You aren’t necessarily wrong. Have you ever seen Friends without a laugh track?
Friends without a laugh track is 1000% funnier.
Especially Ross…who becomes basically a serial killer vibe.
In The Big Bang Theory without the laugh track, Raj becomes just a huuuuuuge asshole.
In The Big Bang Theory without the laugh track, Raj becomes just a huuuuuuge asshole.
To be fair, with or without a laugh track, TBBT is depressing as fuck. I feel incredibly sorry for the faith of most characters.
There was a great take on one of these called “Everybody Hates Raymond”
It was the show Everybody Loves Ramon but the laugh track was completely replaced with boos and was frickin hilarious. I think it got removed from YouTube though cuz I haven’t been able to find it for years.
Holy shit, this is much better than the original!!! Damn, I should rewatch the series like this. Where can I find all of it without the laugh track?
Edit: I have to add, the long pauses make it a bit annoying. With the laugh track the pauses aren’t noticeable (to me at least; my girlfriend did notice the long pauses even with the laugh track, and it was annoying to her).
The pauses are there because it’s not a “laugh track”, it’s a live audience. That’s not to say it’s 100% genuine laughter, but they’re pausing so the laughter doesn’t bury the dialogue.
Timing and pacing are inherently different when there’s a laugh track. You can’t just silence the laughter or cut the time range. In some cases, you have to rework the joke.
laughing has been show to be a social activity which is why almost all comedies have a fake or real audience
I feel like laugh tracks are way to manipulate the audience. The reason they have to manipulate the audience is the joke wasn’t all that funny. If you don’t have a laugh track or a live audience then you have to actually be funny. Your jokes actually have to make people laugh in an organic way.
The reason they have to manipulate the audience is because people look for validation and so feel good when other people react to things in the same way as them. If another equally funny show has a laugh track and you don’t, yours will likely be less enjoyable to watch unless it’s a specific form of humour which benefits from not having a laugh track.
Basically a laugh track can’t save a terrible show, but it can manipulate people into finding a mediocre show more enjoyable to watch, but a mediocre show will make people laugh organically at least a few times anyway.
I’m talking about laugh tracks. They are fake. The sound of laughter is homogenous. If you listen to a real audience, some people laugh louder, some softer. Also with laugh tracks, you can tell someone is turning a volume knob or slider on a mixer. It’s all fake.
Tbf it’s more that the feel of a live audience would be missing otherwise. They wanted that live audience feel and be a fully written TV series.
I guess to some degree it’s not completely wrong tho.
It’s just a passing shower thought
Laugh tracks are awful. So are shows where the live audience has people screaming “Whoooooo!!!” whenever their favorite actor enters the scene. Married With Children being one example. Jerry Seinfeld calls it “the sound of dumbness”.
Alan Partridge, The IT Crowd, Black Books, Only Fools & Horses, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, Father Ted all disagree.
Used to love watching the IT crowd
audience loses their shit at this comment- people are rolling on the floor, gasping for breath, beginning to choke their fellow humans out of sheer comedy.
I personally enjoyed (didn’t enjoy) this one.
Some of those jokes were actually amusing. I don’t know why they didn’t have a real audience. Most people will come for free just to watch the show.
The audience usually attends for free (“for free tickets to the _____ show, call…”), but there’s still a lot of overhead. Not only do you need ushers, security, and so on, you need to be filming on a sound stage with a place for the audience.
On the flip side, laugh tracks are easily added in post.
real people are unpredictable.
Since real people are watching that would be a good thing.
If you have about 20 minutes or less if you crank the speed, this podcast about laugh tracks is pretty interesting.
Wow, that first one was horrible. Someone was screaming like maybe they were getting murdered.
Never heard of it. I definitely have to look that up.
