Dear Laugh Track,

Why do you taunt me, ever so strategically placed between horribly written and executed lines of dialogue? Actually, to call your placement "strategic" is giving you far too much credit, since your existence is more predictable and formulaic than even the most basic episode of 'Saved By The Bell.'

And yes, I realize the irony of referring to a show that relies heavily on your particular form of the dark arts in order to expose you for your evils, Laugh Track. Yet, you continue to insult your audiences on all the major networks with your pandering, your cheesy repartee.

Laugh tracks always amaze me. Just what kind of easily-amused simpletons do the networks hire to laugh at crappy sitcoms? I imagine it does something like this. A bunch of actors are wrangled into a studio and are told to pretend to be an interested audience. They are each given a secret dose of thorazine through a hidden syringe in their seats. Nitrous oxide is pumped into the studio. And just before the curtain goes up, they are each whacked across the face with a cast-iron shovel. Then they turn on the applause sign.

College Humor has taken this weird TV tradition and turned it on its head by providing a "groan track" to CBS' neverending sitcom 'Two-and-a-Half Men'.

I love seeing TV shows and movies with something taken away from them. Even comic strips, as 'Garfield Minus Garfield' shows, can become completely different when seen in a different context.

This video is a scene from 'The Big Bang Theory' with the laugh track taken out. It gives you a little hint as to what a show with a big laugh track is like with the laughs taken out. Without the laughs (and the build up to them), the lines suddenly seem more...intense and weighty (I guess it doesn't help that you don't know what came before this scene if you haven't seen it before).

[via Pop Candy]

One of the big things on the web now is taking dramatic TV shows and giving them a laugh track. You can probably do this with a lot of dramas (depending on what you find funny), but this is one below is centered on the eating establishment in True Blood and, as New York says, makes the show seem like Alice.

Early to rise...early to bed...

Looking at this clip, I noticed that someone first posted it on YouTube back in 2006. So some of you might have seen it already. But as NBC used to say about their repeats, "if you haven't seen it, it's new to you!" What if The Wire had the laugh track from Married ... with Children? Wonder no more.

Laugh tracks can be so inappropriate.(NSFW)