Tue, October 17, 2006

Arksie wrote a nice column last week in defense of the sitcom laugh track – or, more accurately, reprimanding those who bitch about laugh tracks. As someone who does that quite often, I should probably respond. On the face of it, he's absolutely right: his point is that the laugh track itself is not a bad thing, and that's true. However, in my case I'm using the laugh track to refer to the writing style of the shows that use a laugh track – employing a cute little device called synecdoche, which basically means using part of an idea to refer to the whole idea. I can't speak for Mr. Hoff, but when I read his post, it sounds to me like he's doing the same thing.

Certainly the sound of people laughing isn't going to make a great sitcom suck. However, the type of sitcom that employs a laugh track? Is strangling television. As Mr. Arksie points out, the real difference is that between "single-camera sitcoms" and "multi-camera sitcoms" – those which film more like movies and those which film quasi-live in front of a studio audience. Rather than getting into that whole distinction every time I talk about sitcoms, I shorten it to the most identifiable trait. Certainly onebee's core readership is savvy to the whole "single-camera" concept, but a lot of TV viewers don't really know what that means. They probably realize Earl feels different from Reba, but they may not notice exactly how the cinematography differs. But you can be sure they notice which one has a laugh track and which doesn't.

Two things are at play with the multi-camera/studio-audience/laugh-track sitcom: one, I don't trust audiences; and two, I don't like the way they affect the writing of those shows. Watching comedy (sitcom, stand-up, or movie) is always funnier with a group of friends. However, watching a movie with a group of strangers has become an unbearable chore. Fortunately, sitcom laugh tracks have not begun incorporating cell phone conversations, loud popcorn chomping, or crying babies – but I think my qualms about sitting in an audience have carried over and now I'm eyeing sitcom audiences skeptically. (Having first-hand knowledge of how these people are recruited, they definitely don't represent people I want to watch TV with.) More important, though, is the way a studio-audience show is written. Writers avoid surprising or challenging the live audience, because if they're not following along, then the laugh track suffers. So they stick to tired, conventional setups and interchangeable jokes along the same lines (setup/punch line, pratfall, sight gag) we've seen a million times.

There's an old but fascinating profile of Simpsons writer George Meyer – one of the great ones – which will tell you how to think about almost any topic. On the topic of sitcoms:

I asked him why TV comedies changed. "One of the main reasons," he said, "is the tyranny of live studio audiences, which I think have ruined television comedy. 'Leave It to Beaver,' unlike most sitcoms today, was not taped in front of a live audience. If that show were in production now and Beaver made some kind of gentle, sweet remark about his collection of rocks, or whatever, that line wouldn't get a laugh from the audience during rehearsal, and it would be cut. With a live audience, you always end up with hard-edged lines that the audience knows are jokes. Audiences hate it when they have to figure out whether something is funny or not – I think because people have an anxiety about laughing in the wrong place, almost like a fear of speaking in public. That's why the biggest comedy stars tend to be people like Robin Williams and Jim Carrey, because audiences never have to guess when they're trying to be funny It's the same as the phenomenon of seeing a joke in a movie trailer. A lot of times, a movie's biggest jokes will be in its trailer, so you may see those jokes five or six times before you see the movie. Then you go to the movie itself, and you think, Oh, no, here comes that joke from the trailer-I guess nobody is going to laugh at it, because it's all played out. Wrong. That joke gets the biggest laugh, like a nuclear blast."

I clumsily attempted to address this in The State of TV Comedy, and I kind of fumbled it. The point is, good sitcoms are good; bad sitcoms are bad, and increasingly common. More of the bad ones have a laugh track and an audience, so it's kind of a shorthand way to identify a show that could be trouble. Certainly, the occasional studio-audience show rises above all this – but it's getting rarer and rarer.

By way of example, let's compare the two sitcoms that premiered this week.

30 Rock

NBC, Wednesdays at 8:00

Tina Fey does a lot of different comedy well, and it really comes across in her new show – a behind the scenes look at a comedy/variety show called "The Girlie Show." There are silly moments, and character moments, and observational moments á la Seinfeld. She and Alec Baldwin are spot-on hilarious throughout the show – are they ever not? – and Tracy Morgan is pretty good (as Martin Lawrence-style wild-man comic Tracy Jordan), but he only gets to play one thing: crazy, non-sequitur spouting black dude. We'll see more range from him this week, I'm sure.

The show is at its best when it's depicting the madcap collision of all these nutty characters, frantically scrambling to get the show done despite all sorts of complications. When it's about Tina's smoldering frustration at having her show spontaneously "retooled" by Baldwin's character, it misses the mark a little. The rhythm and the laughs slow down. I think that's just how the show is going to be, and that's okay. I still like it a lot. The show is very funny, and I think the ability to do hand-held camerawork, tight editing, and throwaway lines without having to wait for the studio audience laughter to die down are all key factors.

Twenty Good Years

NBC, Wednesdays at 8:30

Ironically, this show begins with a laugh track over a brief on-location single-camera scene. This is fairly common practice for multi-camera sitcoms, but it's more jarring than usual because it's the very first scene, and it's also shot hand-held. Shows like Frasier did the occasional remote scene, but I think staging it like a studio scene made a big difference. Anyway, this one scene will not make or break the show – I just thought it was a nice coincidence given this week's topic.

This show has one of those goofy "premise" backbones that I think are absurd. I don't see how they can maintain the idea of living every second to the fullest within a sitcom framework. Sitcoms are about scenes in people's living rooms (just like the scenes in this pilot) – are we going to follow them around the globe on wacky adventures? Seems unlikely. Maybe their version of "fullest" is opening a home business.

The writing is pretty much what you'd expect, mostly hacky and plodding, with the occasional good laugh. The real reason to watch the show is John Lithgow. In comedy, he seems to polarize people – some see a scenery-chewing madman where I see hilarious hyperbole. If you liked him in 3rd Rock from the Sun, you'll like him here – he's just as boisterously pompous. If you didn't, be warned. Unfortunately, Jeffrey Tambor is not used to his best abilities. He plays quiet, weird moments well, and his character is meant as a foil to Lithgow's bluster, so it would seem natural to have him do that. Instead they have him sort of whiny and stodgy. It seems like someone was afraid if Tambor played really quiet, he would be overshadowed by Lithgow. But both are smart enough comic actors to avoid letting that happen. It would've been better than the character as written – basically an interchangeable sitcom geezer.

I was not a regular 3rd Rock viewer, but I liked it more than most – I'll probably watch Twenty Good Years on the same schedule, every so often for a little Lithgow fix.

A couple of scenes also reminded me of another studio audience problem: the scene "button." A character delivers the last laugh line of a scene, and then all the actors have to stand still, making "reaction faces" while we wait for the laughter to die down, the music to fade up, and the establishing shot to carry us to the next scene. It's uncomfortable and weird, and it wastes valuable seconds where we could be watching comedy!

I probably should not also address this line from Mr. Arksie's article:

"Studio 60" just isn't turning out to be that great a show unless you're convinced we're all living in Salem, Massachusetts

But I'm always baiting you people on this site, so it stands to reason that I should occasionally be baited myself. This is a valid criticism of Studio 60 – and we all know how much I hate those!

Certainly we don't live in Salem. (Well, 40,000 of us do, but it's changed a lot these days.) Sorkin has stated that one of his goals with the show is to take on "culture war" issues and, while I agree with him that religion is the most serious and threatening front of the culture war, there are many others as well. Continuing to sound the same note is only going to alienate people and make him seem like a whiny hack. (I cringe whenever Christianity is brought up on Studio 60, and not the usual cringe I have for Christianity.) If Sorkin can't open the show up to other perspectives on the culture war and its effect on television, he'll fail to accomplish the most important objective – reaching those who disagree with him on the religious issue, but might see his point if he frames the debate another way. To return to Mr. Arksie's Salem example, Arthur Miller told a story about a controversial contemporary issue by framing it in a way people could agree upon. If Sorkin doesn't change tacks occasionally, he'll only be preaching to the converted. (As a member of that group, that's fine by me, but I don't think that's what he wants.)

Regardless, the show has the best writing and the best cast on television. Even if I occasionally have to wince at the stories he chooses to tell, I still enjoy the show very much. It's not perfect, but it would absolutely top my list of new shows this season. The only other show that even comes close is Heroes, but that's still a little too patchy for me to give it the top slot.

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