I was saying yesterday that "Chuckles" starts as far from the ending as it possibly can--i.e. in a deadly serious, even somber place. But in addition to setting up the ending, in the fashion of a great joke (which it is, in fact), that opening tills the soil of the ep, if I can be farm-y--which actually I should not because what the hell do I know about farms, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.
What I mean is, it teaches the audience that in this episode things are going to be a bit different, more open to reality and a little deeper. It creates the conditions for what follows, which is not only hilarious but also repeatedly thoughtful about death and life and the place of comedy in the midst of it all. "We laugh at death," says Lou after he and Murray get caught laughing gets him laughing about Chuckles' death, "because we know death will have the last laugh on us."
Amidst the comedy we also get Claudette's great line about funerals come too late, and the various characters reflecting on what they want their own funerals to be like, including Ted's fantastic assertion that he's not going to die (which while definitely written for the laughs also so captures how most of us live our lives most of the time).
In a sense, these serious moments become part of the magic trick of the episode--we track the comedy, and yet at the end it's actually all been kind of moving too. How the hell did they do that?
And the answer is in part by following the dramatic threads even as comedy starts to win the day. But in part it's where they started, the way they tilled that soil (I'm just going to keep saying it until it works) to make it ready to grow the kind of harvest they want (God it's just getting worse, isn't it, you know what I mean).
Fun exercise: Look at the first couple scenes of your own pilot--Teaser plus Act One, say. And pay attention specifically not to how they read but to what they're teaching the audience to expect, what sort of conversations, themes, arc, emotions are on the table/off the table.
Is what you're seeing what you want? Any adjustments to be made?
