Most smart humor requires more “work”. You have to figure out how the various bits of the joke fit together and connect. The further you have to “travel” to gather those bits, the funnier it tends to be, but only if you don’t get lost on the trip. Quite literally, the journey IS the reward.

I tend to go out of my way when telling a joke or making a funny statement to require several leaps in order to get it. That means that about half of my jokes aren’t “gotten” or that nearly everyone in the room doesn’t get it.

However, the one guy who has all of the necessary pieces tends to nearly fall out of his chair. That need to have the right bits to connect up points to genuinely smart humor being a pretty niche thing.

Every once in a while, some humor works on multiple levels at once. There’s often a smart joke sitting underneath a dumb one. I think a great current example of this working is Big Bang Theory.

Lots of the jokes are of the sort: “Geeks are obsessed with Star Trek and ‘regular’ people aren’t” and don’t take much to get. However, there are usually several other jokes underneath. When I watch with people who aren’t geeks or physics nerds or comic book fans, etc. they tend to miss the smart jokes.

The Simpsons (during the good years, for whatever definition of that variable you assign) also pulled off the layering pretty well.

And then there’s stuff like Family Guy where not only are the jokes dumb, but they repeat them, and highlight the path between the bits needing connection.

Consuming really smart humor takes more “work” than dumb and most people aren’t willing to put in that work.