it’s incredibly difficult to write a story with characters that make reasonable and empathetic decisions without it being boring

Nah, not exactly. Yeah ever story needs some conflict or adversity to overcome, but if the characters are healthy and empathetic then the conflict has to be external. But that doesn’t work so well for shows that revolve around a small set of insular characters and their at-home relationships. External conflict fits better with adventure stories and crime solving and whatnot.

Dunbing people down into tropes makes it cheap and easy to crank out episode after episode after episode.

Yeah for sure. TVTropes.com has ruined so much of this for me lol (warning if you’re not familiar, it’s a worse timesink than Wikipedia)