TV shows with excessive canned laughter

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by willy, Nov 24, 2019.

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  1. Veech

    Veech Space In Sounds

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    For me, canned laughter equates to brick-walled audio. I was blissfully ignorant of both but once I became aware of them I couldn't tolerate them. Even studio laughter gets annoying for me. There are a handful of classic comedies with studio laughter that I still enjoy - Everybody Loves Raymond, All in the Family and of course the golden age comedies like I Love Lucy, Honeymooners etc.
     
  2. SomeCallMeTim

    SomeCallMeTim Forum Resident

    Location:
    Rockville, CT
    I was a child in the 70's, when EVERYTHING comedic had the same laugh track. And I mean THE SAME - that much was apparent to me even as a small child. One particular audience chuckle, ending with someone either wheezing loudly or being stabbed to death very quietly, always seemed to accompany a young cast member saying something precocious...I'd actually listen for it when Joanie Cunningham or Bess Lindstrom or Nicholas Bradford got in a good one.

    I found it insulting. It was one thing to hear the reactions of an audience present at the performance - those were genuine and throwaway lines would get the polite chuckles they deserved. It was quite another to insert a pre-recorded sample of people laughing at something else to advise me that something was just funny. My laughter almost never mirrored the "audience"'s, no matter how funny I found the situation, except in the cases of the old shows with organic audience reactions.

    I was visiting friends lately (God, I've missed that), and an episode of "Love Boat" was starting on one of the broadcast channels. I hadn't seen it since its original run. After the theme song (and a half-dozen ads for pharmaceutical products to remind me of my demographic), I was stunned to hear audience laughter at the pithy exchange among our crew on the gangplank...who were on location for a two-part special in...the Netherlands, I think? Where were we supposed to think the audience was? On the shore? Watching the same show in a studio while being recorded? My answer came when Vicki, the captain's adorable daughter, verbally slammed the ship's doctor, who I don't remember being such a lech, and Pre-Recorded Wheeze/Stab Laugh followed.

    It's a practice the industry really needs to abandon.
     
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  3. Spaghettiows

    Spaghettiows Forum Resident

    Location:
    Silver Creek, NY
    Well, at least on The Flintstones, I would often laugh along and didn't mind it that much as a kid. But I never found The Archies remotely humorous even as a six-year-old and I hated the fake laughter applied to something that wasn't funny at all.
     
  4. Every Chuck Lorre-produced CBS sitcom ever? So much canned and ham-fisted insertion of audience laughter on the former “Tiffany Network” that I sometimes think “CBS” might stand for “Chuckle by suggestion”. :rolleyes:
     
    Last edited: May 8, 2021
  5. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Which is why it is so obnoxious and overbearing. You can understand laughing with the audience. But when something is not even close to being funny, the charade just falls apart.
     
  6. The Pinhead

    The Pinhead KING OF BOOM AND SIZZLE IN HELL

    I could never sync with canned laughter; I laugh only when I find something funny. I remember attending these series of scottish lisergic humour fims (starred by some members of the Trainspotting cast) : 8 people in the theater, and just me getting the gags and laughing my a... off, and the others turning around to give me homicidal stare (as if I were interrupting) . Matter of fact, the subtitles did their best to translate, but it didn't replace a firm grasp of the English language, and, TBH, some experience with drug usage (ahem)
     
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  7. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI
    I hope you're not referring to "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends-The Complete Series".
    I say that because I picked that up not too long ago, but haven't had the chance to watch any of it. I can live with laugh tracks, however, if they dubbed them in where they originally *weren't*, I don't like that. Like you, I don't recall there originally being a laugh track on "Rocky & Bullwinkle".
     
  8. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    What would be funny, would be a Greta Thunberg speech with a laugh track.
     
  9. Onkster515

    Onkster515 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Side point: is there a name for that one-of-a-kind goofy guffaw that got dubbed into the quieter moments of many comedies? “Huh hoo hoo huh hah hah”? Know what I mean?
     
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  10. HGN2001

    HGN2001 Mystery picture member

    I remember watching I LOVE LUCY reruns and always noticing the lady in the laugh track that goes "AWh-oh!" whenever Lucy was getting herself in trouble.
     
  11. AKA

    AKA Senior Member

    The Conners, which normally has a studio audience (as did the original and revival runs of Roseanne), has been filming without one the entire season due to the pandemic, and I honestly can't tell the difference. This either means the show relied too heavily on sweetening in the "before times" or that the laugh track this season has been used judiciously. Perhaps it's a combination of the two.
     
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  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    all of the TV shows I've watched throughout the years I never really noticed any excessive canned laughter...I must have been lucky or tuned it out.
     
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  13. Grand_Ennui

    Grand_Ennui Forum Resident

    Location:
    WI

    I've said it before, I'll say it again: I never had an issue with laugh tracks to begin with... Judging by your post, you haven't either.
     
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  14. buzzzx

    buzzzx Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cal.
    I remember reading somewhere that that woman was Lucy's mother, who attended almost every I Love Lucy taping and did the "Uh-Oh" when she felt like it.
     
  15. Onkster515

    Onkster515 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I recall a "Your Show of Shows" reunion episode where all the actors are watching their show in post, and each actor wants a laugh added over whatever they do. By the end, it's wall to wall laughter--it was interesting because the skit in itself wasn't exactly funny, just amusing, and felt almost more like a complaint against other actors.
     
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  16. Onkster515

    Onkster515 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I worked on the "Uncle Buck" sitcom around 1990; what was unusual was that the show wasn't especially liked or highly rated--but I gotta tell you, the live audiences on Friday nights were eating it up. Really. Big, big laughs--you'd think the show was a beloved hit by the sounds of it.

    In contrast: the number one show around that time was "Murphy Brown"--I went to a taping of that, and the audience was DEAD. That show would have required sweetening, whereas "Buck" barely needed it, but they'd layer some on anyway. (Though you could still hear the writers laughing the loudest at their own jokes!)

    One week, the network declared as "Uncle Buck Week". They ran the original John Candy movie along with a couple of extra episodes as I recall. I was working a sweetening session for the TV show the night they were showing the movie. We watched some of it during our dinner break, and the laugh track guy started pulling up the laugh track for every beat as we watched the movie! That just felt really...strange. But interesting.

    The laugh track guy--I don't recall his name decades later--then was off to prep for that year's Oscars. "What, you sweeten that? A live show?" "Yep, of course..." Not necessarily just laughs, but applause, etc. It never occurred to me--I'd figured the audience response would have been plenty loud enough for the feed. Makes me wonder how dead things sounded at the actual event!"
     
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  17. Jimmy B.

    Jimmy B. isolation can harm you terribly

    I was surprised to find the laughter that sometimes almost drowned out lines in Car 54, Where Are You? was actually recordings of audiences that had seen the show.
    I'm now wondering where if anywhere online it would say this......
     
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  18. Hooperfan

    Hooperfan Your friendly neighborhood candy store owner

    Location:
    New York
    That may have been her Mother. She always attended her daughter's shows.
     
  19. rmath84

    rmath84 Forum Resident

    I can't watch shows with laugh tracks anymore. It's like commercials, pay a little and make them go away. Unfortunately not with laugh tracks.

    I worked as an extra on Will and Grace and The Big Bang Theory and as usual @Vidiot is correct. They have to tone down the audience reaction. They are rabid fans who stand in line for hours and are dosed with candy bars.
     
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  20. MitchFlorida

    MitchFlorida Forum Resident

    Location:
    Florida
    I love when a show has no studio audience and then suddenly the dining room or kitchen is full of uproarious laughter. So realistic.
     
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  21. OldSoul

    OldSoul Don't you hear the wind blowin'?

    Location:
    NYC
    I think this is the worst method. Not only does dialogue get drained out, but I can sense the disconnect, somehow, and it just makes me uncomfortable. I never knew why the laughs on How I Met Your Mother bothered me so much until I learned they recorded at screenings.
     
  22. guy incognito

    guy incognito Senior Member

    Location:
    Mee-chigan
     
  23. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Well, as I always say: where does the music come from in a TV show? It's the same thing. I accept the convention of a stage play, and just translate that to a TV sitcom. It does help if there's a real audience right there in the studio providing real laughs for real actors. It's not about being real; it's about being entertaining. There's plenty of TV shows that aren't realistic, but if I want reality, I'll look in the mirror, not at a TV set.
     
  24. lv70smusic

    lv70smusic Senior Member

    Location:
    San Francisco, CA
    Some of my favorite television shows of all time make little sense when analyzed. Comedy doesn't have to be realistic, just funny. Without thinking too much about it, I'd say that comedy is more likely to excel when at least some aspects of it are beyond reason.
     
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  25. entropyfan

    entropyfan Forum Resident

    The worst! They literally used *one* laugh for 15 years.
     
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