No one likes being told what to do. As soon as we can choose for ourselves, humans thrive on the sense of agency to wear what we want, eat what we want, say what we want and do what we want. And that includes laughing.
So why did so many television shows include a laugh track, telling us when to laugh at something? Was it an attempt to manipulate us? Or perhaps the jokes weren’t funny enough to conjure up a genuine guffaw. The Big Bang Theory was the last show to incorporate a laugh track and that ended in 2019. So with laugh tracks pretty much dead now, what caused producers to kick the canned laughter? You mean they have to rely on clever scriptwriting, innovative directing and engaging actors?!
Could laughing tracks be dead forever?
The laugh track, or as they say in the biz, “sweetened audience laughter”, was a key part of Hollywood television making since the 1950s. Until recently, just about every comedy show had a laugh track. From cartoons like The Flintstones and The Jetsons to pop culture classics like Friends, Will and Grace and Cheers, everyone who was someone drank the laughing Kool-aid.
In the 1940s and 50s, TV started to live broadcast and I Love Lucy was the first TV show to be filmed in front of a live audience. For the actors, it was like theatre on steroids but for the producers, it was way too risky. What if the audience laughed at the wrong point? What if someone had a weird annoying cackle? What if they didn’t laugh at all?
Enter stage right, Charlie Douglas, a sound engineer who invents the LAFF, a typewriter-looking machine on wheels containing 320 different recorded laughs. Ironically, Charlie was considered by some to be a hopeless square with no sense of humour.
The LAFF was cleverly operated by a Laugh Boy (yes, that was his official title) who had a foot pedal, some black knobs and one large knob marked “decibels” to play a bunch of different laughs to get the right response for each joke. There was also a small aperture called “the hole” into which the Laugh Boy was observed on occasion to insert his hand. Okay, what’s in the hole? And why does the laugh boy put his hand in there?
Now, don’t be misguided by the position title. Laugh Boy wasn’t just a job designated to the producer's half-cousin’s third nephew. There was an art to choosing the right laugh. First, you’ve got a few people who might anticipate a joke and they laugh a little beforehand. That’s called giving it a little tickle. (Insert laughter at inappropriate joke here).
Then you’ve got the Sharpie, which is just before the main laugh. They’re the clever people like us who get the joke the quickest. Then Laugh Boy has to climax the laugh (more inappropriate jokes), turn a few knobs (keep ‘em coming) and let the laughter tail out. Laugh Boy was good with his hands. And the LAFF was the producer’s new best friend. No more inappropriately timed giggles, weird screeching cackles or jokes that didn’t land!
Coming out of the era where all entertainment had been in live theatre or cinemas, the audience was used to having the communal viewing experience - people like to laugh together. Plus, it helped make some of the weaker jokes seem funnier than they were. Laugh tracks were used in most shows from the 1950s all the way up to the 2000s. Even shows recorded with a live audience would use a laugh track to ‘sweeten the laughter.’
But despite its prolific use, not everyone was a fan of the LAFF. In 1955, actor and producer David Niven called the laugh track “the single greatest affront to public intelligence that I know of.” Time magazine in 1999 called it “one of the hundred worst ideas of the 20th century” and in 2003, the New York Times called the laugh track “obvious fig leaves for the embarrassment of weak punchlines”. Some even ventured to say it was the most evil innovation in TV history, dehumanising one of the most human actions imaginable. Big call.
As much as we love him, it seems Laugh Boy might be out of a job. Since the late 1990s, using a laugh track has been seen as somewhat catastrophic, with shows such as The Simpsons, Arrested Development, The Office, and Community proving we don’t need to be told when to laugh. In fact, The Office won its first comedy Emmy in 2006 and from that point on, no laugh track comedy has won an Emmy.
So why did the laugh track die? One theory is simply about the jokes per minute. The laugh track takes up too much precious time and without it, you can cram in more puns. Another factor is that silence is the joke. You gotta have space to really feel the cringe and awkwardness. And maybe we’ve just gotten better at comedy. We’re not covering up weak jokes anymore.
As for the Wholesome Verdict, there have obviously been some cultural changes over the decades. We want authenticity, we want to laugh at legitimately funny things and cringe comedy has become more of a thing. And sure, the laugh track was a bit coercive but hey, if it helps you enjoy the show a little more, is it so bad?
SOURCES:
• RIP canned laughter, the most evil innovation in TV history
• The Hollywood Sphinx and his Laff Box
• The Laugh Track: Loathe It or Love It
• The Most Hated Sound on Television
• The Real Reason TV Sitcoms Stopped Using Laugh Tracks
• This Sitcom’s Cancelation Signals The Death Of A 70-Year-Old Sitcom Trend
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[00:00:00] Will: There we go. Right. I want to play a couple of clips from some of your favorite TV shows ever. I'm going to start with this one here.
[00:00:16] Laugh track: No, Joey doesn't share food. I mean, just last week we were having breakfast and he had a couple of grapes on his plate, but you wouldn't let her have a grape. Oh no, not me. Emma.
[00:00:29] Joey doesn't share food.
[00:00:33] Will: I got another one for you. Another one of your favorite shows.
[00:00:36] Laugh track: Over here.
[00:00:40] Will: This one doesn't announce itself in the same way. This is Mr Bean. It really is. Or, the Jetsons. Let's go with the Jetsons now.
[00:00:49] Laugh track: Morning, George, dear. Ah, morning, Gloria. Honey, it's your friend Gloria, the cute looking one. Gloria, oh dear. I can't let her see me looking like this. I've got to put on my morning mask. I'll be right there, George.
[00:01:05] Rod: Morning, Gloria. Those scamps. That's a kid show.
[00:01:12] Will: I don't know if you could hear it, but because maybe you paid too much attention to the Jokes that I just played, but something about those three shows stands out for me when I watch them with modern ears.
[00:01:23] Rod: One of them is a cartoon.
[00:01:25] Will: One of them, A, yes, is a cartoon which is strange because laugh track.
[00:01:30] Rod: Are you sure they're all tracks? Cause I know at least friends does have a live audience.
[00:01:34] Will: I will. I will come to that. I will. But don't ruin the fucking thing that I'm talking.
[00:01:37] Rod: The Jetsons doesn't have a live audience.
[00:01:39] Will: They stand out now a little bit because we, as I've come to, not so common, but friends, Mr. Bean, the Jetsons all full of the sound of audience laugh track, just layered right over the top.
[00:01:53] Rod: The jetsons weirs me out the most. Like a cartoon and laugh track is super weird to me.
[00:01:57] Will: Very weird. The laugh track, canned laughter or in the biz, sweetened audience laughter. It's been a key part of Hollywood tV making since the 1950s and to a point where just about every comedy show would have a laugh track until recently.
[00:02:17] Rod: Someone grew out of it.
[00:02:18] Will: I don't know until recently. 2019 when the last big Comedy show that had a laugh track, the big bang theory ended. And so now you don't find any of the big comedy shows anymore with a laugh track. Why did producers use this so much? Why did it die? And is it dead forever?
[00:02:57] Welcome to The Wholesome Show.
[00:02:59] Rod: The podcast in which two academics, him and not him. Grab a couple of beers, knock off early, dive down the hole of the rabbit.
[00:03:07] Will: I'm Will Grant.
[00:03:08] Rod: I am Rod Lamberts.
[00:03:09] Will: And today we're drinking a galaxy far away galaxy hopped IPA from our friends at Akasha.
[00:03:16] Rod: I'm shamelessly double branded here with the t shirt as well. They make a lot of delicious beers, and the problem is they make really delicious ones and they stop making them just when they get you hooked. Makes me sad.
[00:03:26] Will: Evil geniuses. So Rod, how does a laugh track make you feel?
[00:03:30] Rod: Look, depends on the show. Love my TV, I'm a TV slut. But there are some shows with laugh tracks that annoy the shit out of me, mostly because they're not funny. Like the one that sticks in my head is some show that I caught in passing a few years ago and I think it was called, might've been called Two Broke Girls.
[00:03:45] Will: Oh yeah. Yep. 2011 to 2017.
[00:03:47] Rod: So I caught an episode of that and it was wildly unfunny.
[00:03:50] Will: No I've seen funny.
[00:03:51] Rod: Horribly acted.
[00:03:52] Will: I have seen some bits of that in there.
[00:03:54] Rod: Maybe it was a different show. But so the two main girls were very squeaky. The writing was bad. The acting was average. And then the laugh track was just bang. And I'm like, the reason you're playing that is because it's not fucking funny, man.
[00:04:03] You tell me when I'm supposed to pause for laughter. But like something like friends never even, if you'd said, did friends have a laugh track or whatever, I'd be like, I don't remember.
[00:04:10] Will: You were laughing too much already for you to even notice.
[00:04:13] Rod: I've seen all of them a hundred times though. So I remember the things you were just showing.
[00:04:18] Will: You know, you know, it's weird. I mean, I'll come to this as we think about it. I don't remember being bothered by a laugh track, but sometimes when you think about it, you go, oh, okay, fine. Other people are laughing at that and it's weird. And it's weird that someone is Playing a laugh track, you know, that's kind of a thing.
[00:04:33] Rod: Is that the job you give like to the boss's cousin's child or something?
[00:04:37] Will: No, that's a pretty good job. You know, it's the juicy job.
[00:04:41] Rod: I couldn't be trusted with that kind of power.
[00:04:42] Will: So there were two precursors for the invention of the laugh track. TV started live broadcast sort of stuff in the forties and fifties. I love Lucy was the first TV show to be filmed in front of a live audience.
[00:04:54] Rod: Oh, really?
[00:04:54] Will: And of course that means, you know, you've got to get it right. I don't know how much they're editing. I don't think they're actually editing. It might've been broadcast fully live. 1951. You can imagine as an actor, this is cool. This is good fun. They're performing to a live crowd and being filmed.
[00:05:08] Rod: They get theater on steroids.
[00:05:10] Will: Exactly. And so Lucille Ball acting it, she was like, this is awesome. This is really cool. We get to make jokes in front of people and it, and they said, you know, this is much better way of you know, making the show, but the producers, they liked it, but they didn't like the risk.
[00:05:27] They didn't like the risk that would come. What if the audience laughs at the wrong point? What if the audience laughs weird? What if they don't laugh? You know, you know, there can be a weird laugh guy up the front who's laughing at all the weird bits and you go, Oh, that's not a joke, dude.
[00:05:43] Rod: I just found my pants. Get rid of him. Get rid of him now
[00:05:47] Will: you know, you know, so the producers were like, ah, is there something that we can do about this to make sure that our product Is professional on stage, but also professional off stage.
[00:05:57] Rod: You get people with zero sense of humor and you wire them to electrodes, so when the electrodes zap the genitalia, they know to go, Hehehehehehe! That's before they automated it.
[00:06:06] Will: That, that might've been their first try. That might've been their first try. Thing that started to happen is in radio actually, Bing Crosby realized that they could use this new technology of magnetic tapes to record their show. And he thought that's awesome because now I don't have to record twice for East coast and West coast. I could record a show and send it out.
[00:06:26] But pretty soon people started realizing actually you can combine the problem and the solution here. And you can go, all right, well, what if we record some good laughter and put it over a taped show and we can have the feeling of a live audience and the watcher at home, they can sit there and get this great show. It's got people laughing.
[00:06:44] Rod: And they put the thing in a can and it becomes canned laughter.
[00:06:48] Will: It's not quite a can. So the first first version of this and clearly this is not the version that was still running on the big bang show in 2019, but the first version, it looked like a typewriter on steroids sort of thing.
[00:07:01] So imagine a typewriter on top of a box that you would wheel around. It was called the LAFF box, L A double F.
[00:07:07] Rod: And then centuries later, Twitter took it up as I'm having a LAFF.
[00:07:12] Will: Possibly. Possibly.
[00:07:13] Rod: They literally rolled a typewriter around that had different laughs in it?
[00:07:16] Will: Yes.
[00:07:16] Rod: I would fucking murder for one of those.
[00:07:19] Will: I did look, I did while I was having to look into this, I had to look on eBay. I was like, can I buy a laugh box? I don't think there are actually very many.
[00:07:26] Rod: Screw the budget. We're not doing any more shows. Whatever money's left is gone.
[00:07:29] Will: I suspect that all of them are in like, Hollywood TV museums and stuff like that, but probably because they weren't actually heaps of them because a production company would have so it was invented by Charlie Douglas a sound engineer
[00:07:41] Rod: or chuckles as he was known.
[00:07:43] Will: Yeah, no. Well, actually I'll tell you something about him later. He was a sound engineer who had that problem. Mostly he's listening to the laughs in the live audience and he's like, ah, we've got the one weird guy laughing at the wrong time.
[00:07:56] Rod: Donkey boy and squeak lady.
[00:07:57] Will: Okay, let's record them all and and put them in a place. Now the recordings they got from like this Live like a mime show called the red skeleton show.
[00:08:06] Rod: I know red skeleton. I didn't know he did a mime show. I think they should have gone to St. Petersburg. Because no one laughs more hardly than the Russians.
[00:08:12] Will: That's what they should have done. Find the most laughing people. Oh my god. I think now I need to know differences in international laughter There are some international differences on the laugh track, but they recorded it from this show because it was well not mime. It was more sketch comedy, but not talking. No dialogue really.
[00:08:30] But he's not like your French, here I'm in the wall. Like it's Pratt falls and things like that with not a lot of talking. And so, so for them, it was super easy to just strip out the, there's no dialogue getting in the way. So you can just strip out the laughs out of that.
[00:08:41] So what it had 32 like spinning tracks of laughs on it. Yeah. Each wheel would have 10 different laughs on it. So you can say, yeah, so there's 320 different laughs and then the operator, which was called at the time, the laugh boy would have a foot pedal, the switch marked on and off, some black knobs, one large knob marked decibels and then they would play like a bunch of different things to get the feeling for each laugh.
[00:09:08] Rod: Okay.
[00:09:09] Will: There was also a small aperture called the hole into which the laugh boy has been observed on occasion to insert his hand. This is, this comes from TV Guide in 1966, did a deep dive into this.
[00:09:19] Rod: I do like, this is a small aperture. We'll call it the hole because it's a hole.
[00:09:24] Will: I want to know what happens when the Laugh Boy puts his hand in the hole.
[00:09:27] Rod: I want to know first why. Oh, look.
[00:09:32] Will: But they might key up a particular laugh that they want, but they play a few different things at the same time. But of course, you know, not every laugh is the same. The Laugh Boy would watch a show and go, okay, take some notes. This is where the laughs go. And then he'd try to work out what the level of laughter you want for each joke is, you know, you're listening there to the friends at the beginning. Clearly it's not all exactly the same laugh. There's a bit of an art to choosing.
[00:09:54] First, you've got a few people might anticipate a joke. They're like beforehand. They go, here it comes. You call that giving it a little tickle.
[00:10:01] Rod: That's not all I called that. Carry on.
[00:10:02] Will: Then you get the Sharpie, which is just before the main laugh. I think that's the person who gets the joke the fastest.
[00:10:07] Like the main laugh. And then then you have to, you climax the laugh and you punch a few keys and they'll let tail out and then a few little chuckles in to slide under
[00:10:16] Rod: this is a fucking instrument,
[00:10:20] Will: absolutely an instrument and they're playing these laughs. And so you can, you know, when I said, so it's 320 actual laughs recorded on this thing, but dialing up the sound and dialing, which ones you get like millions of Different possible combinations.
[00:10:33] Rod: The career I never knew I really wanted already doesn't exist anymore. This is dreadful. I have to say this because it reminds me of years ago I got an app on my iPhone. It's a fart app and it's like a little keyboard. Like it looks like a drum thing and all these different farts.
[00:10:49] And so when I was forced to go to the supermarket shopping, I'd quietly put it behind my back.
[00:10:54] Will: Why would you do that?
[00:10:55] Rod: Cause to watch my wife's face, you know, someone would walk past and I'd be like, and she'd have to keep a straight face or like pretend it wasn't me. I'd keep looking around like nothing's going on shitting myself laughing and I'm thinking this laugh box. So if I could have one of those to work around having your own laugh track. I'm rethinking all my career decisions.
[00:11:12] Will: Well, you know how you're saying Charlie, the inventor, Charlie Douglas not quite chuckles because you know, the box was the same. There was a few of them that they had, but the producers on the TV shows would ask for a different laugh boy by name. I think they were laugh boys cause they were all boys. I don't think they were all gentlemen.
[00:11:28] Rod: The fifties. Yeah. We'll get a lady to do it. There's a laugh we don't have on the machine.
[00:11:33] Will: They come to a different level of laughter on different things. A lighter touch or something. This was in the TV guide article. One is universally considered a hopeless square with no sense of humor, whatever. And that's old Charlie himself produces wince when they see that it's Charlie trundling in the box, which is a bit sad. You've invented the laugh box.
[00:11:51] Rod: And you don't have a sense of humor. Does that make you fucking brilliant choice or terrible choice?
[00:11:55] Will: Now here's the thing. I don't know, maybe he didn't have a sense of humor, but maybe he just didn't have the art for it. Or maybe he was slower at getting the jokes or
[00:12:02] Rod: no. How can you do that job without a sense of humor?
[00:12:04] Will: I don't know, but they would definitely go, some producers would go, no, I want Johnny or Carol, I think it's a 1950s boys name.
[00:12:11] Rod: Carol O'Connor from all in the family.
[00:12:13] Will: Yeah. They liked him personally but he wasn't very good at driving in the laughs
[00:12:17] Rod: nice guy. Shit at laugh tracks. What's he do? Laugh track guy.
[00:12:21] Will: Yeah. The other thing that made me laugh is of course it's super proprietary. And so
[00:12:27] Rod: that's more impressive than the Enigma. Yeah. Yeah. You code break or whatever. This has 44 million kinds of laughters on it. That's fantastic.
[00:12:34] Will: Anytime it broke down while it was being run. I don't know if it was common, but it's a 1950s. They'd have to wheel it off into the toilet to service it so that no one could see what's on the inside.
[00:12:44] Rod: Is it elves?
[00:12:46] Will: Little elves laughing. Pulling on the legs of elves and making them giggle. I don't know. There was one time when I think it started to smoke or something like that in, in the middle of recording. And they were really stressed cause they couldn't find a toilet to take it into. So they had to pop the lid and take the padlocks off to like, it's all padlocked down.
[00:13:04] Rod: So the show is too funny.
[00:13:05] Will: Maybe, I don't know. I like the idea that it might've been.
[00:13:08] Rod: That's why we can't use one. Yeah. Too fucking hilarious.
[00:13:11] Will: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
[00:13:12] Rod: You know, I've always said so. Too funny for a laugh machine.
[00:13:15] Will: But that would also have some terms for and they might deliberately put these in. Not the weird laugh guy, but the person that is laughing to the beat of their own drum, you know.
[00:13:25] I do remember though, there was a podcast show that you and I went to may have been under the weather a little bit
[00:13:31] Rod: and we may have eaten certain baked goods.
[00:13:33] Will: I remember dying of laughter. That was the funnest thing I've ever seen.
[00:13:36] Rod: The two of us were in the front row and we were laughing in this hall at the top of our lungs.
[00:13:41] Will: And listen back to it later. And it was a good show. Not terribly funny. And they took out all of our laughs too.
[00:13:48] Rod: We were guffawing. Like I remember guffawing through the masks.
[00:13:52] Will: As you can guess, it took off like wildfire, like straight away. People are like, Oh, this solves a problem and we're going to do it. Why did producers use it? I mean, it's pretty straightforward. They came from a time when people really thought to watch something, you have to be in a communal space. They're coming from theater and movies, movie theaters, where you'd have a lot of people in the room with you. And so you'd have an audience experience.
[00:14:14] Like you're going to get entertainment in community. And so the TV producers early on were thinking, all right, we're going to have to do something to sort of replicate that feel.
[00:14:22] Rod: And I guess some people might need cues to like some jokes, you might not feel, I mean, I've never felt this, but they might not feel like they're allowed to laugh.
[00:14:30] Some people would be like, Oh, if I laugh, will I look stupid? Or will I look dumb if I don't laugh? And I'm sure, surely some of that social should come in.
[00:14:37] Will: You know, there's a whole bunch of good social research here that says, you know, laughter is a social bonding tool that goes back before we're humans.
[00:14:45] We've been laughing as A species and a pre species probably all the way back to parakeets but it's a social bonding tool, clearly a bunch of great apes and so this is all drawing on that idea that we like to laugh together and we're more likely to laugh when we are.
[00:14:58] Rod: Also, if you do a lot of laughing and you're on your own, people start to go, are you that weird guy? Look at him. He's laughing again. Do you know why? Yeah. It's because of his headphones.
[00:15:07] Will: So I think there's a couple of reasons. One is Producers thought, okay, this is going to make people feel more comfortable in their laughing.
[00:15:13] They're going to have a better time. It's going to be a more of a communal experience. Another one, maybe they're like, okay, this will bump up some of the weaker jokes. We can make people feel they're a little bit better.
[00:15:26] Rod: There's no way people who've watched a fairly dud show with a lot of laugh track. At least some of those people are going to come out going and think it was funnier than it was. Like there's no way that wouldn't happen.
[00:15:36] Will: So this is, I mean, this is why one of the questions I want to ask, Is it all bad? Anyway, come back to that.
[00:15:42] Rod: Manipulative.
[00:15:43] Will: We'll come back to that. The shows that had it, and it was pretty much every show for 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s. There were debates. There were debates.
[00:15:55] Rod: And live shows where there was actual audience laughter, they would still employ it or?
[00:15:59] Will: Occasionally they would, they would sweeten the laughter. So if it is a live show and I think, you know, most sitcoms that became rarer but they would sweeten it, they would add a laughter to the sound.
[00:16:08] Rod: I feel like you'd have to too, cause the idea of watching a live comedy, if they have to stop and change sets or they have to stop and change costumes and shit, like you're losing the continuity of the story, surely that would have an impact.
[00:16:17] Will: I mean, this is a little bit like before a comedian, you might have a warmup comedian or something like that.
[00:16:21] Rod: Yeah, stripper. You have a stripper, then the comedian.
[00:16:23] Will: Well, but I think there is some justice to you want to get your peak product and your peak product might lead a little bit of warmup.
[00:16:30] Rod: It's called the fluffer.
[00:16:31] Will: I was going to get to fluffers later. Later. But yeah, like shows with a laugh track, Bewitched.
[00:16:36] Rod: God, I love that show.
[00:16:36] Will: The Flintstones. Although it didn't seem every episode I was looking through a bunch of Flintstones and it didn't seem to be there.
[00:16:42] Rod: Huh. I never thought of cartoons having laugh tracks before.
[00:16:44] Will: I know. The Jetsons definitely did. Seemed more subtle than than you might get in Friends. There was strong laugh track there. I mean, it was a good joke. But the Jetsons are a bit weaker. Two and a Half Men, News Radio, Will and Grace, I Love Lucy did eventually use it. Frasier, the 70s show, the IT crowd.
[00:17:00] Cheers? Cheers would have been a big laugh track. I remember the laugh track in Cheers. Mr. Bean is nearly all laugh track. One of the things you can do, you can find on the internet Switched around so you can find shows with a laugh track that they've taken it away and shows without a laugh track where they've added it.
[00:17:17] Rod: Taking it away would make it a kind of morbid and grey affair.
[00:17:19] Will: Well, it's kind of weird. I mean, I'll show you. Here's a Mr Bean where they've taken away the laugh track. For those of you listening, we've got Mr Bean taking out a sandwich. He's sitting on the park bench. He's gonna cut it with scissors. Okay, that's funny. That is funny. That's funny.
[00:17:41] Rod: Yeah, I'm okay with that so far.
[00:17:42] Will: I don't know how much I'm laughing though.
[00:17:45] Rod: It's quietly amusing.
[00:17:47] Will: Alright, you heard a tiny bit of that there. Or, flipping it around, Brooklyn 99 is a show, it doesn't have a laugh track.
[00:17:53] Rod: No, it doesn't need one.
[00:17:54] Will: But someone put it in.
[00:17:55] Rod: I'm gonna hate this. I'm sure I'm gonna hate this.
[00:17:56] Will: Are you?
[00:17:59] Rod: I love Rosa that's horrible.
[00:18:03] You get used to it.
[00:18:06] Laugh track: Oh. My. God. Rose is wearing pink! Rose is wearing pink! Are we sure it's not a white shirt that's just been bloodied in a motorcycle crash? Maybe it wasn't her. Does she have a twin sister? If Rosa had a twin, she would have eaten her in the womb.
[00:18:19] Wait, hold up, stop. How come none of you teased her about it? It's Rosa. She's scary. You guys are unbelievable! I once wore a tie with a splash of purple. You guys called me Mr. Grapes for two years! Oh, Mr. Grapes! I forgot about Mr. Grapes!
[00:18:33] Rod: I don't like it. It doesn't need it. I think it's better without. Do you know why? Because it's such fucking sarcastic comedy, too. So it's more like you kind of go
[00:18:42] Will: so I think you can go, mr. Bean struggles without it. Like you can see there are jokes,
[00:18:48] Rod: but it's very quiet anyway, as well. Like there's cause it's dead quiet. It's just actions being basically dead quiet, except for traffic noise in that clip. It's kind of a bit weird
[00:18:57] Will: it's tough brooklyn 99 absolutely doesn't need it, but I'm on the fence about whether it may be better without it.
[00:19:04] Rod: No look, part of my objection is whenever I think I can tell in this case, I definitely know that it's fake, laugh tracks make me mad, but I've watched many shows that have them and I've enjoyed them entirely. It's just like that one. I'm like, I like Brooklyn nine, nine. Anyway, I don't need someone to tell me when Scully puts his foot up and says, but it's all wart, and you've got Jake, you know, with his sandwich. I don't need a laugh track.
[00:19:28] Will: But your reaction there, like from word go, people were pissed about it. Like 1955 David Niven, actor and producer, called the laugh track the single greatest affront to public intelligence that I know of.
[00:19:38] Rod: Okay. Big call. There are others. McCarthyism.
[00:19:42] Will: Yeah. Maybe.
[00:19:43] Rod: Book burning.
[00:19:44] Will: I don't think it was a competition. Don't critique the list. Just say he's put it on the list up high. But my point is, since 1955, like this is early on, people knew about it. It wasn't, it's not like it was completely hidden. People hated it.
[00:19:57] You know, 1977 in the movie Annie Hall one character calls the addition of tremendous laugh to the audio mix of his friend's TV show, nothing less than immoral. And he said, especially cause the joke is weak.
[00:20:07] Time magazine in 1999 called it one of the hundred worst ideas of the 20th century. I lost another one. There was one. It's, what is it? The most evil innovation in TV history. Or something like that. People are furious. 2003, the New York Times. Pretty much nobody likes laugh tracks, perhaps because they're such obvious fig leafs for the embarrassment of weak punchlines. Perhaps because they make us feel bossed and condescended to. Perhaps because they dehumanize one of the most human actions imaginable.
[00:20:33] Rod: Dehumanize?
[00:20:34] Will: Yeah, well, telling you when to laugh.
[00:20:36] Rod: Damn, that's strong language though. Like, I mean, they annoy me at times when they seem obviously fake, but I've, like I've said, I've often more times than I would ever be able to count enjoyed a show and laughed at it with a laugh track and I don't feel like I've been abused and manipulated. I feel like I've had a laugh.
[00:20:49] Will: Well, maybe it's just the highbrow people are like, no, I must laugh on my own. I must have my own timing for laughter. But I think the point about one of the most human reactions possible. I mean, it's not because laughter is not exclusively human, but it is also very important that, you know, that's one of the things that we share as a social bonding thing with just about everyone. Laughter is a deeply communal human thing and I can understand that's a,
[00:21:12] Rod: I get it. I get people getting upset, but surely you're probably going to do this. You know, people who turn around the other way and go, well, it's like AI girlfriends, you know, if we're getting a fake version of feeling that community, maybe that's okay. Put maybe in italics, .
[00:21:27] Will: So academics doing work on this
[00:21:29] Rod: that's my favorite field.
[00:21:29] Will: Boil down this, you know, it's like historians, like these critiques basically coercive they dumb down the audience. And deceptive. And I mean, they're different versions of saying the same thing.
[00:21:39] Yeah. But I think the coercion there, so you get a lot of people that are really talking about this as immoral is a common thing.
[00:21:45] Rod: Fuck. It's a strong word.
[00:21:46] Will: It is, but just back to your point, plenty of people all the way along have hated the laugh track. This is terrible. But then they've watched the shows. Like lots and lots of people happily watched all those shows. They might go, if they're asked, it's got a laugh track, you know, they go, oh, I don't like that but the show's funny anyway.
[00:22:02] Even Hollywood producers, there was one in 1955, so, a producer called Babe Unger. He said he hated canned laugh tracks himself. He thought audience reaction's not necessary because TV viewers expect it to be there. Blaming the viewers here.
[00:22:15] Rod: Always blame the audience. Are you listening? Maybe you'll get to this. Have they ever tried them or use them in movies?
[00:22:21] Will: They have tried in movies, as in there are tests that they've done like to see if they work not needed. I mean, the number one thing that they thought from day one is that because you're in theatre, like you've got the experience, you're surrounded by people laughing. And I think because of that, there was a feeling that would be actually pushing people off.
[00:22:40] Rod: Well then David Lynch would have tried it.
[00:22:42] Will: Look well, there are certainly uses of laugh tracks for non comedy reasons.
[00:22:47] Rod: I can think of 11 right now. No. I believe you.
[00:22:49] Will: But just basically not ever really used. It's already communal.
[00:22:53] Rod: But with streaming, I wonder if that might change. I wonder if I'll start inserting him into movies.
[00:22:57] Will: Wow. Here's the thing. So yeah. They started dying in the late 90s, early 2000s, and then have really, it's become sort of catastrophic since then, if you're a fan of the laugh track. Some people reckon it sorts, sort of starts in the late 90s with the Simpsons.
[00:23:14] Because yes, it's a cartoon, but it's a comedy show like, like many others. And clearly there, there are some comedies that have had the laugh track in there.
[00:23:22] Rod: Does the Simpsons?
[00:23:22] Will: Simpsons doesn't. Arrested Development starts in 2003. One of, one of the big shows without a laugh track. The office, both, both American and UK office.
[00:23:31] Rod: Oh, that would have murdered the office. A laugh track, I think would have, cause it's so, but a lot of these, cause they're more sarcastic. They're more kind of socially cutting. I think there's a pattern so far.
[00:23:40] Will: Yeah. That's 2005. Community 2009 .Orange is the new black 2013. Curb your enthusiasm. I think starts in 2000. Scrubs 2001. No laugh track. Modern family and parks and rec 2009. And so you think of the more recent comedies, there's more, you know, while friends and Seinfeld were huge in the 1990s with a laugh track, the ones that started from the 2000s and then the 2010s, it just becomes rarer and rarer. So Brooklyn Nine from 2013, you just don't have laugh track anymore.
[00:24:10] And so, you know, one of the other signs of this is the office won it's first comedy emmy in 2006. And from that point, no laugh track comedy has won has won the Emmy.
[00:24:22] Rod: And that was a British office or the Pommy?
[00:24:24] Will: I think that's the American one but yeah it's been a slow decline and then catastrophic
[00:24:29] Rod: correlation is not causation, but I take the point
[00:24:31] Will: but yeah, since 2009, there hasn't been a big comedy show that has had a laugh track.
[00:24:36] Rod: We're smarter now.
[00:24:37] Will: Well, here's the thing. Why is it dying? Why has it died? What's your theory?
[00:24:42] Rod: Authenticity. I think that's a big one. I think this, the, or the perception of authenticity might be a big killer.
[00:24:48] Will: How so?
[00:24:48] Rod: Well, you know, this notion of identity and being authentic, even though it's often probably fake anyway, in social media, et cetera, maybe the focus on authenticity matters more than it used to.
[00:24:57] So laugh tracks seen as being more fake, less authentic, that's my off the cuff suspicion. So I think we're less tolerant of inauthentic or what we perceive as being inauthentic.
[00:25:08] Will: I've got one on that that we'll build on that. Yeah. One, one theory is it's literally about jokes per minute. Like a laugh track. Like I saw something this YouTuber Drew Gooden. He did a couple of different things. One, he went and grabbed an episode of friends and took out the laugh track. And it's like, what are they, 20, 22 minutes episodes, something like that. Five minutes of laugh track. And so you can, it gives you back five minutes in which you can actually cram in jokes.
[00:25:35] And the Simpsons I've seen, you know, their theory has been, don't go for the best joke. Go for as many jokes as you can, cram them in as many as you can and the laugh track is just literally waiting for a joke. So, I mean, this Drew Goodin he did a couple of different experiments, but one of them, he was looking at one random episode of Friends, 121 Jokes.
[00:25:54] one random episode of the Office, 166 jokes. So friends had the laugh track and you just can't get as many jokes in as you can in a show without the laugh track. Now, number of jokes isn't the be all and end all. Another theory. Silence is the joke.
[00:26:09] Rod: Fuck yeah. Everything Jon Stewart does.
[00:26:11] Will: Jon Stewart or the office, you know, like cringe, cringe comedy.
[00:26:15] Rod: You need space for people to really feel terrible about it.
[00:26:17] Will: Not that I'm a huge fan of the office because I can't handle the cringe but there are definitely so for example, in Parks and Rec, there is a lot of breaking the fourth wall, looking to the audience that I don't think you could do the same way if you have a laugh track. I think there are different uses of silence that might've emerged in that time. So I liked that one. Going back to your point you know, authenticity, another way of saying that is. Well, we're not covering up weak jokes anymore.
[00:26:42] And you know, there's some people that say, okay, you've mentioned them before. Some of the terrible sitcoms from the sixties and seventies, maybe we shouldn't have fake laughed at some of the terrible things that they were saying.
[00:26:52] Rod: How are you going to know the racism was funny then?
[00:26:54] Will: And you know, you know, so there's people that are saying, you know, fake laughter was a way to push further racism to push misogyny, to go, Oh yeah, reinforce. We can laugh at these things
[00:27:04] Rod: and others would argue, but that's what it's actually going on anyway.
[00:27:07] Will: Oh no. Of course, community at the time and the community still is has a whole bunch of racism, a whole bunch of misogyny and those kinds of things, but did this forced dialing up of that, like, are we Pushing them all.
[00:27:19] Rod: It's true though. Like, you hear like in some of the shows I've mentioned to you from my childhood, it'd be like is that being abusive and horrible? Oh, wait, it's they're laughing. Oh, it's a joke then.
[00:27:27] And without the laugh track, you'd literally could be sitting exactly on the fence going, this could go either way. Did he just abuse that guy or was he just making a funny aside?
[00:27:34] Will: There is a bunch of this stuff that people have taken the laugh tractor out of a bunch of shows and you go, Oh, it's just people being really horrible.
[00:27:41] Rod: Yeah. You guys are cunts. I can't believe you said that.
[00:27:43] Will: A hundred percent. So, so there is that, that, you know, going back to your point about authenticity, that we're actually, you know, laughing at the joke that you find funny, that is a real joke, not being forced to laugh.
[00:27:53] So I think there is a cultural shift that might be helping. But then there's one last argument that I think it's a little bit sad.
[00:28:02] Rod: Oh, don't make me sad.
[00:28:04] Will: This is from Jacob Stern. There was always something a little dark about the illusion of the laugh track, you know, it's a little dark and this is some of the shows that are still using laugh track. So WandaVision a couple of years ago used the laugh track. Only in the early bits where they're pretending to be in the fifties. And so they use that as a way to make things a bit more sinister. So it's not laugh track as laughter, but it's laugh track as sinister. And I think that's a more possible thing now, but anyway, there's always something a little dark about the illusion, but there's arguably something even darker about its loss of appeal. Whether they realized it or not, viewers found comfort in the pretense that they're part of an audience.
[00:28:43] But now, but now, we're content to laugh alone. And I'm like, Oh!
[00:28:48] Rod: That's not good for you! Have you ever laughed alone?
[00:28:51] Will: I can't! I can't!
[00:28:52] Rod: Can you do anything alone? Do you need someone to hold your hand while you take a poo?
[00:28:55] Will: All of it! All of it! Name one of those things that you should be on your own for. I, you know, I was thinking about this and I've noticed when I'm sitting on the couch, you know, and watching a show, there is a really subtle micro difference.
[00:29:09] You are hearing other people laugh at the same time or just before or just after, and there's a, you're listening for that at the same time and you're gauging against. Okay. what is funny and how they feel? And you're bonding all the time. And I know laugh track is a fake version of that, but not, it's still made by humans. And I think there's something that
[00:29:29] Rod: so are nuclear bombs, man,
[00:29:30] Will: But could you say suddenly we're happy more to be completely by ourselves?
[00:29:35] Rod: I was never not happy to laugh on my own though. Like there are times when I've been
[00:29:38] Will: I can laugh on my own.
[00:29:39] Rod: I've been doing something podcasting Folding clothes or digging a hole. And I collapse because it's so fucking funny that I'm crying with laughter. And my wife will go, are you all right? And it's just like, it's just, I can't even, I don't need anyone to help.
[00:29:54] Will: I am happy to laugh on my own. I just like laughing better with people.
[00:29:57] Rod: It is good. Sharing a laugh makes it funnier.
[00:30:00] Will: So I reckon, look, there might be, as you said, some cultural changes going on. Yeah. We want the authenticity and we want to be laughing at legitimate things. And I think the laugh track. Good. It probably was a bit coercive, but I think also we want to cram in more jokes and I think we've changed in a bit and cringe is probably part of it.
[00:30:17] Rod: Yeah, look, definitely cringe. You do not need laugh tracks with cringe comedy. In fact, it would break it.
[00:30:22] Will: So the question is, are they dead for forever?
[00:30:26] Rod: No.
[00:30:28] Will: You're going to give me more there? You're going to give me more?
[00:30:30] Rod: You and your evidence chain and logic and reason.
[00:30:33] Will: No, this is speculation.
[00:30:34] Rod: My, speculation is because all things come around again. And again, like, I mean, half jokingly, you know, some avant garde person like David Lynch or David Lynch jr is going to come along and go, yeah, we can retweet just like avocado and prawn cocktails used to be mocked popular in the seventies. Then they disappeared and they come back. I reckon maybe they'll come back around.
[00:30:54] Will: The one that made me think about this is that there's a new app that you can get where you can fake a live crowd watching like an Instagram live feed or a YouTube live feed or something like that. So, so basically you want to pretend to people, Oh, look, I got 10, 000 people watching me and I'm doing this thing.
[00:31:13] And I think it goes into the same instinct, you know, that for thousands of years, people bought placebo whalers to come to your funeral and cry. People have bought followers on Twitter and Instagram.
[00:31:26] Rod: Oh, there were fake clappers in audiences and theaters.
[00:31:28] Will: Fake clappers. I think part of that is producers going, let's dial it up. Let's fluff this stuff up more. And yes, it's coercive but I think there's always going to be a bit where producers will say, yep, let's do that. And there's a little bit of me that goes, if it helps me to enjoy it, is it the worst?
[00:31:49] Rod: Should we have a laugh track?
[00:31:53] Will: Oh my God. What else have you been thinking about?
[00:31:56] Rod: I have to get my notes. So I was reading this thing, came across an article in the Washington Post very recently, and it is literally, how are people handling this issue where there's a flock of children from zero to three Who are saying shit that really clearly seems like they're remembering past lives like they're saying shit that is indescribably freaky.
[00:32:15] Will: Like what is it?
[00:32:16] Rod: You've got them talking about like there's a three year old talking about her friend Who's got you know numbers on her arm and all these sorts of things and she starts to make comments about things that are like Yeah, that's fucking Auschwitz and I'm like, yeah, we've all heard this, but then you got these scientists are actually, I'm digging into and I'm like, I want to know more.
[00:32:32] And then it fades three to five. It starts to fade. And I'm very curious about that. I was in the Washington post, therefore it's real because Jeff Bezos would not stand for it otherwise.
[00:32:40] Will: No. Of course. I'm going to go with children maybe guessing something and it resonates with adults.
[00:32:45] Rod: Pretty good guessing. Pretty good guessing. Like they could be cold reading, but fuck, I love it with my hair prickles. I love it. I kept reading. It was a long article. I was reading it going, damn. So what interests me more is how the people who are legitimately, who are studying it legitimately, the extent to which that works, their legitimacy. I'm very curious about that.
[00:33:06] Will: You convince me.
[00:33:07] Rod: That's what makes me curious. Whether it's true or not, I don't know, because obviously all things are true.
[00:33:11] Will: So a couple of years ago and no one knows if this is terrorism or someone misguided or someone being friendly. But in a couple of different countries, People have been re receiving mysterious seeds in the mail, like anonymously sent
[00:33:27] Rod: like, is this the invasion of the pod people?
[00:33:29] Will: I don't know. But like, like they get an envelope and it says Rod Lambert's at your address and here's your seeds. And I never ordered these seeds and I don't know, I don't actually have, I'm going to find out some more details.
[00:33:40] I don't know if it's just like an envelope with like seeds in it, or if it's wrapped in plastic and stuff like that, but here's the weird thing. The thing that gets me a why are people sending this? But B. Significant numbers of people are actually planting straight away in the ground. Here's some magic beans.
[00:33:55] Rod: How did it grow into anthrax? I didn't know you could grow that.
[00:33:58] Will: So I was talking about this to some people who are concerned about biosecurity. And I love they're just like, what the fuck is in your brain that you would plant some random seeds. Curiosity.
[00:34:11] Rod: It'd be like, Oh, I have to know.
[00:34:12] Will: So I have to know that one too. Got any others?
[00:34:14] Rod: Yeah. My only other question is. Hey dorks, stop calling out sci fi for not having accurate science.
[00:34:20] Will: Any dork in particular?
[00:34:22] Rod: He might be called Neil deGrasse Tyson. It just, I caught an article. He's sitting on, was it Jimmy Fallon or Colbert, calling out all the problems with Dune 2 and it's like, it's science FICTION. I just, it's not a question. It just shits me. Like why would you want to become famous for going, you know, science fiction isn't true.
[00:34:41] Will: Yeah. Maybe the word science in science fiction, particularly with Dune doesn't actually mean anything. It's in space beyond that, it's fantasy.
[00:34:49] Rod: I got spaceships
[00:34:49] Will: beyond that. It's fantasy. You can have spaceships
[00:34:51] Rod: like a breathing tubes. They got things that process the faeces in the thigh pads. That's science. Okay. If that's your fantasy, you're a sick fuck. I just, I mean, it's obviously now in our industry, at least academically, there's a lot of that business. People go, Oh yeah, I saw that movie, but at least 10 science is inaccurate. And you're like science fiction, buddy. Yeah. fucking fiction. You're allowed to enjoy shit without all of it being.
[00:35:12] Will: Oh my God. Oh my God. All right. That's enough.
[00:35:15] Rod: That's my question.
[00:35:19] Will: We'll be back soon. Listener. But if you love the laugh track tell us cheers@wholesomeshow.com or down in the comments. If you'd like to have your laugh track while you're walking around the supermarket, you can just play the laugh track. Or the fart track.
[00:35:32] Rod: I want the typewriter.
[00:35:32] Will: Laugh, fart, laugh, fart. In fact, I know a gentleman who who quite often does the fart laugh, which is of course the greatest of the laughs.
[00:35:40] Rod: Is that me?
[00:35:41] Will: I said it was a gentleman.
