The magic of ABC's Wednesday night line-up in 2009 was that The Middle, Modern Family, and Cougar Town were good sit coms THAT
USED NO LAUGH TRACK. I just don't know how often comedy shows don't use laugh tracks at all, so the premiere of ABC's 2009 two hour Wednesday BLOCK of entertaining comedy programming, that used no laugh tracks, may have been a first in prime time television programming history.
If I were a producer on any of the three already established comedy shows, I would be in tears, and very very angry, that ABC in 2010 has now infected the one night of television where comedy ruled without a laugh track, with a show ironically called, "Better with You", and its bitingly bad laugh track.
Other than "Friends" sometimes over doing their laugh tracks, a laugh track on a good sit com has never really bothered me. Two of the greatest sit com's of all time, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond, used laugh tracks (although both shows do amazing jobs with their musical riffs that guide us through every episode). However, once ABC created a classic comedy night with no laugh tracks, to now infect that night with a new sit come that does use laugh tracks, grated on me IMMEDIATELY.
It felt as if someone had sent electrical shocks through me the very FIRST TIME I heard the laugh track on "Better without You". And what is even sadder is, I am pretty sure that there will be MILLIONS OF POTENTIAL VIEWERS who may be negatively yet subliminally affected by the contrast of having one out of the four back to back comedy shows using a laugh track, while the other three established comedy shows do not.
Hopefully I'll remember to switch back to ABC for Modern Family and Cougar Town.
I am stunned at ABC prime time programming. Lets ABC to the list of corporations that could use old fashioned AlexLOGIC when it comes to the easy stuff.
info at alexlogic.com
You can also view more
commercial critiques
by Alessandro Machi at
No comments:
Post a Comment