Laughtracks

Okay, this is going to be weird. Not at all to do with Vs. Or comics. Though it does make me want to create a supervillain named Laugh Track. I don't know what he'd do yet. But he should exist.

Because laugh tracks are evil.

Now, my roommates and myself recently marathoned the West Wing. All seven seasons. Under 14 weeks. It was insane, but except for season 5, it was one of the best TV shows I've ever seen. It was just...crazy good. So, we went out and rented Charlie Wilson's War, which was pretty good. Then we realized that there were two TV shows Aaron Sorkin wrote that we'd never seen before. Studio 60, and Sports Night.

Our library didn't have Studio 60, so we checked out Sports Night, and pretty quickly fell back into the flow of Aaron Sorkin's excellent dialogue. The show was a little...campy, a little cheesy. It was obviously a late-90s comedy in some of the pacing (though, as the show goes on, it gets better), but what really killed it for us was the laugh track.

Okay, maybe it's just us, but...laugh tracks make us feel dirty. Maybe we've just outgrown them, maybe it's just the mood we're in, but I've noticed that I have trouble laughing at a joke if the laugh track laughs. If the laugh track laughs, whatever just happened becomes less funny. Because they TOLD me it was funny, I find it less funny. It's funny when I'm "in on it", but when I'm in on it and then they tell everyone else "Hey - c'mon in!", it feels less like it's a private joke between friends and more like it's a really obviously set-up public conversation

So, just to let you know between all of you and myself - if you ever make a TV show, I'll gladly watch it.

But it better not have a laugh track.

Or I'll find you.

Back to VS stuff soon enough. I'm in a little bit of a lull with so much time since DCL, but I'll come up with something clever. It's just what I do.