Canned
What exactly is the point of canned laughter? You know what I'm referring to. You hear it mostly in sitcoms — one of the characters cracks a funny line, and you get a pre-recorded laugh track. It's like a cue that whatever line was just delivered was supposed to have been funny, and you should now laugh.
I just don't get the point. Are viewers too dumb to figure out when something was supposed to be funny? I'd just think that if you have to cue your audience to laugh, you're defeating the purpose. No? Why is it necessary to inform your viewers that your joke is funny? If it really is funny, they should laugh on their own.
Right now I have the distinct pleasure of hearing my roommate and his girlfriend watching a season of “That 70s Show” in the living room downstairs. This show has quite possibly the most canned laughter of any show I've ever come across. As I'm listening, I've been keeping track of just how often I hear the laugh track. It's literally every other line. Every… other… line. For every two lines of dialogue, at least one of them is guaranteed to be accompanied by fake laughter. Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?
There aren't laugh tracks in movies. In movies, if a joke isn't funny, people don't laugh. We're not told that we should be laughing, we don't get a pre-recorded studio audience laughing, we get nothing but the joke itself. Why is it different for TV? Seriously… I'm getting sick of hearing canned laughter.
I'm not laughing.