The House Next Door

Like (I suspect) most folks nowadays, I prefer the approach of the neo-realistic, less manipulative non-laugh tracked sitcoms. I mean, if it's funny, you shouldn't require prompting.

That said, one of mye most distinctive memories of watching the Mary Tyler Moore show, taped before a live (as opposed to dead) studio audience, was the recurrence of the most distinctive goose-like laughter of one James L. Brooks, whose honk graced (and distinguished) the laugh track of not only MTM's show, but his other efforts as well (Taxi, Rhoda).

For every advancement, there are losses. As Henry Drummond noted in Inherit the Wind, you can have the telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance.

My favorite observation in this article is how the adherence to the three-camera laugh track format actually changed the structure of comedy, cranking up the pacing and leading both writers and viewers to expect a joke every few seconds. The best thing about shows like Malcolm, The Office and the like is their willingness to go long stretches without trying to be wacky -- giving the characters room to breathe, to actually be characters.

Because the pace of the multi-camera setup has sped up into something so bland, the only way, it seems, a multi-camera sitcom can succeed is to be a throwback, and that AUTOMATICALLY turns off a large portion of the critical audience (even if, like Raymond, it's a ratings hit).

When you look back at the best sitcoms of the '70s or even '90s, the characters are all recognizable as characters. They don't really grow or change, but Archie Bunker or Lou Grant or George Costanza were recognizable people.

I'm not sure how to tell multi-camera comedy writers to "be more funny," but I wish I could.

I don't have a link for this, but didn't Fox sell Malcolm as an attempt to do The Simpsons in live-action form? It seems a lot of the single-camera shows from the early '00s were heavily influenced by the animated hits Fox had (while noting that King of the Hill is almost the most traditional sitcom on TV).

I should add that a significant problem with the traditional sitcom is that networks will rarely work with older hands, who actually wrote for the classics of the past.

Look at the best dramas on TV -- many are shepherded by people in their 40s and 50s, people who have familiarity with the form. Too many sitcoms are guided by people in their late 20s or early 30s, who would be better learning from others.

This is not to say, of course, that younger people can't write fine sitcoms, but sitcom writing strikes me as being as much of a craft as it is an art -- even if your writing is artless, if you know how to construct it, you can wring laughs from pretty pitiful stuff.

Interesting article. On the DVDs of MASH there is an option to remove the laugh track. It's a completely different show without it.

On side note: I still say that King of the Hill is the most realistic show on television.

Wagstaff: "M*A*S*H" is a much better show without the laugh track; the comedy plays better without the overdone, canned guffawing, and the absence of the laugh track makes the grim or melancholy moments seem less contrived.

"King of the Hill" is a terrific show, but I stopped watching it after Season Three because of its psychological effect on me; I'm from Dallas, and the series' eerie understanding of the mindset of the North Texas white man was seeping into my brain. I felt my drawl returning, along with a craving for Shiner Bock, corn dogs, Big Red cola, jalapenos and the instinct to vote Republican.

Todd: "Look at the best dramas on TV -- many are shepherded by people in their 40s and 50s, people who have familiarity with the form. Too many sitcoms are guided by people in their late 20s or early 30s, who would be better learning from others."

It's funny to think that the "norm" in comedy is now defined as single camera, no laugh track. This is a logical result of the generational dynamic you mention; many of the people toiling in the TV comedy trenches are in their 20s and 30s, and their formative series were things like "The Simpsons," "Malcolm," "King of the Hill," the original "Office" and "Seinfeld," which had a laugh track but was so stylistically original in other ways that it didn't feel like business as usual. I've talked to young writers who are working on three-camera, laugh track sitcoms, and they often have a rueful self-awareness, slightly depressive, as if they're ashamed to be working on something so primitive, discredited even.

One of the things I like about How I Met Your Mother (aside from the fact that it seems very specifically targeted to people born between 1978 and 1982, a demographic I'm a member of) is that its characters, stereotypical as they are, are all recognizably CHARACTERS and not just joke machines. A joke from the Neil Patrick Harris character wouldn't come from the Alyson Hannigan character and vice versa.

To be honest, the jokes are often a little bland, but I've stuck with the show because it seems the best kind of throwback to me.

Side note: I could NEVER get in to M*A*S*H until I watched it sans laugh track.

I agree it plays better that way.

Except for older series I grew up with, I can't watch shows with audiences or laugh tracks anymore. They used to vary the laughs at least but they are so lazy that every joke gets the same size guffaw, no matter how funny. If I see it has laughs, I won't even try to watch.

As a semi-related sidenote, allow me to relate a joyous sitcom related story.

I was on jury duty in Feb 2001 and our jury waiting room was a true melting pot of Los Angeles. Elderly Chinese ladies with very little English, Filipino community college students, Latinos young and old, Anglos like me, etc. This was also pre-Blackberry, pre-Ipod, pre-really ubiquitous cell phone usage. Most people were reading or chatting, and most everyone was irritated and frustrated to be there. There was one TV on the wall that got three or four local channels; it seemed to be constantly tuned into All My Children, Jerry Springer, or The Price is Right.

At some point in my ten-day purgatory, someone changed the channel - to "I Love Lucy". I still recall with perfect clarity - everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) stopped what they were doing and started watching this show. I wish I could remember which episode, but I suppose it didn't really matter. The entire room - young, old, little or no English didn't matter - laughed all together at the same times, pointed at the screen, nudged their neighbors ("Oh yeah, this is so funny" "I remember what happens, watch this"). At the commercials, folks were reminiscing about their favorite Lucy episodes and chuckling together over jokes.
After 30 minutes of blessed relief, we all went back to being irritated and short-tempered. But I felt like I had discovered the secret to peaceful human relations, all over the world.
Still makes me smile to think of it.

My point? Laugh track or no laugh track, single or multiple cameras, bottom line: if it's funny, it's funny. And maybe that CAN change the world. :)

Great article, Alan. I will agree with Matt that the insight about pacing is key. I don't really notice laugh tracks anymore, perhaps because funny shows don't let the laugh track dictate their pacing -- Seinfeld's jokes had far more in common with Seinfeld's real stand-up act rhythms than with any metronomic laugh track. And as the recent YouTube Deadwood/ Lucky Louie mashup showed, a laugh track may in fact be amenable to a show that has the right rhythms -- namely, a regularity of scenes that end with a punch line.

At the same time, I always process studio audiences because the actors have to incorporate weird pauses to make sure their lines don't get swallowed.

But my question is this, since there's so many cartoon fans on this blog: When did you first realize how weird it was that The Flintstones had a laugh track?

Anon

Anon: Even as a child, that struck me as strange. The prefix "meta" didn't really exist back then, but there was an element of self-awareness to it -- one more touch that mimicked the sitcom affectations that were ironclad for about 40 years, and that "The Flinstones," shoddy as it was, represented. But then, I thought it was weird that "M*A*S*H" and "Gomer Pyle" and other such sitcoms had laugh tracks, when a good portion of the action was filmed outdoors or in real interior locations, often with a moving camera. I wondered, "Are they trying to fool us into thinking there's an audience beyond camera range, or are they just doing it because comedies are supposed to be laughed at, and they think I won't laugh if I don't hear other people laughing?" Granted, I was overthinking it, but I was an odd kid.

I always hoped that at some point, "The Flintstones" would cut to a cartoon audience in a cartoon studio laughing their heads off while overhead, a "Laugh!" sign flashed.

An excellent article, Alan.

I can't imagine that the single-camera format as forged out of stuff like Malcom and My Name Is Earl will have as durable and productive a career as the standard audience driven sitcom format.

It's hard to defend the laugh-track, as it is a poor substitute for a live (& well-trained) audience. Yet I would offer this: if live audiences were not an option because of the corporate memo, at least the laughtrack allowed for the continuation of the format. I agree with Matt and Wags that MASH is considerably more interesting without the laughtrack, but there is no denying that the writers were timing the show around one, and when they leave that space for a prolonged guffaw, there is a curious hole in the action. It's like watching a sitcom in a vacuum. By choosing the laugh track, the creaters chose to write to a "live" audience, nevermind if it was imaginary. Without the track, the show would have evolved into something drastically different.

But to move away from laughtracks….

In general, I tend to want my comedians to be a slave to the audience. It’s both humbling to them and pleasing to me. The sitcom heritage owes more to radio and vaudeville than to film. As such, its natural instinct is toward quick verbal comedy that often relates to stuff not seen. The theater aspects of the sitcom, as related by Brad Garrett, run deep. Of the many things that make the stage so great are the very limitations that Ted Danson is so anxious to destroy when he talks about showing the “funny thing” that happened off-screen. That's the equivalent of saying that you do not like your bread and butter. Something tells me it won’t be so funny when its shown to the audience. And for Pete’s sake! leave something to the audience imagination. They can usually imagine something funnier than anything you can show them.

Jamie Weinmann, a Canadian critic and blogger who knows more about old sitcoms than most paid critics, wrote this defense of the laugh track a while ago. I think it sort of makes sense, even if I tend to prefer non-laugh tracked shows.

http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/05/bring-back-laugh-track.html

eires32 wrote:

Two things in your post jumped out at me...

At some point in my ten-day purgatory, someone changed the channel - to "I Love Lucy".

I had jury duty a couple weeks ago, and in the smoking room there was a TV which I turned on, flipped through the channels and settled on I LOVE LUCY. Everyone else in the room looked at me as if my decision was insane. I left the room for a bit and when I came back they were all GLUED to THE PRICE IS RIGHT. (Just thought I'd mention it in contrast to your story.)

My point? Laugh track or no laugh track, single or multiple cameras, bottom line: if it's funny, it's funny. And maybe that CAN change the world.

While I'm no great fan of laugh tracks, this is really what it comes down to, yeah. If the material is genuinely funny, they don't bother me a bit. It's when the material is just godawful that they seem ridiculous and obtrusive.

By the way, on the subject of M*A*S*H, am I incorrect in recalling that the surgery scenes *never* had a laugh track (even when the rest of an episode did)?