Sunday, January 22, 2006
Adventures in the Obsolete Vol. 1: The Laugh Track
posted by RICK : 12:45 PM
Some things never seem to die, even when everyone knows they serve no purpose in modern society-- like "two guitars." Adventures in the Obsolete hopes to examine these immortal phenomena.
Up first: The Laugh Track.
The other day I downloaded the first season of "I'm Alan Partridge," the BBC series starring Steve Coogan about the titular talk show host and his lovely cluelessness. I was quite pumped about seeing this as I find Coogan to be pretty great in whatever I've seen him in (covering most of what he's done on this side of the pond-- which I've read isn't so much a "pond" as it is the "world's second largest ocean"). I wanted to get a sense of his more famous roles in Britian before I see "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story." The movie sounds completely crazy (not Bubble-crazy, just normal-crazy). I suspect the movie will have some referrences to Mr. Coogan's series. I'd like to 'get' those.
ANYWAY.
I load the first episode and without a beat its off and running. I'm loving it:Alan Partridge (sitting behind an audio board at a radio station): That was Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, a song in which Joni complains they 'Paved paradise to put up a parking lot', a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion on the outskirts of paradise, something which Joni singularly fails to point out, perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in with her blinkered view of the world. Nevertheless, nice song.
Unfortunately, as soon as the words begin to come out of his mouth you start to hear the slow fill of audience laughter. An audience that is CLEARLY no where near the set and laughing in a way that suggests getting hit in the groin with a football more than subtle character quirks.
I watched the show for about 3 more minutes before turning it off in disgust. The laugh track killed what was shaping up to be a brilliant show. I'm not even sure I can go back and finish the first episode let alone the remaining 5.
Early in the evolution of sound in cinema, people thought that putting music on the soundtrack would confuse the audience-- they suspected the viewer wouldn't understand that the music wasn't suppose to be IN the scene, but instead used to enhance the scene. Whoever "they" were, they were clearly wrong. One could even take it a step further and argue that it's a safe bet that most people's favorite moments in movies involve a song being played over the soundtrack. What's funny is this argument seems to have never been made for the laugh track on television.
Its origins are acceptable. Radio plays were done in a theater in front of an actual audience; the listeners at home could hear that. Obviously it made perfect sense to port that to television, but they also brought the audience with them. The situation-comedy, in its most pure form, shouldn't be anything more than a short play acted in front of people-- and then rebroadcast. That is why the best all-time sitcoms relied on great characters and few sets. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" rarely felt the need to show Rob Petri anywhere besides his living room and his office. Even better would be "Cheers" which is almost entirely shot in the bar. THAT's a sit-com, and the laugh track isn't only acceptable, but its expected. Of course, that type of program isn't made anymore. A big reason why I quit watching "How I Met Your Mother" was they simply had too many sets, and yet wouldn't give up the 3-camera crutch. It's comedy also relies partially on the editing process-- something that is impossible for a live studio audience to respond to. I guess we can blame "Seinfeld," the last great laugh-track show. They broke the "set" rules but were able to make it work because the writing and acting were so damn strong.
But the moral of the story stays the same: the laugh track is dead. We're smarter audiences these days (even the morons are smarter), and we don't need to be pandered to-- well, maybe a little pandering. There are more than enough shows without the track completely accepted by the masses, and yet we're still adding laughs. Why?
Probably laziness. That seems like a good go-to excuse for most things in life, yeah? I'll say!
When you're working with something that is obsolete, you eventually have to suck it up and grasp onto the new technology whether you like it or not. When will this happen? Lord knows, but I suspect it will happen around the same time people start getting most of their programming from the likes of Google and iTunes. So 2008. Until then...
Some things never seem to die, even when everyone knows they serve no purpose in modern society-- like "two guitars." Adventures in the Obsolete hopes to examine these immortal phenomena.Up first: The Laugh Track.
The other day I downloaded the first season of "I'm Alan Partridge," the BBC series starring Steve Coogan about the titular talk show host and his lovely cluelessness. I was quite pumped about seeing this as I find Coogan to be pretty great in whatever I've seen him in (covering most of what he's done on this side of the pond-- which I've read isn't so much a "pond" as it is the "world's second largest ocean"). I wanted to get a sense of his more famous roles in Britian before I see "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story." The movie sounds completely crazy (not Bubble-crazy, just normal-crazy). I suspect the movie will have some referrences to Mr. Coogan's series. I'd like to 'get' those.
ANYWAY.
I load the first episode and without a beat its off and running. I'm loving it:
Alan Partridge (sitting behind an audio board at a radio station): That was Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell, a song in which Joni complains they 'Paved paradise to put up a parking lot', a measure which actually would have alleviated traffic congestion on the outskirts of paradise, something which Joni singularly fails to point out, perhaps because it doesn't quite fit in with her blinkered view of the world. Nevertheless, nice song.Unfortunately, as soon as the words begin to come out of his mouth you start to hear the slow fill of audience laughter. An audience that is CLEARLY no where near the set and laughing in a way that suggests getting hit in the groin with a football more than subtle character quirks.
I watched the show for about 3 more minutes before turning it off in disgust. The laugh track killed what was shaping up to be a brilliant show. I'm not even sure I can go back and finish the first episode let alone the remaining 5.
Early in the evolution of sound in cinema, people thought that putting music on the soundtrack would confuse the audience-- they suspected the viewer wouldn't understand that the music wasn't suppose to be IN the scene, but instead used to enhance the scene. Whoever "they" were, they were clearly wrong. One could even take it a step further and argue that it's a safe bet that most people's favorite moments in movies involve a song being played over the soundtrack. What's funny is this argument seems to have never been made for the laugh track on television.
Its origins are acceptable. Radio plays were done in a theater in front of an actual audience; the listeners at home could hear that. Obviously it made perfect sense to port that to television, but they also brought the audience with them. The situation-comedy, in its most pure form, shouldn't be anything more than a short play acted in front of people-- and then rebroadcast. That is why the best all-time sitcoms relied on great characters and few sets. "The Dick Van Dyke Show" rarely felt the need to show Rob Petri anywhere besides his living room and his office. Even better would be "Cheers" which is almost entirely shot in the bar. THAT's a sit-com, and the laugh track isn't only acceptable, but its expected. Of course, that type of program isn't made anymore. A big reason why I quit watching "How I Met Your Mother" was they simply had too many sets, and yet wouldn't give up the 3-camera crutch. It's comedy also relies partially on the editing process-- something that is impossible for a live studio audience to respond to. I guess we can blame "Seinfeld," the last great laugh-track show. They broke the "set" rules but were able to make it work because the writing and acting were so damn strong.
But the moral of the story stays the same: the laugh track is dead. We're smarter audiences these days (even the morons are smarter), and we don't need to be pandered to-- well, maybe a little pandering. There are more than enough shows without the track completely accepted by the masses, and yet we're still adding laughs. Why?
Probably laziness. That seems like a good go-to excuse for most things in life, yeah? I'll say!
When you're working with something that is obsolete, you eventually have to suck it up and grasp onto the new technology whether you like it or not. When will this happen? Lord knows, but I suspect it will happen around the same time people start getting most of their programming from the likes of Google and iTunes. So 2008. Until then...
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-Rick
(co-creator)
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