NaveWeiss's Journal: Live-audience comedies are passe

All those american comedies where you can hear the audience laughing in the background (because they see that someone lit the "laugh" sign) are passe. We suffered them for many years, but finally they ended and now it's the age of the more subtle comedies.

Ally McBeal started that (or so I believe), and although Ally is passe herself, other comedies, such as Sex And The City, Malcolm In The Middle and Scrubs, adopted the notion of giving up the forced laughter. This way they don't have to stick a gag into every second sentence, and instead they can work more on the series itself.

When I was young, I was surprised that movies labeled as comedy didn't contain audience laughter, because that laughter actually helped me to know that something funny just happened (and then ask for the meaning of that). But I don't miss that laughter anymore.

So, from now on the comedies will be seperated into 2 genres: the layman/passe genre, such as My Big Fat Greek Life, Ellen, Drew Carey and crap like that; and the witty genre, which is more rare and much more intelligent.

Any questions?

great post

[ceejayoz]

My opinion on it is that if the show needs a laugh track, that means it can't stand on its own merits. If you have to clue the TV audience in on what's "funny", it's not funny.

Way before Ally

[gmhowell]

Way before Ally McBeal (the reason there was no laugh track is because even the audience couldn't be tricked into laughing at that garbage) there was MASH. Later seasons had no laugh track.

Mash

[NaveWeiss]

Mash was indeed an audience-free comedy, but it wasn't funny.. it was sad...........

Re:Mash

[jawtheshark]

It was funny in a sad way. Really, MASH is great... I laughed my ass off many times. I just might like black humour... After all, the classical definition of humour is "Laughing with a tear in your eye", or why did you think many clowns have a tear painted on their face?
Have you ever listened to the soundtrack of MASH? You should.... In the context it is very funny.