I think they can have both: Ego Draconis did it pretty well, having a number of random, odd and absurd touches, be it the handstand at the apex of a ladder or the hermit-with-the-wit-of-a-carrot, or the Broken Valley Village gossips, or the gravestones, or the Horror of High Hall's exclamation of "oh bugger!"... etc. But I don't think it detracted at all from what was actually quite a serious storyline, and something which I found to be quite heart-rending more than once.
Perhaps it reflects our own approach to life: I've often been told off for not being as serious as a situation dictated, sometimes in an official capacity, but personally I felt my misbehaviour just added character and general seasoning to something that needed a bit more depth. Well okay, perhaps "need" is going a bit far, but y'know.
