pretty good results saying the police declined to investigate the accident I had with a deer because running the hair fibers would only come back as a Jane Doe.

Meta Comedy

Meta comedy asks the audience to laugh at something they don’t know much about: what goes on behind the scenes at the comedy show or during the writing process or whatever. The result is that the writers and performers probably think it’s funnier than the audience does, because they have greater context for the jokes. That thing? That actually happened! Ha ha! That other thing? That would never happen! Ha ha! How can you expect an audience to laugh at situations they know nothing about?

Even if you try to give context—after all, sketches often depict a board room, locker room, etc., which many in the audience have little experience with—you still have the problem of the comedians knowing much more about the situation than the audience.

SNL did a lot of behind-the-scenes sketches in its early days, often as the cold open, and I don’t think the audience fully understood the absurdity of the performers each having a mere gym locker instead of their own dressing room. Fifty years later, Please Don’t Destroy (Marshall, Higgins, & Herlihy) did a lot of writers’ room sketches, but these were mainly just about them as people and not as writers on the show per se; and even so, most people in the audience understood the concept of writers coming up with ideas for the show.