I Know when to laugh: Gauging the need for a laugh track

Before I being, some background: I had a little to drink tonight and started typing. Instead of softening my points by proofreading (aka, I'm lazy), I'm posting this as raw as I can. Sorry if any typos snuck by me.


I may only be...carry the 2...24, but I think it is safe to say that I have watched a lot of TV. Without a doubt, my favorite type of show to watch is the sitcom. Frankly, I don't see why anyone would choose anything over the potential to laugh. Laughing at a good joke is perhaps the greatest feeling I have, period. I can't give a damn about reality TV. I enjoy a good dramatic series. But, 10 times out of 10, I am going to give a new comedy series a chance over any other unknown quantity on TV.
People that know me could call me a harsh critic when it comes to comedies. Personally, I think I am pretty easy to please, but I'm quick to recognize lazy writing (All I want is for the joke to fit the character or the world. Is that so much to ask for?).
In the past decade or so, the television comedy has made a dramatic shift. Virtually since it's inception, there has been the laugh track on comedy series, and it has been going away, slowly, but dramatically.

Before I go about examining things too closely, I think I should make my opinion clear. I hate the laugh track.
It is insulting. To both the people making the show and the people watching it, the laugh track is insulting. You don't add gasps and groans to a drama series. The assumptions is that the audience knows how to respond. They are smart enough to interpret what they see. Audiences haven't just become more mature. They have always kept the audience out of dramas. Comedies have never been given the respect.
I say it is just as hard to make someone laugh [sincerely] as it is to make someone cry. There is this misguided understanding that comedy is easy. If that was true, then TV schedules would be filled with more than a night (possibly two) of comedies per network.
The laugh track is insulting and only serves to mask that which otherwise would not generate an honest laugh.

In the early days of TV, when sweetening (Verb: adding laugh track to amplify or create laughter for a live audience) was first introduced, many comedians with past careers legitimately relying on audience laughter balked at the though of adding in laughter. The opinions was "if it's funny, they will laugh. Why should we tell them when to laugh?" I love these men and women and wish they would've been listened to.
Sadly, they were ignored for decades. Show after show was produced with added laughter. I'm talking about TV classics. I Love Lucy, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, Cheers, Seinfeld. There are a lot of very funny shows with laugh tracks. Some of my favorite shows of all time, in fact. I'll even admit that I don't know how well they would've worked without the added laughs.
I've always been aware of it though. Even as a young child, when  Jaleel White as Steve Urkel or Christina Applegate as Kelly Bundy walked into a scene and all conversation and action was paused as the audience applauded or woohed, I felt jipped. I knew I was being played to. These interactions could never play out as they do on the show. There is no pause for laughter in real life.
Yeah, there's a good chance I was too sophisticated a TV watcher as a kid (people who knew me then would disagree). I know I enjoyed jokes on Seinfeld when I was 10. Going back, there's episodes of Frasier and Cheers that I would rank among the funnies 22 minutes in history. The laugh track added nothing to this.
The first time I ever laughed uncontrollably at a TV show, I don't know the exact episode, but I know the show: Malcolm in the Middle. It's still perhaps my favorite show of all time. My other favorite show at the turn of the millennium: Scrubs.
There were other out there at the time. Sex and the City  was a massive success. The Larry Sanders Show had come and gone without me ever knowing about it. On Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin fought the use of the laugh track valiantly, even if the show didn't last. And, you can't ignore something like the Simpsons avoiding the laugh track which past animated series (The Flinstones anyone?) couldn't.
For me, I zeroed in on Malcolm in the Middle and Scrubs. I loved those shows a lot more than anything else on TV. It wasn't a conscious choice rebuking the sitcom establishment. In 2001, I was 14 and too busy battling with unwelcome erections to have any philosophic causes. I just liked those shows. After a while though, I noticed that neither show had a laugh track in a time when most shows did. I started to wonder about that.
Malcolm in the Middle is a brilliant show. It would've never worked with a laugh track. It's brilliance was in the big laugh. At the end of any given episode, even if I didn't laugh much in the fist 20 minutes,  the enjoyment in the third act was greater than any other TV show could offer.
With Scrubs, I didn't leave every episode laughing. There were funny moments in every episode, but sometimes it didn't want you to go away laughing. Sometimes it hit you in the gut, and having an audience saying "awwww" would've cheapened that.
From then, I was hooked. I could still like Friends and Frasier, but I always felt I was being pandered to. I was liberated from the fetters of being laughed at and loved it.
Slowly more and more shows popped up ignoring the need for forced laughter. It seemed to start with USA introducing the comedic procedural with shows like Monk, then Psych. Fox experimented with Arrested Development. ABC had Desperate Housewives. NBC recreated The Office for America. HBO never toyed with sweetings. To this day, I think Lucky Louie is the only show they've ever made that featured a laugh track. Unsurprisingly, CBS was the only one not to switch.

It wasn't until abut two years ago that I learned what was meant by Single-Camera and Multi-Camera. Ostensibly, they are just two styles, but they work better for sans-laugh track and with laugh track respectably. Since they aren't relying on an audience reaction, shows without the laugh track can make the shot they want. whereas the laugh track shows pick from the best of the three or four shots of the scene they have.
Single camera is the way all dramas are shot. Try shooting a muti camera drama and you will understand the kind of handicap sitcoms have been working with all these years. Can you imagine Law and Order shot in front of a live studio audience? I can't either, and that's why Seinfeld will still be watched in 20 years. To be that good despite the laugh track is a herculean feat.

Here is what worries me. Since 2006, only 5 of the 34 nominees for the Outstanding Comedy Series  Emmy have been multi-camera comedies (All CBS by the way) and any series that people say has been snubbed in those years (Parks & Rec. till this past year, Community, It's Always Sunny, Louie) are single-camera series. It is not even an opinion, but a fact to say that the best comedy series do not have the laugh track. They trust their audience to know when something is funny. These series appreciate the need for the slow build. An episode that is 2/3s without laughter can have the funniest moments and be most appreciated by it's audience.
The problem is, the multi-camera series still kicks ass. This year's biggest comedies so far: New Girl, sure, but then you have 2 Broke Girls and Whitney. Most successful show from last year: Mike and Molly. The highest rated comedies right now include Modern Family (which gives hope for the future), but after that, Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men reign supreme. NBC's Thursday lineup, which is the strongest comedy lineup in the history of television (not hyperbole. I honestly believe Community, Parks and Rec, The Office, and 30 Rock is as strong as you will EVER see) is a solid 4th in the ratings, closer to the CW than CBS.
I sure hope the masses are just slow to respond and not preferring bad taste, because if this current trend in comedy is just that, a trend, and 10 years from now NBC is premiering Cheers 2020, full of unnatural pauses for people to laugh which would never exist in real life and an online vote on how loudly the audience should laugh after a given joke, I will be very disappointed.