Like so many Barney Miller episodes, this one addresses a topical issue that had not yet been fully addressed at the time it aired. The episode aired in 1978, when New York law held it perfectly legal for a man to have non-consensual sex with his wife: marriage was legal consent to sex at any time in the future. The first New York conviction of a husband for raping his wife came three years after this episode aired.
The actual dialog and acting in this episode takes the problem of marital rape quite seriously, with the wife reporting it very upset, Barney sympathetic but perplexed at how he can accommodate her needs given the state of the law, the husband angry and confused because what he did was "natural," his lawyer puzzled knowing that this was legal at the time, and a DA wanting to push this through the courts as a test case to make marital rape illegal.
Unfortunately, a ham-handed laugh track is slathered all over this episode, with a prerecorded audience bursting into guffaws when the woman says that her rapist is her husband, that she was assaulted by him, and so forth, and the laugh track becomes more aggressive as the episode progresses. There are a few lines that are meant to be humorous (Barney: Would you be willing to sign a complaint? Wife: Today, I'd be willing to do anything; last night, I wasn't), but most of the things that the audience laughs at are not meant to be humorous, are not played as humorous, and almost 40 years later it is downright painful to hear the laughter.
In spite of that, I give this episode a reasonably good review because hiding underneath all of that artificial hilarity is actually a good examination of an awkward legal situation that is no longer a problem: marital rape is now a crime in all 50 states. In 1978, marriage was consent in most states.