That’s all I’m asking for in a TV show or movie: people acting like real people.
It’s bothered me since… well, since I Love Lucy or Andy Griffith, I guess. In real life, if someone makes a funny comeback, everyone laughs. Apparently in The Television Dimension, the studio audience/laugh track people know when something’s funny, but the characters have NO idea.
On almost every sitcom, you get the Set Up Line, followed by the Hilarious Zinger, and maybe a character reacts with a facial expression, but it’s not at all like what happens with real people.
With every real person I know, it’s Set Up Line, followed by the Hilarious Zinger, then everyone in the room cracks up. New person walks in, and everyone’s talking at once: “You just missed it!” “Did you hear what Robbie said?” “Okay, so Chris walks in and Robbie says…” “You should’ve seen his face!” Then it gets recreated later, and built upon.
Trying not to laugh (“Corpsing” right?) at someone being funny is the opposite of how real people act. Real people are laughing with the joke-teller, and reacting to what they do/say. That’s what I want on TV.
This is a prime example of why realism is overrated.
People laugh harder at staged presentation when the characters are not laughing. Buster Keaton discovered this over a century ago: he was funnier when he didn’t laugh. Laughing at other characters’ jokes doesn’t make the joke funnier; and it’s disastrous if the audience doesn’t think it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
Yes, it would be more accurate. But it wouldn’t make for good comedy. The purpose of a comedy is to be as funny as possible, not as accurate as possible.
Yes. “Having the characters act like real people” is relatively far down on a sitcom producer’s list of priorities—below “being funny,” “being entertaining,” and “making the best possible use of the 22 minutes they have available to tell their story.”
As for why this is true: maybe it’s because, since the character’s lines and the other characters’ responses to them are both scripted (presumably by the same people), this comes across as “laughing at your own jokes.”
Disagree about those two examples. A lot of the exchanges between Lucy and Ricky seemed totally spontaneous and quite real for a husband and wife (ditto for Rob and Laura Petrie.) Of course, don’t forget that Lucille Ball ordered the writers that no one was to make fun of Ricky but Lucy.
And how could anyone laugh at poor Barney Fife? Sure, he was pompous and incompetent. But he also tried so hard, and was a loyal friend to Andy and almost an uncle to Opie. You didn’t laugh at Barney, you felt sorry for him.