[objclxt]

> Can we at least agree that laugh tracks are awful, even on otherwise-phenomenal shows (Seinfeld)?

No. Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.

Shooting a sitcom in front of a studio audience radically alters the pacing, the way jokes are told, and the setup (you're inherently constrained to fewer sets).

I think there is still a space today for comedies with live audiences (and the ratings seem to back this up). I love Arrested Development. I also love Frasier. AD would obviously never have worked with a live audience, Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track.

Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.

[millstone]

Can you elaborate on why Frasier would have been a far worse show without the laugh track?

One show which benefited from a laugh track was Married With Children, because it was an unapologetically trashy show about trashy people, and the audience hoots and jeers contributed to its low-brow atmosphere.

But the Big Bang Theory suffers horribly for its laugh track. It's not just the disproportionate reaction to jokes, it's the laughter at things that aren't jokes at all. See for example this egregious example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN3qn92R0SE , in which the audience starts cracking up after "My new computer came with Windows 7."

[nikatwork]

> Multi-camera sitcoms with live audiences are very, very different in writing, tone, and end product to single camera comedies. They both serve different purposes.

Or, y'know, you could have single camera comedies with no laugh track. The British seem to manage that just fine. I personally find laugh tracks equal parts desperate and condescending. "Hey dummy! There's a joke here! Laugh damn you... LAUGH!!"

[cdcarter]

Did you miss the last paragraph of his post. He was comparing live in-studio w/ audience to single camera, saying how a laugh track in live in-studio helps, and then goes on to note how he doesn't approve of canned laughter.

[yaeger]

>Now, I'm not talking about canned laughter. I think I can agree that adding laughter in post is bad. And Big Bang Theory is particularly guilty of 'sweetening' live audience reaction, meaning jokes that shouldn't be that funny often have huge waves of laughter. I don't appreciate that.

You are looking at it wrong. Do you know why the laughter is edited in post? You agreed that they film in front of a live audience (something most BBT bashers still can't accept from personal observations).

Now, one scene, multiple takes. The take that makes it into the show might have been the fifth one of the day. Of course the laughter that take produced is nowhere near as the initial response to the joke. So, you edit the laughter in post to make it fit. That has got nothing to do with "sweetening" anything. Unless you would rather they just use the laughter form the actual take, even though it was the 12th attempt and after seeing the joke 12 times the audience couldn't muster up so much as a snicker.