I saw some clips of Friends in which the laugh track had been edited out. Let me just say that this meme is well-justified.
I've mentioned this before and faced fierce pushback from friends fans. The laugh track causes such pacing issues it's so distracting.
I hate laugh tracks - but most of the show (as far as I can tell) is in front of a studio audience
Ah yeah, I believe they have a light that goes on that tells them when to laugh since the material isn't funny enough on its own 😂
That’s brutal. Not having known about the ‘applause’ light, I can see that because some of Phoebe’s jokes were so bad and the audience just cracks up…
That said, it’s still way better than ‘big bang theory’ with pre-recorded laugh that they drop whenever… like nails down a chalkboard
Idk it's pretty funny quit crushing my childhood
It's a live audience, not a laugh track.
It's still a laugh track. The laughing is captured live, but presumably with a different microphone. They then mix the laugh track with the character's voices to get the levels they want.
This but The Office
Good god that show sucks so much. Glad somebody finally said it. I thought the whole world had gone crazy. Their other show, Parks and Rec, was considerably more entertaining.
What did you think of Brooklyn 99 then?
I like Terry Crews, but Andy Samberg's mere appearance in the show ruins it for me, so I can't enjoy it. I don't know why people think he's funny.
I like how Steve Carell plays out Michael, and I enjoy Dwight as well. But the rest really is nothing special. The whole Jim and Pam story arc was more annoying than anything.
It is crazy how good Parcs & Rec is compared to the office.
Especially after they get married and they have to keep inventing Jim and Pam conflict to keep their arc “interesting”
I love parks and rec, because every character is interesting. The office has like 3 and a half good characters
Friends isn't funny, the office is like
Just dumb levels of cringe. Like so cringey no one would actually do that kind of thing, and I'm autistic. So it's so cringe I wouldn't do it. It's not even shitpost funny it's just
Humans being stupid?
Don't watch Curb Your Enthusiasm. It's purely cringe comedy with very little in the way of other humor. I personally like that style, and even I have to stick to a single episode in a sitting. There's something wrong with Larry David because he's said many episodes were based on things he really did.
It's way too uncanny to feel fun to me. I didn't like Carrell for a long time but it turns out he's a good actor, just got paired with a lot of unfunny material.
The Season 2 Christmas episode where Michael makes everyone play Yankee Swap and then gets them hammered to smooth things over is a classic. I'd say seasons 2-4 were good. Then it nosedived.
There's some merit in both simply by encapsulating a snapshot in technology.
Things like corded phones and answering machines or the lack of internet are interesting in how they impacted situations and culture.
Watching sitcoms from decades past through a modern lens is difficult.
Most 90s sitcoms haven't aged well at all. Multi-cam 3-wall sitcom in general don't. Single-cam higher quality production that aren't trying to replicate the old variety show live-theatre format have come around.
Sanford and Sons, Full House, and Cheers were really popular, but have aged poorly.
But things like MASH (especiallythe seasons after they dropped the laugh track), Arrested Development, and Scrubs have done really well because they didn't have an identity crisis between theatre and film.
MASH never had a laugh track. It was added in syndication and I believe the episodes, like Seinfeld, were sped up by small percentage to make them a couple minutes shorter.
I fully disagree with you though that there is no place left for classic sitcoms and that they haven’t aged well. While a little old still (but newer than Scrubs) I will refer to The IT Crowd as an example.
That's British TV. They make it work by averaging like 3 hours a year of programming to focus on quality. A single season of an American-style 3-wall sitcom has a longer runtime than most British sitcoms have in their entire run.
"Cheers" mostly aged well. Some misogyny and anti gay and trans jokes, but it is largely a show about people being kind to one another and building community.
Full House
My housemates played a practical joke on me back then where they were all watching Full House when I came home and rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically at everything. It was a scene where one of the Olsen twins had planted an M&M and was trying to grown an M&M tree. I was mystified at what was so funny until I grabbed the bong.
You can't just watch friends for the first time in 2025, it's a bad show. You can maybe rewatch for the nostalgia but the show was clever at its time and paved a lot of way for another sitcoms.
It's similar to breaking bad, if you are just watching for the first time you may not find it appealing, but it was great in 2008 and new shows took inspiration from Gillian's direction
Could I BE anymore of a paper-thin stereotype?
Why aren't you laughing? The laugh track specifically requested this time to laugh.
I rather watch The Expanse
True, I found Seinfeld way more interesting.
Friends was one of the dumbest shows my ex has ever made me watch. When she tried to make me watch Seinfeld, I knew it wasn't going to work out.
I genuinly enjoyed Seinfeld, although I don't think that it would be at my top three funniest TV shows. Friends however, I couldn't get into it.
Throw in The Office as well…
Sorry ill always love it, the writing is clever and hilarious.
Not sure why its polarizing. Its just a feel good show. Letterkenny is probably more polarizing but I also enjoy that.
I always found it immersion breaking that they lived in the massive place they did, and that was before I released it was set in New York of all cities. Like all sitcoms tended to gloss over money but Friends was just a step to far for me.
It’s been addressed in the show. Ross and Chandler have good jobs. Joey eventually gets a stable acting job but is usually short on cash. Monica’s apartment is illegally occupied and rent controlled from when her grandmother lived there.
That does not explain it at all, a "good" job?! It was like a 3000 sq feet apartment in new York, where they astronaut stripper day trading porn stars?!
Also many of the plot directions don't work if they have access to money (hell you did not even touch on Phoebe). I get that it was TV and they needed good shots but at least Fraser made some sense with it.
you clearly didn't watch the show. they riff on this all the time. there are multiple episodes on this topic.
The apartments were like 1500sqft. It’s not really that difficult especially at that time.
Phoebe was a masseuse but also constantly had money issues.
My partner has been rewatching the show and from that parts I’ve seen it hasn’t really aged well.
Is this Stargate??
The Mummy
This is a crossover I didn't know I wanted until now.
That was a nice serie, in the 1990s...
HA HA HA HA Ross!!!
It's aged not so well.
When friends first went on the air, I remember being puzzled. The name was super lame, the episodes weren't funny but people loved it.
I was too young to understand that if you're good looking enough, everything you do is funny.
Friends is just a big American dog scooting it's butt across the carpet of comedy.
That show is like basic b and bro indoctrination propaganda
It was in the 90s. Then somewhere in the early 2000s somebody came up with the idea to write a sitcom, that the audience laughs at instead of the laugh track.
Memes for the masses, chuckles for the chosen.
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