Laughing in sit-coms!

cormie

Have you ever been watching a sit com and suddenly put all concentration on the laughing? It gets sooo annoying, you can hear that it's about 5 different laugh samples played back again and again throughout the show. Is there a sit com without them? Do you know which ones have them and which don't? It's weird, it's something we seem to have become used to. Fake laughing.

MrSinn

cormie wrote:

Have you ever been watching a sit com and suddenly put all concentration on the laughing? It gets sooo annoying, you can hear that it's about 5 different laugh samples played back again and again throughout the show. Is there a sit com without them? Do you know which ones have them and which don't? It's weird, it's something we seem to have become used to. Fake laughing.

I only get that when im stoned.
Were you stoned?you can see things much clearer when you are in touch with nature

dr zoidberg

Is there a sit com without them?

Malcolm in the Middle.

Laugh tracks are annoying alright but they it has been proven that listening to other people laugh makes something seem funnier. It's very disrespectful to an audience though, as if they aren't smart enough to know where the joke is

Sangre

scrubs

Sparky

They put laughs in sit-coms to get people to "get that its a joke".

I wonder if we turned the tables and put screams and roars into shows like 24, lost etc.

mmmm... would'nt really work would it?

CuLT

Arrested Development, Malcolm in the Middle, Scrubs, Everybody Hates Chris, My Name is Earl, and the American version of The Office.

Before television, people had always experienced comedy, whether performed live on stage, on radio, or in a movie, as part of an audience. In the early days of television, it was thought that watching recorded comedy at home alone, without hearing the laughter of other attendants, would feel odd to some viewers, and the laugh track was an attempt to reintroduce this familiar element.*


*copied entirely from wikipedia

elvis2002

70s show really annoys me with that crap. I think the show might be much better without it because much of the luaghing stuff is just ridiculous.

blu_sonic

Its like back ground music if the show is any good you won't notice it

Karl Hungus

Sparky-s wrote:

I wonder if we turned the tables and put screams and roars into shows like 24, lost etc.

mmmm... would'nt really work would it?

I'd like to put scream tracks on sitcoms.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

There is one thing worse... when the canned laughter (I think that's what they call it) is mistimed... or overused... And then you get it when nothing particualarly funny has happened.

John R

There were two versions of MASH available, one with and one without laughter. The laugh track ruined the programme IMO.

Sparky

The Simpsons summed it up nicely in one episode where they took the piss of Married with children.

Al just walks in the door, *long laughter, with a wooooooo at the end*, "Peggy" *more long laughter*

DEmeant0r

afaik Malcolm in the Middle doesn't have those laughter things in it

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Sparky-s wrote:

The Simpsons summed it up nicely in one episode where they took the piss of Married with children.

Al just walks in the door, *long laughter, with a wooooooo at the end*, "Peggy" *more long laughter*

Isn't there another one where the first line is " 'The Simpsons' is filmed in front of a live studio audience" followed be insane laughter every time someone moved...?

monkeyfudge

There are some shows that are really harmed by a laugh track.

The laugh track in the League of Gentlemen is absolutely horrible and more recently I felt the laugh track in the IT Crowd was really poor. Mostly because a lot of the jokes aren't exactly ones you'd laugh out loud at.

Series 2 of the Mighty Boosh on DVD has the original pilot as an extra, it has a laugh track in it too... and it's really horrible.

lostexpectation

monkeyfudge wrote:

There are some shows that are really harmed by a laugh track.

The laugh track in the League of Gentlemen is absolutely horrible and more recently I felt the laugh track in the IT Crowd was really poor. Mostly because a lot of the jokes aren't exactly ones you'd laugh out loud at.

Series 2 of the Mighty Boosh on DVD has the original pilot as an extra, it has a laugh track in it too... and it's really horrible.

we had this discussion about a month ago, IT Crowd is filmed in front of a live studio audience (twice)

monkeyfudge

lostexpectation wrote:

we had this discussion about a month ago, IT Crowd is filmed in front of a live studio audience (twice)

It's still a laugh track, I don't care if it was recorded live with the show or not. It's simply not needed. And they do play around with them and enhance them when they don't get the laughs the way they want them.

And also, not all the scenes in The IT Crowd were filmed in front of an audience.

Sparky

Its a bad day for filming when the bulb blows in the Laugh sign.

Hobbes

Sangre wrote:

scrubs

Scrubs actually did a show that made fun of the usual Laugh tracks.

Stephen

I've noticed that most of the GOOD sitcoms don't have laugh tracks because they don't need them: Scrubs, My Name is Earl, Arrested Development, Everybody Hates Chris, etc, whereas most of the horse sh1te does have laugh tracks: i.e. Friends and a billion crappy daytime sitcoms from America.

Sam Vimes

dr zoidberg wrote:

Malcolm in the Middle.

Laugh tracks are annoying alright but they it has been proven that listening to other people laugh makes something seem funnier. It's very disrespectful to an audience though, as if they aren't smart enough to know where the joke is

mitm would have been destroyed by a laugh track