Funny Ha Ha

American humor does tend to lend itself toward more of the one-liners, as you identified. It also commonly revolves around characters that are “cool and successful” (or at least appear to be successful). Think about some of the more popular American sitcoms, like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory… All of them live in nice apartments in expensive cities and in general things go their way even though they are not always the nicest of people. Very rarely is there active hostility toward the characters from the outside, excepting a recurring rival or villain-of-the-week— even in TBBT nerd culture is made “cool”. (Disclaimer: I am a huge nerd and I do think nerd culture is cool, but it was not the norm in earlier media)

By contrast, British comedy leans more toward grand setups and “losers,” by which I mean main characters that are not well-regarded and who rarely accomplish their goals. They may be in positions of stature (e.g. Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster) but more often they are common folk in crappy apartments —if you ever even see their homes. Think Fawlty Towers, IT Crowd, Red Dwarf.

In short, American audiences want to BE sitcom heroes, and British audiences want to see those poor bastards struggle.

I think it's intensely subjective. I've written the exact same type of comedies -- Douglas Adams copycat with a wry ending that doubles as a punchline -- across multiple rounds. I've placed highly in some and gotten zero points in some. I didn't change how I write comedy; I just got judges who liked my humor one time and really didn't like it the other time. x) Imo it's the most subjective genre assignment, but I wouldn't fear it. I'd just have fun and write something that makes you laugh while you write it. The only thing you can control is writing something that honors your own writing voice and interests. 

I think it's always a good idea to focus on relatable and unexpected characters, since comedies are still stories and need that element of a character with a motivation. :) <3

I have no set way of writing comedy. I have always written comedy to send to my friends.

I was also the class clown in school, at which I was highly successful, so I just think of 

something funny and write it. 

Now, there are more constraints compared to back then, meaning so many things 

people will take offence to. I wrote a comedy for a different contest for screenplay, not NYCM, 

and everyone I showed it thought it was deff funny - one judge said he/she did not find it

funny in the least - I put that down to my finding humor in people with all four limbs missing,

but maybe it had something to do with one of the limbless characters looked very much like

Prince Harry, but then it could have been because I included Nancy Pelosi chasing cars while

foaming at the mouth. At any rate that one judge that found no humor sank me...

Better yet, you know that these people like metal (what a workplace) but you like old metal from it's early days when the songs would be about wizards and ghouls instead of throat tearing screams. You still like the new stuff and play it but it's just not your thing. But, you're all content. Maybe not thrilled but its not bad. And if you had played what you wanted to play it is probable that these people wouldn't have recognised that as metal.

What I'm getting at is when asked for comedy there is an expectation and as much as leaning into self indulgence goes sometimes people won't recognise it as comedy, for whatever reason.