I think we are currently living in the best era television has ever known. Not only that, but I would venture that TV has eclipsed cinema as not only the preeminent mass-media format, but the preeminent artistic format, as well. "Breaking Bad" convinced me of this (although there could be convincing cases made for earlier shows). I remember sitting in my house feeling my rear end go to sleep from literally sitting on the edge of my seat, barely being able to blink and crying out in catharsis as the show ratcheted the tension higher and higher. I had never seen anything like it on TV. Season One was, essentially, a 7-hour feature film presented in hour-long segments. Season Two was a 13-hour feature film, and so on. It was territory Hollywood wouldn't have dared tread. The media tides had changed.
I read just this morning that there is a forthcoming remake of Stephen King's classic novel, "It" being planned as a single, two-hour feature film. A two-hour feature film to encapsulate 1,138 hardcover pages of classic horror? I was immediately disappointed and incredulous. Stupid Hollywood! But if I had heard HBO had plans to turn the novel into a one-off season, say, eight or nine episodes, I would have barely been able to contain my excitement. And that is a perfect example of where TV has the competitive edge. Few people want to sit in a theater for 9 hours to watch a single movie, but TV segments that length in such a way that it becomes easily digestible. And with production values that rival the best Hollywood has to offer.
It has been exciting to watch all of these shows during the last several years that have rewritten the rules of what TV can be. It's okay for shows to create story arcs that last across a season (or even an entire series). Seinfeld was the first show I remember watching where I noticed the slate wasn't wiped clean at the end of every episode. If Jerry started dating someone in one episode, he would still be dating them in the next episode. Maybe even the one after that. Eventually, the relationship would implode, but it seemed to happen naturally, in real time. 30 Rock was the first sitcom I remember that was so packed with jokes and gags it didn't have space for a laugh track. This was revolutionary. Could it be that a sitcom was actually trusting me to know what was funny and when I should laugh? The laugh track was so ubiquitous that it was even featured on cartoons! Scooby Doo was filmed before a live, studio audience. Wait - huh?
Of course, today I couldn't think of a show that still uses a laugh track. That's where we are right now. Years down the road, perhaps the laugh track will make a return. As tired as I was of the laugh track and as welcome as its demise was, it was part of the fabric of television, and comforting in a way. Slipping into an old show that follows the letter of those antiquated rules is like slipping on your favorite pair of shoes. Not too exciting, and with no surprises left to offer, but soothing in their sheer familiarity.
I have been delighted over the past several months that a few local networks have added subsidiary channels that feature nothing but classic TV. I have enjoyed becoming reacquainted with old favorites, and experiencing many shows for the first time. They all follow the classic mold - stories begin and wrap up neatly within one episode, characters remain relatively steady, and all the sitcoms use laugh tracks. You tune in and you know what you are going to get.
One of the "new" discoveries I have made when exploring the offerings of these channels is a sitcom called "Hazel," which originally aired from 1961-1966. The show is about a sassy, earthy, simple housekeeper ("domestic engineer") named Hazel Burke and the family she lives with/works for, the Baxters. The first season was filmed in black and white, and subsequent seasons were filmed in color.
I had been watching the first season for a few weeks, and suddenly one morning I tuned in to find that the show was in color. The network had progressed into broadcasting Season Two. Aside from the glaring, saturated early color of the show, I noticed something else was different about Season Two. It took me a while to realize what it was, but when I did I couldn't believe it. The show no longer featured a laugh track! It hadn't suddenly switched formats - it was still the same show it had always been. It still set up the jokes the same way and featured the necessary pauses for the laugh track to do its thing, but the track was no longer there.
I did some research and found that the show had originally featured a laugh track for its entire five-season run, but at some point over the years different aspects of the original materials had been lost. I had always considered the laugh track to be an insult to my intelligence, and shows that were never designed to have one fare just fine without. But the experience of watching a sitcom that was designed with a laugh track suddenly devoid of that canned laughter is disorienting, to say the least. The show went from peppy, economical, and, well, funny, to slow, ponderous, and very bizarrely somber. Of course, it wasn't lost on me that the show had really never been funny - that it was all an illusion created by the laugh track.
I watched a couple of episodes and very nearly gave up on the show altogether. The entire nature of the show had changed without the canned laughter. Suddenly, Hazel's antics weren't cute or funny, but a tortuous slow-burn of ignorance and meddling. Rather than being a true ensemble endeavor, the show suddenly became all about the daily struggle between Hazel and stuffy, tight-ass family patriarch (and lawyer) George Baxter. It had always been about that - Hazel would stick her fingers into George's business, creating a catastrophe due to her meddling that she would eventually realize and be able to rectify by episode end. The episodes with the laugh track were light and effervescent, and Hazel eventually cleaning up the mess she had created always brought things around to the status quo again. All was right with the world, she was forgiven, and we were ready to do it all again next week.
Without the laugh track, though, the ramifications of Hazel's behavior create an environment altogether darker and more sinister. She still fixes the problems she creates, but without the release of tension found in the laugh track episodes. Every episode slowly chips away at the sanity of George Baxter, and reveals Hazel to be the manipulative monster she has always been. She does what she needs to keep the other two members of the Baxter household, George's wife and son, soundly on her side, so that when George finally explodes over the extent of Hazel's meddling, she can cast her eyes down, quiver her bottom lip, and the wife and son will come running to her side. They badger and brow-beat George until he finally coughs up a begrudging apology for his actions, which Hazel accepts cannily, understanding intuitively that she has remained in charge of the household. She returns George's balls to a small box she keeps under her bed, and we are ready to do it all again next week. It is appropriate that the opening credit sequence for these episodes features the entire group in the Baxter family convertible, with Hazel behind the wheel, the son in the passenger seat, and Mr. and Mrs. Baxter simply along for the ride in the back.
One recent episode went like this: Mrs. Baxter had been out of town for several days on a trip, leaving George, George's son, and Hazel together in the house. Hazel, with her constant stream of stupid, unfunny jokes and rampant criticisms of George's weight (as she serves him food she prepared) had gotten onto George's last nerves, leaving him incredibly anxious for a Saturday out of the house, which he planned to spend on the golf course with his boss. Of course, being the proud, pompous figure he is, he wouldn't deign to tell the help of his plans, merely figuring he will announce his departure when the time is right and head out without explanation. Hazel, thick as a brick, continues her barrage of lame jokes and barbed criticisms, pushing George to the brink of explosion. She finally realizes something is wrong, but chronically incapable as she is of ever assigning blame to herself, she decides George is on edge because he is missing his wife.
She takes it upon herself to improve his mood, which she does by arranging for him to stay busy with work all day. She talks George's boss into giving up his plans for golf to ask George for help with a case, which she figures will take an hour, after which she arranges for one of her friends to make up a phony need to legal advice to bring to George, which she figures will take another hour, after which she arranges for another of George's superiors to bombard him with work. George reaches his "what the hell?" moment and puts all the pieces together, realizing that Hazel has orchestrated the ruination of his Saturday, which finally pushes him over the edge. He blows up at Hazel, calling her a "busybody" and a meddler, in front of his son, her friend, and his bosses. They all adore Hazel, and promptly chastise George, who is forced into an apology for HIS actions. The episode ends with George as miserable as before and Hazel having learned nothing.
I would love to have the experience of watching that episode with the original laugh track for comparison. The actions of the characters would be the same but the intentions of the episode would be reversed. In a way, though, I am glad the original laugh tracks were lost somewhere over the passage of decades. It turns the show into something dark, perverse, and fascinating. It takes it from being squarely a product of its era to being ahead of its time. The idea of traditional sitcom without a laugh track seems edgy and modern, something that wouldn't be out of place on HBO. Imagine what other touchstone sitcoms from the past would be without their laugh tracks. Imagine the awkwardness of "All in the Family" sans canned laughter. Would the filthy bigot Archie Bunker have become an American icon if every racist aside was greeted by stony silence instead of canned laughter?
"Hazel" without canned laughter is the story of the class-struggle in a bygone era of American history. It is the story of an uneducated, yet highly intelligent domestic servant and her daily battle against her pompous, wealthy employer. It is the story of one man's slow descent towards madness at the hands of someone who has wormed her way into the very lifeblood of his family unit. It says more about its era than any other show of its time. It is the perfect product of the Kennedy era, or "The '50's, Part 2" when the upheaval of WWII led everyone to overcompensate with an "aww shucks, ain't life just swell" attitude. It peels away the candy coating layer by layer, laying bare the cancerous entropy underneath that would go up in flames in the years following the shows ultimate cancellation. It is comedy in the classic sense, in that the only thing that separates it from tragedy is that the entire cast doesn't die at the end. No, they are cursed to live, to endure another day. Robbed of the sweet eternal release that would finally bring their misery to an end.
