I actually caught a few minutes of Fox News' supposed answer to the Daily Show, the "1/2 Hour Comedy Hour" (you can see clips here). First off, as you can tell, it's incredibly not funny. So far from funny that funny isn't even in sight. Even conservatives, apparently, are trashing it.
Now you might say, well Paul, you're just a soft-headed liberal, so you wouldn't laugh at conservative humor no matter how good it was. Maybe. But I think even Fox knows how unfunny it is. How do I know? The laugh track.
The laugh track on "The 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour" is about as in-your-face as it gets, so ridiculously over the top that it's almost the only thing about the show that is funny. As far as the laugh track is concerned, every joke on the show, no matter how lame, is just about the funniest thing it's ever heard.
But why would you need a laugh track at all? The Daily Show doesn't need one - they have a studio audience who laughs at the jokes. But "The 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour" has a studio audience, too. If they were laughing, you wouldn't need a laugh track. But they obviously aren't.
3 comments:
Hey, thanks for bringing us Gadflyer. I guess I'll catch you over here now.
I could be wrong, but I don't think that show really had a studio audience. They showed one during the pan-in, but I think that was a pre-recorded thing and didn't represent a real audience. I think it was just a trick to make people think the laughtrack was legitimate.
I once made a sitcom-parody with a really bad laughtrack that laughed at all the wrong moments. That Fox show reminded me a lot of that.
Oh hey, if you're thinking that your blogroll seems to be lacking an unconventional blogger with a bionic brain and analytical skills to beat the band, then we're in agreement. You should probably do something about that.
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