In Defense of THE LAUGH TRACK

A lot of people hate the laugh track. It can feel clunky. It can feel unnatural. It can feel like Jeb Bush. Please clap. But it's also a major part of television history, and something that is all over some of the best comedies full stop. Seinfeld. Cheers. I Love Lucy. Mary Tyler Moore. Friends. Frasier. MASH. All in the Family. All classic, hilarious shows with laugh tracks. I see what you're doing here. You're trying to plant a little seed in my brain. Oh, don't be silly. I know of nothing that grows in solid rock. Since the beginning, many creators have pushed back against the laugh track, and now we find ourselves in a place where the number of laugh track shows has dwindled into infinitesimal regions. Still, readings show us time and again that laugh track shows are simply more popular than those without them. What? I thought you knew that. Nuh-uh. But how can this be the case if we all hate them so much? Today, that's exactly what we're going to look at. Why the laugh track gets a bad rep, and why that may or may not be fair. I'm Jackson, and this is Ideas at Play. So why does the laugh track even exist in the first place? Well, TV and radio marked the first time entertainment transitioned from public venues into the comfort of our own homes. A sort of fireside chat and chill, if you will. The idea was to make that transition less jarring. To maintain that communal aspect that had been in show business way, way, way longer than any of this newfangled technology. Bet they don't do that at your opera. No, and Mozart's still kicking himself. These programs would be shot in front of a live studio audience, with their reactions being recorded. But in scripted comedies, the reaction to each take of the same joke got a little more watered down. So a guy named Charles Douglas created a machine called The Laugh Box to sweeten those reactions. The Laugh Box immediately turned TV executives into the rich kid in high school with the fancy car. They flaunted it everywhere, even though they barely knew how to drive. Now every joke could be funny. Or at least seem like someone thought it was funny. It wasn't just about sweetening the reaction of a studio audience, but creating one out of thin air. Even when it made no sense, like on animated television shows like The Flintstones and The Jetsons. And I think everyone today can recognize that it went too far. But executives had a good reason to push for the Laugh Track. Shows tested better with it than without it, and they still do. Of the six most watched comedies of 2018, four featured a Laugh Track. Jokes that are patently unfunny can get by. Which is why there's a whole subgenre of YouTube videos showing TV sitcoms with the Laugh Track removed. Leaving really awkward and uncomfortable silences. To make things worse, Stewart hired some woman. There we go. I'm not annoyed that she's a woman. I'm annoyed and she's a woman. No, I get that. I'm annoyed and I'm a woman. But in some really important cases, this critique is kind of an overcorrection. It ignores the fact that some of these sitcoms were shot in front of a live studio audience. Or at least shot on a soundstage that could have one. There are actually people in the audience of The Big Bang Theory who think it's really funny. Today we have a little bit over 200 people getting ready to see the show. I love this show because they're my people. Personally, I don't agree with them. But thinking about these shows as a stage performance does frame them a little differently. It might be more reasonable to think of these shows as something that might be closer to a stand-up set than, say, Airplane or Anchorman. God! I did not see that coming! We don't hear anybody clamoring to get rid of the audience in a stand-up set so that we can judge their jokes objectively because it's part of the art form. Comics play on the reactions of the crowd and time their jokes accordingly. When you remove the laugh track from these sitcoms, you're isolating the actor trying to time their next line, and that's pretty weird. Think about it like isolating LeBron James on a basketball court. Without knowing where the ball is, it kind of looks like he's just standing there. Until you realize he's timing this. Here's a clip from Frasier with the laugh track removed. Oh, I'm sorry, Niles. I didn't realize you'd stop talking. You haven't heard a word I said. Niles, you're a psychiatrist. You know what it's like to listen to people prattling on endlessly about their mundane lives. And on that subject, I heard your show today. And? You know what I think about pop psychiatry. Yes, I know what you think about everything. When was the last time you had an unexpressed thought? I'm having one now. Now, compared to The Big Bang Theory, you can tell that the writing and acting is much stronger, but it still feels awkward. If there were no audience, no laugh track, the show would be shot and edited completely differently. So let's follow that experiment to the end and tighten up everything as if it were a modern single-camera comedy. Oh, I'm sorry, Niles. I didn't realize you'd stop talking. You haven't heard a word I said. Niles, you're a psychiatrist. You know what it's like to listen to people prattling on endlessly about their mundane lives. And on that subject, I heard your show today. And? You know what I think about pop psychiatry. Yes, I know what you think about everything. When was the last time you had an unexpressed thought? I'm having one now. Much better, right? Shows like Cheers, Everybody Loves Raymond, The Honeymooners, Seinfeld, and I Love Lucy played to an audience from a stage, filmed by multiple cameras. They might have scenes that were shot on location, especially in the case of Seinfeld, for example, but this difference is apparent in the essence of these shows. The way they use space and physical comedy is completely different than more modern single-camera comedies. Oh, my. What a lovely clock with an unusual bird. Let me try getting him from the bottom. Just give me a... Man, these are tight! Twitch your hips in! I am squishy! Now, this isn't to say one style of comedy is better than the other, but only to show how the medium opens up different avenues. Just think of how iconic characters on these shows enter the stage. So, Raymond Man! Those entrances work because the actors can use the space of a stage. Fraser would sometimes make elaborate sets with multiple rooms and Scooby-Doo-esque scenes that played on our, and the live audience's, ability to see the bigger picture. There's something I need to tell you. This may come as a surprise to you. Annie! Bertie! In that way, it's closer to theater than to film, which is maybe most on display when you see the chemistry between the actors. Obviously, any show is going to need chemistry onscreen to be successful. On la araña discoteca. Discoteca, muneca, la biblioteca. But it's often a key feature of these comedies. Characters feel like they're hanging out together, and in turn, we feel invited to hang out with them. It's something that feels organic because of how unedited the shows feel, and something that you can see on display on the rare occasions when sitcoms have produced live episodes. Have you been drinking? No! I had a bottle of wine with dinner. May I smell your mouth? I thought you'd never ask. This is more heavily written than something like Saturday Night Live, but both only work because the actors can play off of each other and the audience. Do you really love the overzealous studio audience who applaud at anything? Here in the greatest city on earth, New York, baby, what's up? Will & Grace's final season, before the reboot, started with a live episode, with creators Max Muchnick and David Cohen saying, We love the idea of a live episode because we get to show the audience of Will & Grace what we've known from day one. We work with the best cast in network television. Hey, Will, where's Grace? How about that? Right in the blind spot. While this theatrical style of delivering lines has been called less realistic because people don't leave large slots of time in the middle of their conversations for a third party to laugh, it's also not very realistic to have a witty quip ready for every conceivable scenario. Hey, Will, I get to learn karate. Karate? The Dane Cook of martial arts? No. And you know my motto. Save the drama for Wilmer Valderrama. No, no, no, no, it's pronounced Wilver Valmorando. No, it's not. So what, now my motto doesn't make sense? I want to buy a condo with Wilver Valmorando? Never do. D plus. Sign this. This is a D minus. Well, either way, it's Bubba D, right? Another world beater. When asked about creating a network comedy without a laugh track, Linwood Boomer, the creator of Malcolm in the Middle, said, We made a conscious effort at the very beginning to find a way to substitute that sort of easy energy that laughter provides. We ended up doing an awful lot of quick cutting. We did a lot of music stings, a lot of sound effects, and things that added energy to it. And those are great choices. Just sit tight. I gotta do some paperwork. Run a computer check. My record is clean. There is no way I have 16 unpaid parking tickets. But it's kind of hard to make the argument that they're realistic. Our lives aren't edited any more than they're accompanied by canned laughter. The point is, they're different animals. Creators have largely been against the laugh track, and as they've gained more power and artistic freedom from TV executives, we've seen tons of single camera comedies without laugh tracks pop up. Which has its own set of advantages. That time spent waiting to deliver the next joke can be filled with more and more jokes, saturating every inch of screen time with stuff that makes us laugh, not the laughs themselves. Due to some statistical outliers, the average employee does heroin. I would never do heroin. Unless I was dying. Or someone just offered it to me. I don't have a 401k, so as of now, my retirement plan is to overdose on drugs. Smart. Losing that obligation also allows comedies to explore the entire emotional spectrum, which has been objectively amazing for television, and comedy has probably never been better. But it's also disingenuous to pin that on the laugh track itself. All in the Family, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and M.A.S.H. are all old-school laugh track comedies that found the ability to tell stories with real emotional depth. And sometimes the absence of the laugh track could be just as powerful. How come you don't want me, man? Of course, it would be equally disingenuous to not mention how many creators have come out strongly against the laugh track. Way back in 1955, actor and producer David Niven claimed, The laugh track is the single greatest affront to public intelligence I know of. M.A.S.H. co-creator Larry Gelbert argued that the show should take place without canned laughter, just like the actual Korean War. I always thought it cheaper than the show. I always thought it was out of character with the show. Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld did their best to create a single-camera comedy, shooting on location, using different camera techniques, and unique lighting styles, only to be pigeonholed into a laugh track by NBC. Award shows have almost exclusively sided with creators. Since 2005, when Everybody Loves Raymond won the Emmy for Most Outstanding Comedy, only three shows featuring a laugh track have even been nominated, tallying just eight of the last 81 nominations. Gee, I'm glad you're home. How's about a great big... I'll see you later. As creators shift away from the laugh track, these multi-cam sitcoms feel older and slower, which they are, but that shouldn't diminish them. The prevailing thought seems to be that anything with a laugh track is a commercial success, but something we'd hardly call art. Those are the shows for the unsophisticated masses, not the cool kids. And especially in shows you don't find particularly funny, the laugh track can be grating. You feel apart from the group watching, since they're all laughing, and you're not. Very funny. Ross is gay. Ha ha. And I think as an industry-wide mandate, yeah, the laugh track should go the way of the dinosaur. But that's not to say the style of the multi-cam sitcom with a live audience doesn't have its place. It gives us a completely different sense of space, taking place on a stage that stretches far beyond the frame. Where am I? They're places to hang out with friends. They give us a different sense of reality that can be as much a feature as a bug. Just like anything else on TV, the laugh track is a tool that can be used for good or for evil. Inserting canned laughter into a show that clearly doesn't have an audience, like in MASH? Fat. Performing comic theater on stage for an audience and playing off their reactions? Much better. I have never been witness to such a silly, soft... Laughter is a social phenomenon as much as anything else, and psychologists believe that it existed long before humor. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to laugh in social situations than in response to a funny remark, and you're much less likely to laugh alone. As much as anything else, the laugh track is an attempt to hold onto the communal aspects of television. Gathering around the living room or talking over the water cooler the next day. But that's largely not how we watch TV anymore. We watch on our laptops, at our own pace. Entire seasons come out at once, ready to be consumed at your own convenience. The market is flooded with so many shows that everyone has their own niche, but the shared experience is coming to a close. And while we might laugh at the laugh track, it represents a real bedrock of American television. Comfort and escape. Hanging out with our people, with a group, together. Thank you so much for watching. Please share, like, and subscribe. This was a totally different style of video for me, and I tried to include as many different kinds of comedies as I possibly could to try and cover a broad spectrum, but, you know, there's only so much TV that you can fit into 12 minutes of a video, and I didn't want it to seem too schizophrenic. So if I left out your favorite comedy, I'm really sorry. But if you want to see more indefensive kind of videos, please let me know in the comments. You can also check out my blog, Ideas at Play, where I write about TV, and the podcast I co-host with Capri called Couch Taters. You can also jump onto my Patreon and throw in a buck, which helps me make this channel as great as it can be. Thank you so much, and see you next time.