> This is “Friends” summed up... the canned laughter
Are you not aware that the show was filmed before a live audience? Watch how the actors pause between lines - they're actually waiting for the crowd to finish laughing. And that's the case for most sitcoms from the previous century.
It might not be your kind of humor. But real audiences found the show funny enough to laugh so long and hard, when they were under no obligation to do so, that the actors had to have unnaturally long pauses between their lines.
Many modern internet commenters have a misguided tendency to automatically dismiss any show with a laugh track as inferior. FWIW I think Friends was a great show for most of its run, with top-notch comic writing, within the constraints of the medium at the time. Sitcoms were nearly always single-camera format, and shot in a studio with a live audience. The storylines had to be accessible to casual watchers. The shows lived and died by weekly ratings, and needed to have ad breaks at specific times, which also influenced the writing, casting, and pacing.
Just to show you that I'm not swayed by mere laugh tracks and longevity, let me also announce that anything made by Chuck Lorre is absolute drivel.
Are you not aware that the show was filmed before a live audience? Watch how the actors pause between lines - they're actually waiting for the crowd to finish laughing. And that's the case for most sitcoms from the previous century.
It might not be your kind of humor. But real audiences found the show funny enough to laugh so long and hard, when they were under no obligation to do so, that the actors had to have unnaturally long pauses between their lines.
Many modern internet commenters have a misguided tendency to automatically dismiss any show with a laugh track as inferior. FWIW I think Friends was a great show for most of its run, with top-notch comic writing, within the constraints of the medium at the time. Sitcoms were nearly always single-camera format, and shot in a studio with a live audience. The storylines had to be accessible to casual watchers. The shows lived and died by weekly ratings, and needed to have ad breaks at specific times, which also influenced the writing, casting, and pacing.
Just to show you that I'm not swayed by mere laugh tracks and longevity, let me also announce that anything made by Chuck Lorre is absolute drivel.