The half-hour comedy — that durable, efficient vessel of American cultural life — finds itself increasingly homeless on the platforms that have become television's new home. Streaming services, governed by algorithms that reward serialization, binge completion, and prestige positioning, were never architected with the joke in mind. What is unfolding is not simply a shift in format preference, but a deeper misalignment between the logic of comedic storytelling and the economic grammar of the attention economy.