fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3433 ]

[ SECRET POST #3433 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3433 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 57 secrets from Secret Submission Post #491.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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They use background laughter. That's enough said.

Preferences are preferences, and I get that a lot of people have an almost physical aversion to laugh tracks. But they do not actually make a sitcom bad.

No, but if the laugh track is such that a weaksauce joke is greeted with a burst of hyena-like cachinnation, it's really annoying. That might just be the show's radio ads, though-- which admittedly have been enough to put me off watching the show...

Yes, when a laugh track is used badly, it is bad.

I stand by the point that having a laugh track is not in itself proof that a show is bad. Or even evidence that it's bad.

Fair 'nuf.

It's not a "laugh track", it's enhanced live studio audience laughter. Shows like MASH, The Andy Griffith Show and The Brady Bunch used laugh tracks because they were single cam shows not shot in front of a studio audience.

You put quotes around "laugh track" as if you were quoting me, but that's not what I called it - I called it background laughter, because I'm aware of the fact that it's filmed in front of an audience.

The effect is more or less the same though. It's grating and dated. I don't need to be told when I'm supposed to laugh, and I don't need to hear other people in a studio laughing to infer that something is funny.

I don't really get this whole thing where people say they're being told when to laugh. I hear this a lot but I just don't get that feeling from it.

Why else would they put it in? It serves no other purpose than to suggest "laugh here, this part is supposed to be funny". You don't need to have it in a comedy show at all.

Because there's a rhythm to comedy that develops when performers are playing off an audience, and because people watching feel more connected when a laugh track exists, and because (scientifically) people watching laugh harder when there's a laugh track - not because they don't know where to laugh, but because humans are social beings and we just laugh harder when other people are laughing too.

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(Anonymous) - 2016-05-28 21:19 (UTC) - Expand

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sarillia - 2016-05-28 21:23 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2016-05-28 22:50 (UTC) - Expand

That shit only works for really old sitcoms. It always stands out now that the age of the sitcom is dying.

It still works when it's well executed.

The problem is that, one, it's not usually that well executed, because most of the good people making sitcoms these days are largely working in a post-Arrested Development mode (or other stuff, like Curb or whatever) and so are trying to make multi-cam shows. Two, a ton of the comedy audience has been conditioned by the fact that, like, King of Queens or whatever other shows in the early 2000s used laugh tracks really badly so they just associate it with bad comedy in a way that is frankly really stupid.

God damn King of Queens really fucked things up for everyone. Fuck that show, fuck Kevin James' stupid ass. It's the archetypal example for Shitty Laugh-Track Shows AND the archetypal example for the Stupid Fat Husband With Hot Wife narrative. That goddamn show had an actively perverse influence on television.

SA

Freaks and Geeks is the other influential show I meant to mention, sorry

Also I said multi-cam when I meant single-cam

The reason studio audiences are less common now is also because of The Nanny. After Fran Dresher was raped, she became terrified of having studio audiences around, so the show instituted a laugh track instead.

Fran Drescher was raped years before the Nanny came on.

I guess that's why Big Bang Theory was such an unsuccessful show.

wait.

apparently laugh track shows still work for most people.

Just about every sitcom does. It's less common now, but I never see people ragging on things like Cheers for it.

That's because back when Cheers ran, that statement was actually true.

That doesn't change that a show now is being mocked and derided for doing something a classic show like that could do unhindered and even opened every episode by acknowledging.

Are you saying that all historical context is irrelevant when appraising art? That's one of the dumber things ive heard on the internet this week

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(Anonymous) - 2016-05-29 04:11 (UTC) - Expand

Re: OP

(Anonymous) - 2016-05-29 04:51 (UTC) - Expand

What fundamentally changed?

Honestly, I always hated it, even back then. But it was an unavoidable part of watching a comedy show at that point in time, so I gritted my teeth and bore it. But now that there are shows without one, I'm never going back to anything that has one.

Okay, can you at least acknowledge that this is just a thing you have, like how some people don't eat cilantro, rather than laugh tracks being a show of Shitty Shows That Are Terrible And Insulting?

Ok. I mean, it's a thing a lot of people have... but I suppose that's the same with cilantro.

I do honestly think it's a sign weak writing in this day and age where a laugh track is not pro forma, but there were definitely good comedies in the olden days that had one, and I never stuck around to see if BBT improved, given that it had one. It's been on for ages, it's possible it's better than what I recall from the first season.

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