Maybe I’m just watching the wrong TV. Occasionally I’ll find a sitcom that’s vaguely amusing. Nothing great, but good enough for vegging and unwinding a bit. More times than not, mediocre sticoms employ the accursed laugh track. I guess when I was younger, I didn’t notice as much, or it didn’t bother me for some reason. Now however, it annoys the bejesus out of me, both for its frequency and the actual sound of it.
Scrubs certainly has its meh episodes, but they don’t feel the need to stick canned chuckles in. How do other people feel about this? For me, it sure as hell doesn’t make a mediocre show funnier, and beyond that detracts from what I’m watching. It almost seems dated to me, and if not dated then a sign that your show ain’t so funny anyway. If you need to stick in recorded laughter, then you need better writers. It’s like blowing up a gas station in a movie, or possibly running a cruise ship through a town (Speed 2 [Speed Harder], I’m looking in your direction).
I think of a laugh track as desperation - a suggestion that the live audience (if there even was one) didn’t find a particular joke funny, so they have to fake it. This is why I find it surprising that people list Two And A Half Men as a favourite show, because it’s 99% laugh track and seems awfully desperate sometimes.
Two And A Half Men is the first show I thought of. My wife loves it but I can never see the appeal. All the plots and jokes are from Sitcoms 101 but the laugh track loves it all, and so does she. I think maybe the laugh track adds to the mindlessness of it which makes it a good show to unwind with at the end of the day :shrug:
Remember when they added a laugh track to Scooby Doo back in the day? That was just wrong. Even as a kid, I knew it was wrong.
A laugh track does annoy me, but it doesn’t stop me from watching a show I like. I mean, even Frasier used a laugh track. I can usually tune it out, but I notice it more on the crappier shows, like Reba, which my wife likes for some inexplicable reason. God, I hate that show.
Like aluminum bats and sweaters on dogs, the laugh track is simply a crime against human decency. A phrase like “nails on the chalkboard of my soul” may be trite, but it fully applies here.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s they tried to do away with the laugh track in some series, but I think they found that people didn’t like them as much. They’d been trained to like the track, I think. Maybe now the pendulum is finally swinging the other way.
I think I tune the laugh track out. I don’t need it – some of my favorites funny shows DON’T have one (animated ones like The Simpson’s and The Tick)
I listen to a radio show that sometimes uses a laugh track in completely inappropriate ways like for a deadly serious and sad story. It cracks me up every time.
Confronted with that Chelsea Lately show last night, I was mildly shocked as how much laugh track they injected into the banter between guest quips. Obvious and more than a little annoying.
I hate laugh tracks too but lately I’ve been catching some of the reruns of Two and a Half Men. The first couple times the laugh track was annoying as usual, but now I’m used to it. I think HongKongFooey is right – it fits that show. There’s a rhythm to the zingers and the track becomes something like background music. Sometimes we chuckle along with the laugh track, so we don’t notice it so much.
There are YouTube clips of The Wire and Deadwood with laugh tracks. Sacrilege.
Maybe if they recorded a new laugh track that actually sounded like the live audience, instead of the same pre-recorded bursts they’ve been using for the last thirty years.
That was always one of my biggest gripes about Seinfeld. The stupid laugh track in every scene.
I always wondered how that show would play without it. A bunch of neurotic people bitching about the life around them.
I’ve noticed that on Lewis Black’s new show, the Root of All Evil, they use a laugh track. Despite the fact that they have a live audience. It’s really pretty pathetic.
Seinfeld had a laugh trak at first but he got them to drop it. When you see re-runs it gets very annoying.
The laugh trak on 2-1/2 Men is what keeps me from every returning after the first break.
Historical note:
"Claque (French for “clapping”) is, in its origin, a term which refers to an organized body of professional applauders in French theatres and opera houses. Members of a claque are called claqueurs.
Hiring people to applaud dramatic performances was common in classical times. For example, when the emperor Nero acted, he had his performance greeted by an encomium chanted by five thousand of his soldiers.
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The practice spread to Italy (famously at La Scala, Milan), Vienna, London (Covent Garden) and New York (the Metropolitan Opera). Claques were also used as a form of extortion, as singers were commonly contacted by the chef de claque before their debut and forced to pay a fee, in order not to get booed.
Toscanini and Mahler discouraged claques, a part of the development of concert etiquette.