“Logo Text WHEN WAS The LAST TIME YOU SPARED A TUOUGHT ABOUT SITCOM LAUGH TRACKS? Probably Years. Maybe Decades? Sitcoms with background Laughter have Seemed Almost Dead, Definitely and Firmly Dying, for a Very Long Time. And, Yet, Like The PLAGUE-STRUK VILLAGER IN MONY PYTHON AND The HOLY GRAIL, The FORMAT KEPS SITING BACK UP”, – WRITE: www.hollywoodReporter.com
WHEN WAS The LAST TIME YOU SPARED A TUOUGHT About Sitcom Laugh Tracks? Probably Years. Maybe Decades? Sitcoms with background Laughter have Seemed Almost Dead, Definitely and Firmly Dying, for a Very Long Time. And, Yet, Like The PLAGUE-STRUK VILLAGER IN Monty python and the holy grailThe Format Keeps Sitting Back Up As if Cheerful Say, Complete with Cockney Accent, “I’M Not Dead Yet!”
One Might Look at Laugh Track Sitcoms Like An Observing Anthropologist: Here is the Half-Hour Program with Canned Laughter in Its Natural BroadCast Habit, Driven to Near Extinction Since the 1990s by An Invasive Species, The Single-Camera Comedy. Back in 2021, Several Outletts Declared the Format officially Decedated WHEN NOT A Single New Multi-Cam Sitcom DBUTED IN THE FALL SEASON AND TWO AcCLAIMED POSTMODERNIST. Wandavision and Amc’s Kevin Can F – K HimSelf) Surgically Disaneled the Genre.
And yet (puts on morpheus glasses): What if i were to tell you, there are currently more Multi-Cam Comedies with Background Laughhter Airing on BroadCast than Single Cam (Seven Vs. Five), and that Many Que. That after all Critic Bashing and Evolving Audence Taste, There’s Still A New Chuck Lorre Sitcom This Season (Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage) In the Broadcast Nielsen Top 5? That while most New Streaming Comedies Are Single Cam, They Often Get Trounced in The Ratings by Decdes-Old Reruns of Friends an The Big Bang Theory?
Long been Derided As Tacky, Commercial Non-Art, Sitcoms with Background Laughter Over The Years Have Been Condemned As A Dystopian Form of Joke Mind Control. A Study Showed Laugh Tracks Make Viewers More Likely to Find Jokes Funny and Triggers a Mirror Response – Not Unlike Seeing Somebody Yawow Makes You Want To give (Apolitf. IT’s Never A Writer’s Goal). Laugh Tracks Have Also Been Called A Mechanism of Systemic MISGYNY, WHERE SomeBody (Presumable (Presumable and Anonymous Middle-Auged White Guy) Slaps Laughter Over Over. Patriarchs (“To The Moon Alice!” Ralph Threatens ALICE IN The HoneymoonersFist Raceded, and Cue The Pre-Recorded Hoots).
In recent years, However, TV has evolved so radically, that there’s an argument to be made for appreccating the format anew in our current era of peak realism. Fx’s “Comedy” The Bear HAS BROKEN EMMY RECORDS AND IS SO REAL THAT EVERY CHARACTER IS MISARABLE (Just Like Working in An Actual Restaurant). The MOST Popular Genre Show at the Moment Is HBO’s The Last of UsWHICH TAKS A PULPY IDEA – ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE – AND CREATES A World SO Authentic that a likable Character agonizingly dies nearly every week. While HBO’s Breakout Medical Drama, The Pittis so true to life that you’re taughting everything you never wanted to KNOW About Hospital Staffing Issues. Even A Disney Star Wars Show, Andor, is the use of it Star War So Seriously That A Recent Episode Featured An Imperial Officeer Attempting to Rape A Rebel (Calling It Right Now: The Finale Introducts An Ewok Witch). All Terrific Shows, But TV-That Ever-Relial Escape From Reality-Now Sems to Revel in Shoving Reality Right Back at Us “GROUNDED”?).
Laugh Track Sitcoms, Meanwhile, with Their Intenationally Unrealistic and Ever-Affable Characters, Sporting Perfect Hair in Shadowless Living Rooms with The Disembodied Greek Chorus of Format Feels More Artistic than Ever Because is SOSLIZED Compared to the Grueling Authenticity Everywhere Else. These Shows Are Inherently Weirdand weird goes hand in hand with art.
YouTubers have Made Videos that Stripped Away the Laughter from Shows Like Friends an The Big Bang Theory To PainFully Awkward Effect. But a comedy with audience laughter is it own unified things to who to together in a package that can please. Hearing Laughter Feels Warm, Its Tone Is A Sunny Glow; a soft yellow noise. You’re Not Watching Jerry and Elaine by Yourself, It’s Like You’re Watching Them with A Group of People. The Empty Awkward Silence of Seeing Jim and Pam On The OfficeHits Different, More Cool and Cold. The Laugh Track Makes US Feel Less Alone.
There is a creepy part of this. The Original Laff Box used to add canned Laughter to TV Shows (YES, ITS NAME INCLUDED A DOBLE FF “LAFF” AND IT WAS INDEED An INTRICATE BOX) CONTAINED 320 DIFFERENT LAUGHHGHGHGHGHGHHHHHH. This Sacred Sitcom Ark of the Covenant – Stuffed with Guffws and Chuckles and Titters – Was used for for Decdes. EVEN MODERN SITCOMS OFFEN Used Laughs Recorded Years or Decades Prior. You See Where This Is Going (or Perhaps Not, It’s A Morbid Thought): Even after the box retriered sometime in the 1970s, The Practice of Taping Laughs for Eternal Reuse. Insthead of Being “Filmed Before a Live Audience,” Programs Were Often Created With A Partly Dead Audence. The Laff Box, and Its More Modern Versions, Had Trapped Their Expressions of HILARITY AND STUFFED THEM INTO A Chuckle Cube for Endless Recyling.
Speaking of: There is An Industry Distry Between using Live Studio Audionce Laughter and Entirely Canned Laughter (and Also a Middle Ground, “Sweetening,” while Nowadays Since Even Multi-Cam Shows have some scenes filmed outside). Filming Before An Audience is offen Considered Superior as It Helps Actors Improve their Joke Timing and Producers Tweak Dialogue and Give Notes In Real Torn Torn. There are also infecto for Saturday Night Live-like Moments WHEN ACOR VISIBLE STRUGGLES TO STAY IN CHARACER WHEN A JOKE IS REALLY Working. In Other Words, A Studio Audence Which Provides a Laugh Track Makes The Show Funnier as It is Being Filmed. For Our Purposes, However, We Lumped Them Together for A Simple Reason: The Sound Is The Same. If you can’t tell the figure, then is there a figrence? Aside from a percentage of the audience Likely Being Dead, that is (Sorry – Too Real?).
This Story First Appeared in the May 7 of Issue of the Hollywood Reporter Magazine. To Receive The Magazine, Click Here to Subscribe.