The Sketch Show and Its Rapid Fire Format
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Unlike almost any other television format, a sketch show asks its audience to reset completely every few minutes, moving from one self contained scene to the next with no continuity required between them beyond a shared comic sensibility running steadily through the whole finished episode.
This structure demands enormous economy from writers. A sketch has to establish a premise, escalate it and land a satisfying conclusion within just a few minutes, leaving almost no room for the slower character development that longer formats can comfortably rely on across many episodes.
What sustains a sketch show over a long run is less any individual sketch than the ensemble's collective range, its ability to shift convincingly between tones and characters within a single episode. That versatility, more than any single memorable bit, is usually the format's real achievement.