Since we seem to be on the subject of multi-camera sitcoms this week....
No one hates phony laugh tracks more than me. Longtime readers of this blog (all six of them) know this. But I must set the record straight.
Number one: There is a big difference between genuine audience laughter and the phony canned laughter you so often hear, which to me is like taking a new car and tagging it.
A reader recently commented on a sitcom being given the “Charley Douglass treatment.” Charley was the man with the laugh box. Many of the laughs in that box were compiled from shows as far back as the ‘50s. There are people laughing on your television who have been dead for 30/40 years (talk about getting the last laugh). Some tracks have been used so frequently on so many shows that they’re actually identifiable.
But here’s the thing —
There is no “Charley Douglass treatment.”
Let me be very clear.
It is the show runner or someone representing the show that makes all the decisions. They’re the ones who determine when there should be a laugh, how big a laugh, whether to go with the dead woman’s guffaw. Charley just pushed the buttons.
So when you watch a show and cringe at how the laugh track is going crazy for every stupid lame line, don’t blame the box. Blame the insecure or deluded show representative who felt the need to create bogus hysterical laughter where none was justified.
I watched an episode of TAXI recently and was struck by the fact that several jokes didn’t work. And there was no effort made to hide that with fake laughter. You’d hear the line clank and then silence for a beat until the next line was spoken. It was so refreshing. And it made the lines that did get laughs seem funnier and more genuine.
As we ease out of the pandemic, multi-camera shows will again start filming in front of live audiences. Let’s hope producers write funny enough shows that no “Charley Douglass treatment” is ever needed.
from By Ken Levine
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