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Adam Kotsko made strong points regarding awkwardness and its role in sitcoms. While Kotsko brings up Seinfeld and Arrested Development. I believe that the use of awkwardness and silence was optimized in later sitcoms, particularly in shows be creator Michael Schur.
The shows by Michael Schur that utilize awkwardness and silence for comedic value are his workplace comedies: The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. The workplace is the perfect place for this type of comedy because there is an intimacy between co-workers that allows jokes to thrive but there is very clear boundaries between characters in instances in which they are familiar but not quite friends.
Two of these shows incorporate a documentary format, cutting to interview shots of characters reflecting on previous scenes or offering a deeper dive into their personality. In both The Office and Parks and Recreation, these quick shots often include a still facial expression and the silence offered by these characters causes us to laugh as a result of everything they don’t say. However, this only feels awkward because we as the audience become a part of the cast of characters and only we know how a character is really feeling.
Brooklyn Nine-Nine is not a documentary and this is where the situational awkwardness produces comedy without running the risk of alienating their audience via second-hand embarrassment. When Charles Boyle, designated chatterbox of this cast of characters and king of making his co-workers uncomfortable, is silent? The scene is awkward but filled with phones ringing and papers being turned, and the comedy comes from the facial expressions of the characters. The scene is awkward, but not in a way that makes the audience uncomfortable.