[triceratops]

They filmed in front of a live audience in a theater and those are real people laughing. It's unsettling because the actors pause between lines until the laughter stops.

Reflexive dismissals of shows with laugh tracks are lazy.

[rfarley04]

To each their own! When I watch Ross ask how to beat up a woman in the street with eyes bugging out of his head there's a pretty big difference between a laugh track and no laugh track. Just like Garfield comics hit very different when you realize that John is actually talking to himself.

I don't "reflexively dismiss" all shows with a laugh track. Some of Friends is genuinely hilarious. But a lot of it is only funny, to me, when surrounded by others laughing.