Inappropriate Humor Term

There's a term I've been trying to remember that defines a moment where a serious story or scene ends with a joke or light ending. We see it in TV shows like Star Trek (TOS) where an otherwise grim story has been ended with a joke.

The term could be psycho-analytical. It's possibly German in origin, but that may not be accurate.

It isn't schadenfreude, macabre, dark humor, black humor, black comedy. It's a term meant to signify the writer's apparent idiosyncratic need to end a dark/grim story with a joke.

Writers of Star Trek were known for this. So is Joss Whedon.

This is not necessarily a form "bad" writing. But it Is considered inappropriate.

Solution 1:

It can be described as comic relief:

comic episodes in a dramatic or literary work that offset more serious sections.

Oxford Dictionaries/Lexico

Note that comic relief is considered a legitimate literary technique, although (like anything) it can be misused.

See also Wikipedia.