Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Are TV sitcom laugh tracks now considered old fashioned? It seems like most new comedies nowaday no longer have laugh tracks. Most of the highest rated comedies still have the laugh tracks (HIMYM, Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men), but most new comedies no longer have them. Of all the new comedies I've seen come out this fall, none of them have laugh tracks. Years ago it used to be a sitcom without the laugh track was the oddity (doogie Howser, Hooperman, Wonder Years).

The newer shows are still funny and seem to work well without the tracks (Modern Family, The Middle, etc.) Cougar Town is a little annoying though in that they seemed to replace the laugh track with a few strings of guitar music after the punchlines and funny dialog (Similiar to what they do in Grey's Anatomy).

How does everyone else feel about the new trend in sitcoms?

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Laugh tracks tend to irritate me. They typically laugh when I don't, and the actors generally pause a bit to let the laughing have some time. It seems incredibly unnatural, forced, and unnecessary.

I do sometimes get a kick out of hearing a ridiculous laugh mixed into the track.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I cant laugh without them.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

What is with all these threads about this?

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Laugh tracks died a deserved death with the original version of The Office.

Thank you Ricky Gervais.

You are my hero.

Anyone still using a laugh-track is living in the 80's and I refuse to watch their shows.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Laugh tracks are an odd cultural artifact. That said, I'm glad they're being phased out.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

It was difficult to get past the laugh track/live audience on How I Met Your Mother, glad I eventually did. It is definitely a terrible artifact of the past.

Two Broke Girls is new this season and does have a laugh track, no surprise as CBS seems to dig them. Similarly, Whitney on NBC features a laugh track/live audience.

Is this a reference to something specific in the original run of The Office that I just don't remember?

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Good lord, that one was horrible. But, since it was not funny to me in any way at all, at least it told me when they were trying to be funny!

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

It was the first highly successful comedy without a laugh track.

Gervais has said there were those at the BBC who didn't understand it, and when it was test screened it went down horribly. The only reason it ever aired was because it was cheap to produce. Obviously went went down a storm and shown most of the networks the way of the future (except CBS who is stuck in the 80's).

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I hate laugh tracks that are most obviously laugh tracks (and not a live studio audience). The live studio audience tracks can be irritating, but are also pretty easy to ignore.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

The more modern way of the TV comedy is without these laugh tracks and the most popular and most watched sitcoms are the ones with the old fashioned laugh track!

I think it’s a perfect analogy to the general American TV watching public(J6P if you will). A bunch of old fashioned narrow minded afraid of change people.

Pretty fitting no? :p

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Gotcha, though laugh tracks/live audiences are usually only used on multicamera shows. Shows like Doogie Howser, The Simpsons (I know it's animated but yeah... I remember those animated shows with laughtracks), Malcolm in the Middle pre-date The Office (Malcolm parallels), were highly successful (maybe not adopted into "regional" versions like The Office but popular no less) and also didn't have laugh tracks.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I was also annoyed with Two Broke Girls as I found the laughing at EVERYTHING really distracting (and hate them in general... HIMYM is the only show where I tolerate a laugh track). What is really frustrating is at the beginning of Two Broke Girls they say that they are filmed in front of a live studio audience.

So live people can be just as bad and turn me off just as fast. The format like the Office, Modern Family, and Inbetweeners where is filmed without any suggestions when to laugh is clearly my favorite.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Agreed.

One of the things I find sorta paradoxical is that Whitney Cummings is very active on Twitter, safe to say she's with the 21st century, yet her show and one she's producing (2 Broke Girls) both use laugh tracks like crutches.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Both shows have annoying laughter.... but, again, both are not laugh tracks. Both are recorded before a live studio audience.

The best you can say is either show can have the laughter sweetened if a joke bombs... but you can't say it is canned.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I never noticed during it's original run but the Seinfeld laugh track really gets on my nerves now. It's way over the top IMO. The Brady Bunch laugh track gets my vote for the wackiest ever in sitcom history.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

:lol: Seinfeld was a studio as well. It's pretty easy to tell since you can see the actors waiting to deliver lines until the laughter subsides. It's very noticeable on Seinfeld, especially on Kramer's entrances. Hell they had to start telling the audience to cool it on Kramer because it would go on for too long. I don't have a problem with it.

One that does bug the hell out of me though is M*A*S*H or any show that does an outdoor scene you know was filmed without an audience, yet there is the laughter. :hairpull:

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Like all discussions on this subject, it's once again clear that most of the people on this board don't understand what a laugh track is.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Everybody knows what a laugh track is. Live audience, sweetened or canned it doesn't matter, they all suck.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I still love the laugh track sitcoms of the past, but in the past year I find myself liking non-laugh track sitcoms more. Several of my friends and family can't get used to non-laugh track sitcoms so they pretty much stick to CBS sitcoms.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I find the laugh tracks on CBS' comedies atrocious and simply cringe inducing.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Yeah, M*A*S*H is a great example. I tried to watch an episode on TV at lunchtime today, and had to turn it off because of the laugh track. We're used to watching it on DVD where you have the option to play it without the laugh track.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I figured out when to laugh on my own and realized I didn't need to be told what's funny.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I could care less if they have one or not as long as its well written and funny.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

That option is the greatest special feature ever to be put on any dvd.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

"The Larry Sanders Show" was laugh-track-free 9 years before "The Office" premiered. I'm sure there are numerous examples of others but "Sanders" is one of Gervais's acknowledged influences.

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" had also already aired it's debut special and it's first 10-episode season before "The Office" first aired.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

There were several years before Sanders like Doogie Howser, Wonder Years, and a few others. The 80's ones without the laugh tracks seem to be memorable sitcoms from that era because people recall then=m fondly today and they won many awards in their day.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Of course they are. If the audience isn't laughing loud enough or not at the right times it's added in post. That's the way it's done on all sitcoms with a live audience.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

The first shows (that I'm aware of, anyway) that tried going without the laugh track are Get Smart and The Monkees back in the 60's. They were still funny. And don't forget M*A*S*H. They were fighting for that show to be laugh-track-free forever.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Something that annoys me about live audience tracks is the audience applauding and cheering when a character makes an entrance.

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There's really no such thing as a show that doesn't tell you what's funny, but a show like "Cheers" or "Seinfeld," where the jokes are tested in front of an audience, tell you when to laugh much less than "30 Rock" or "The Office," where music and/or reaction shots are the cues for when the producers think we should laugh.

This is why M*A*S*H rarely had music, by the way -- it had a laugh track (with no audience) so it didn't need music. Shows like "Scrubs" came along in the '00s and basically used music as the laugh track; all in all, the laugh track on M*A*S*H isn't any more of a crutch than the narration and music on "Arrested Development"; both use devices to let us know that what we heard was a joke, and that's fine.

As for audience laughter, many people don't like the rhythm it creates but I think it's just that there haven't been many good shows in that form lately. Also the format cruelly exposes bad writing -- like the producer of "Sex and the City" wrote the same terrible jokes for his new show "2 Broke Girls," but the format makes it clearer what cheap jokes these are. It's harder to make a good audience sitcom, but eventually one will come along again.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

The problem isn't necessarily the laugh-track itself (be it from an audience or otherwise), but how it affects the writing and performances, having to work around it. It just makes everything unnatural, stiff and awkward, killing timing, which is murder for good comedy.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

I hate that too. And it looks weird when the show has been taped out of sequence. I've been noticing in Seinfeld for examaple, there are quite a few episodes where the audience goes nuts when Kramer shows up, even though he's already appeared in a scene or two, but this later scene was the first one filmed.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Pausing for audience laughter is part of stand-up comedy, theatre comedy, and even movies (where they test the film and change the timing based on the laughter), though. Sometimes, in fact, often, the timing on a good audience sitcom is better and more natural than on no-audience shows, where the timing is mostly created in the editing.

I think what it comes down to is that if we don't find the joke funny, the pause seems awkward (and we get mad because the studio audience is laughing at a joke that isn't good). But if the joke is good, then the audience reaction improves the timing and the performances.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

The title of this thread is like asking "whatever happened to the Plague" or "whatever happened to the marauding Huns?". Shouldn't we just be glad they're gone?

Always hated laugh tracks, even when I was little. I remember being patently annoyed every time Michelle said something, anything, and the audience acted like it was the funniest thing ever.

Re: Whatever happened to sitcom Laugh Tracks
 

Laugh tracks on cartoons like The Flintstones confused the hell out of me- I thought somehow they got the cartoons to actually be really up there on a stage with the audience watching them.

And THIS just blew my mind:
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