Harlan Ellison wrote a short story about canned laughter. The protagonist’s mother had been in the audience of a show back in the 50’s when they taped the original laughter. Her recorded laughter was still being used decades later and her ghost was trapped on Earth as long as her laughter remained. The son had to track down and destroy all copies of the laugh track to free his mother’s ghost.
Great thread (and the Scooby Doo stuff made the cartoons unwatchable). But there’s something to be said for laugh tracks. Nothing like a live audience where they get the joke 15-20 seconds after the punchline and the SNL crew is already into the next bit . . .
I remember reading somewhere how the cast didn’t like the laughtrack either, and arranged that there wasn’t any laughtrack during scenes in the operating theatre.
And, from the “predictions that came TRUE” department, a review from Variety back in the day of The Hank McCune Show, believed to be the first show with a laugh track, stated that