Television Digressions

By Orion Walker

September 16, 2002

Sometimes a laugh track kicking in on an unfunny joke before the credits even roll is really all you need to know about a show. No, make that always.

Memo to sitcom producers: The laugh track is a phenomenon that simply can no longer be used outside of an ironic context. To employ it straight-facedly in this day and age is to immediately signal your creative bankruptcy, to telegraph your lack of artistic credibility in the most aggressive manner possible.

I knew Family Affair would suck balls - as I've been repeating since Congo, "Tim Curry must be stopped!" - but even I did not think so harshly of the WB to anticipate they would use a laugh track on a single-camera show.

At least 3-camera shows can be legitimately "filmed before a live studio audience" - still sickeningly sweetened, of course, but at least they give your mind a way to explain the non-digetic tittering. In a single-camera show they're simply phantom laughs from beyond infinity. It feels as normal and unforced as if you were to hear disembodied laughing voices in, say, your actual life. You'd think you were going insane, and rightly so.

So, if you aren't already crazy upon tuning to Family Affair, rest assured it will make you crazy within moments of doing so.

The show is about a butler whose Smithers-like homosexual fixation on his boss is interrupted when two bad-even-for-bad-kid-actors move in. At least, two was the count by the time I gave up watching.

It's too bad Gary Cole doesn't rake in enough dough from voice work on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and Kim Possible that he wouldn't have to take this gig. But then, why am I giving Gary Cole the benefit of the doubt? He was the Midnight Caller for crissakes. He's lucky to get offered leading roles nowadays. Probably jumped at the chance, he did. That's why they keep actors starving, you see - so they don't have the luxury on deciding en masse not to be in stuff that sucks. Of course, if you're rich and you still make crap, what's your excuse?

In closing, and apropos of nothing, I have two zeitgeist declarations to make. One, as evidenced by that new Nickelodeon spot with the kids tussling – make that wire-tussling – over the remote control, we are as a nation ready for more Matrix movies. If the signature slo-mo camera moves got a little cliched circa Shrek and Scary Movie, this commercial demonstrates impressively what a difference the right tone (and a little originality) makes.

And secondly, now that we've all been yeah baby yeah-ed to death, isn't it time to bring back shwing?

-- OW!