This is a list of reasons why I’m slogging through a scene or having to pull a bunch of stunts to make it work, or I’m watching someone else slog through it. It’s not a set of rules, because you can break all of them and still write something great. But when I’m rewriting something I hate, one of these is usually why. This stuff is mostly specific to sitcoms.

1. This is a scene about a character starting to feel differently about something. It probably works in a drama, but it’s really hard to make an incremental attitude change funny, ****and a sitcom audience won’t consider it movement. So just make your characters feel 100% of whatever they’re feeling. The red flag for this is if you write the words “starting to” in your outline. Like “Elaine is starting to think this was a mistake.” If you need a character to change their mind, make it a strong flip from one attitude to the other, and make it funny that they flipped.
2. This is a scene where someone has to explain the stakes to someone else. There’s a reason why in old sitcoms, the boss was always coming over for dinner. Because in that era, every viewer immediately understood the stakes of a boss dinner. If the boss so much as frowned, no character would have to explain why that was important. Look for stakes that are as effortless as that. You don’t need them to be 100% obvious, but if you’re typing a line like “Look, you don’t understand….” that scene is always gonna make you suffer.
3. Someone’s lying and the audience doesn't know it. In a drama, you can write towards a climax where we find out that the protagonist has been lied to. But in a comedy, the liar makes a much better protagonist, and the climax is when they finally get caught. There’s a reason why “I Love Lucy” wasn’t about a musician who never knew what his wife was up to during the day.
4. The protagonist just said “I don’t have to listen to your crap” or “Whatever dude” or “I don’t have time for this” and walked out. Most likely, that means you should delete the scene, or make the character need to be in it for some reason. And ideally, that reason is internal. They can be uncomfortable in the scene, but they should not want to be somewhere else. Your audience needs to know that they are watching the most important thing currently happening in the world of your show. Also, just as a rule, when someone has to listen to someone else’s crap, it’s funnier and it sells their relationship.
5. A character is talking about how mad they are. Better to have anger while talking about anything else than to have anger and talk about being angry.
6. I raised the stakes during the story. This is counter-intuitive because everyone is always saying “raise the stakes.” ****But “raise the stakes” means make them higher to start, not raise them as a plot point. Maybe it works better in movies, but whenever I see it in a sitcom, I hate it. ****Could be a me thing. Escalate the tension by adding to the difficulty of winning, not to the cost of losing.
7. I’m rug-pulling a promise I made to the audience. It’s a judgement call, because rug-pulls are funny. But you need the audience to trust you. So be careful rug-pulling something that feels load-bearing. If Elaine comes in and says she left her purse in a cab, it’s got to be in that cab. If someone’s holding a gun, it can’t turn out to be a toy gun. If Ross wants to take his date to “the most romantic restaurant in the city,” whatever goes wrong on that date should not be due to the restaurant being unromantic. Or, if it turns out to be unromantic, that fact has to fulfill a bigger promise to the audience, i.e. “Ross is is bad at romance.”
8. Someone is explaining themself. There’s a Seinfeld episode where Kramer rebuilt the Merv Griffin set in his apartment. How did he get it? He was walking somewhere and he saw it in a dumpster. Now, you could call that the laziest possible explanation, but anyone who needs a better explanation just can’t be entertained. And why did Kramer want it? No reason was given. Imagine him having to say “Ever since I was a kid I worshipped Merv Griffin. My mom used to sit me down in front of the tv because she was busy with her second job, and Merv was like a surrogate father to me. So you can understand why I have a deep connection to that set.” The more he explains himself, the more you don’t care. The mere fact that he wants it is the part you care about. And the best answer to “Why would Kramer do X?” is “Because he’s Kramer.” But if you really feel the need to justify a character decision, do it quick. Make it a joke and be done with it. When you’re explaining, you’re not entertaining.TM
9. The protagonist just had a setback. This is also counter-intuitive, because sure, you want a character to have trouble solving a problem. But in a 21-minute story, you don’t have the time to send them back to square one. Often, when a story feels like it’s running in place, it’s because there’s a second attempt to solve the first problem. Instead of a setback, do a trap door, eg they succeed at what they were trying to do in the scene, but they end up worse off. It’s the difference between “okay new plan” vs. “shit, now there’s a worse problem.” The former is backward motion and the latter is forward motion.
10. I thought intrigue would work in comedy because it works in drama. It happens to us all. We think we can play with intrigue, because we’ve seen it work, but then we put it in a sitcom and it leads to several scenes that are only important because of something the audience finds out later. A comedy audience doesn’t have that kind of patience. At any given moment in the story, you should be able to pause the episode and the viewer should be able to tell you what’s going on, what everyone’s deal is, who’s trying to do what, and why. Imagine Lucy hiding something from Ricky when you the viewer don’t yet know what she’s hiding. That’s not the funny way to do that scene, it’s the frustrating way.
11. This plot point has no joke support. Chandler needs Joey to vacate the apartment tonight because there’s a girl coming over. He could just ask, and then the moment has passed and your audience doesn’t read any significance into it. Better if it’s a bit. Like, Chandler asks and then Joey goes way over the top with his congratulations, which makes Chandler feel emasculated. Or maybe it’s the opposite - Chandler is dying for the subject to come up organically because he wants to brag, but Joey keeps missing his offers. Either way, the ask from Chandler to Joey then becomes a memorable thing that happened between them. For that matter, if you’re in an outline and someone wants anything from someone, spend time on that moment, because that’s a fun beat to write, and your gut should be telling you that it’s a whole scene, not just a line that happens inside a scene.
12. This scene doesn’t belong to anyone. Whose scene is it? And the answer shouldn’t be “it’s a group scene.” The scene will always be more fun to write and easier to follow if someone drives it. If it’s a group scene, one person should need something from the group, or want to change their status within the group, or have the problem that the group talks about.
13. This scene has too many points of view. Speaking of group scenes, write them like 2-person scenes. Not as in only two people talk, but as in the group members line up on only two points of view. So like, in a seven person scene, you can have seven different personalities, but not seven different opinions. Make it 6v1, 5v2, 3v4. It’s also fun to do a 7-person scene as a cascade, where the turns in the scene are people changing their mind as momentum builds.
14. I’m setting up a tiny detail that I’ll pay off later. If I’m fiddling around with tiny parts to make the story work, I’m making something too intricate. If the story hangs on a specific line, or someone saying something a certain way, or if there’s a little clause in a line that if you lose it, something later won’t make sense, put away the tweezers.
15. I’m trying to gussy up exposition. When it comes to exposition, just pay your bills up top and do it blatantly. You may think the audience will hate hearing bald exposition, but what they hate more is missing the setup because it’s not stated overtly. Just go ahead and start the story with Monica coming in and saying, “You guys have to help me. When I was in college I made a pact with someone, and now he’s in town and he expects us to get married.” Then play the bit. Have your Phoebe say “Oh my god a wedding I’m gonna cry!” Have your Ross say “Okay I made a similar pact, so you’re saying Shoshana Applebaum is dreading my phone call?” Have your Samantha say “Before I know how to react, is he rich or hung?” Have your Norm say “You’re talking about the whole reason I married Vera.” And then Carla says “You married Vera because you promised to get married if you couldn't find anyone better?” And then Norm says, “No the promise was to someone worse.” Your exposition is like when the bobsled team shoves off and runs 50 feet before jumping into the sled. Just push with your legs and then slide the rest of the way.
16. My montage fixes a writing problem at the viewer’s expense. I wrote a montage because I had to cover the time between one funny thing and the next funny thing. So I’m wasting my audience’s time. Imagine a story where George wants to make a splash at karaoke night, so he takes voice lessons. If you were telling that story as a joke, you would say “so then the guy takes all these lessons, goes every week, practices every night, now it’s the next karaoke night and he’s great at singing.” You would instinctively slam through the montage to get to the next funny thing. Why treat your viewers worse than you would if they were standing there with you? So the rule is if you don’t need a montage but have a great idea for a killer montage, you’re on solid ground. But if your story actually requires a montage, maybe start the story later.
17. I wasted a minor character. Don’t make minor characters vanilla. Make them flavorful.
18. This entrance is convenient for me, but adds nothing. If someone enters a scene, they better have news that affects the story or a solid joke. A terrible reason for an entrance is “because the writer needed them not to hear something that happened a page earlier.”