People looked happy in movies and TV because that's simply how it was done. One of the things that made shows like The Simpsons and Married With Children so rev

People looked happy in movies and TV because that's simply how it was done. One of the things that made shows like The Simpsons and Married With Children so revolutionary was their rebellion against this artificial happiness, peeling away the veneer to show the dysfunction that was always lurking beneath. This "peeling away of layers" defined much of the 90s, and eventually led to a kind of one-upmanship to see who could be the grittiest, the most provocative, the most extreme. There's a similar revolution brewing at the moment in Japanese TV with the release of shows like The Naked Director.