4077

Want to know a fun fact about me? I never got into The Wire. Remember, that four-season super-complex, well-constructed think series that was a part of that first big post-Sopranos wave of Golden Age television? Yeah. Never got into it.

I’m not sure why. Technically, it’s a masterpiece. Well-acted, perfectly written, great pacing, superb production. Suffice it to say, I think everybody has that one show that is otherwise universally adored, that they just can’t jive with.

I have a friend who can’t get down with Breaking Bad. Another who just doesn’t see the appeal in Mad Men; there are West Wing haters; folks who think Lost is silly; that The Americans is too slow; Westworld just requires too much mental energy; Game of Thrones is a little too fantasy-y; you know that old trope about how, for people who don’t like sci-fi, except for one show, you just know it’s gonna be Battlestar that they’re cool with…

I used to be one of those people, who would say, “Oh, you’ve gotta try it — just power through until season 3, and it gets really good.” I don’t do that anymore. I remember how that trick didn’t work for me with The Wire. Everyone likes different things. Tell someone why you like something, see what they say, and move on.

Those shows are all dramas, though. There’s the other leg of television: the comedies. I don’t wanna step on anybody’s toes (again, love what you love, and that’s great), But I’ve never been able to get into some of the classics. Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, et al… Just not my cup of tea. Arrested Development, Community, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Simpsons (S1 through ”Principal and the Pauper”)... That’s my shit.

I think what it boils down to is structure; namely, as the structure relates to laugh tracks. Ohhh, I hate laugh tracks. They’re like nails on a chalkboard for me. Even when I was a little kid, I found it so absolutely strange that there had to be an audience participation component — why am I being instructed to laugh?

The four-camera “filmed in front of a live studio audience” format affects what kinds of jokes you can tell. Setup, punchline, hold for laughs, repeat. You ever see one of those clips on Youtube, where some scene from Everybody Loves Raymond is edited so the laugh tracks are removed? It’s downright creepy. The jokes aren’t jokes anymore; it’s just not funny. (Always Sunny, meanwhile, made fun of just this phenomenon.)

I’m not going on about this to say that shows with laughter are lowest-common-denominator trash, and shows without laugh tracks are for the smarties. Shit man, Frasier was solid. Seinfeld, Married with Children, Taxi… All these shows are just good. Visceral hatred of laugh tracks aside, I would hate, even more, for that prejudice to exclude me from legit enjoying these dynamite pieces of television. Fawlty Towers is arguably the funniest show ever made. Monty Python’s Flying Circus simply wouldn’t have worked without the laugh tracks, and its genius needs no introduction.

Shows like these took advantage of the format, and custom-tailored the comedy like a $3,000 suit. Even so, remove the laugh tracks from shows like these, and it’s gonna feel creepy or awkward: Kramer’s manic movements will be off-putting; Al Bundy will come off like a horse’s ass; Andy Kaufman will seem like a serial killer; Dr. Crane will just be unceremoniously insufferable. The built-in laughter is the glue that holds that superb writing together.

Which leads me… to M.A.S.H. Running for 11 seasons, from 1972 to 1983, M.A.S.H. is widely considered to be some of the best American television since the medium was invented. Set in a hospital camp during the Korean War, it unfolds the stories of a group of drafted surgeons and other Army folk. It’s a comedy; the writing is air-tight in that blissful mid-century “bada-bing” kind of way. But, it’s not afraid to be a drama at times. Even through the laughs, and at times, downright absurdity of the scenarios, there are stakes on the line. Heavy ones (this is war, after all), and heartwarming (these are people, after all).

And, yeah. M.A.S.H. is just one of those shows I could never get down with. For me, it was the laugh tracks. I could never put my finger on it, but they just seemed so out of place. It was a one-camera show, there was no studio audience, the comedy seemed as if it could stand just fine on its own. Goofy sight gags, theatrical plot arcs, and Groucho Marx quips (Alan Alda, master of comedic timing) felt dragged down by the fact that the creators felt the need to cram this canned, pre-recorded laughter into the show. Their writing was good! So why?

Turns out, it wasn’t the creators of the show at all. They made this show, it got greenlit by CBS, so everybody could pay their bills and work for a living. There was just one caveat: the network viewed it as a comedy; you can’t have a comedy without a laugh track; you’re gonna have to put in a laugh track. The showrunner was opposed to this — he didn’t see M.A.S.H. as a traditional comedy, and thought it was honestly a little inappropriate to take a show about people struggling through the futility of war and give it the Archie Bunker treatment. Still, you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. He did get one concession — they could skip the laughs during the surgery scenes.

Growing up in the states, the show was always syndicated on some network or another. As a fan of television, I tried to like it — shit, 250 episodes? That’s a binge well that goes deep! But I just never could. It was just too hokey.

Fast forward to 2021: a year in which I have watched all television that there is to watch. I’ve reached the dim edges of Netflix and have digested the greatest TV of the last 50 years. It’s lonely, running out of content.

I was telling this to a friend of mine, who is from the United Kingdom. We were both bitching about running out of television (first world problems?), and he was saying how he had already binged M.A.S.H. like, three times during Covid. We got into the usual “I could never get into it / Really? Why?” conversation. And I fumbled for a few moments before saying something about how the laughter felt like sandpaper on my brain.

“Wait… what?”

“Yeah, you know. The laugh tracks.”

“M.A.S.H…. doesn’t have laugh tracks.”

I kind of felt like I was in a bizarro world of brainfarting for a second.

“It… does though? You know, like there’s a joke, and then, there’s the sound of laughter?”

“Heather, I’m British — I know what a fucking laugh track is.”

My friend, like myself, enjoys utilizing modern technology to borrow content from the internet, so he sent a link.

Apparently, the show was also a massive success on the other side of the pond, but it didn’t test well with laugh tracks. So, the BBC was able to procure the original master reels, without the laughter. (A little internet research reveals that an episode with a laugh track accidentally made it to air in the UK in the ‘90s, and that there were a not-inconsiderable number of passive-aggressive letters of complaint... riots in the streets, by Gum).

But, there it was. An episode of M.A.S.H., without the canned laughter. And it all clicked together. No longer was this a slap-sticky little show about a bunch of goofballs in This Man’s Army; it was an absurdist commentary about the harrowing nature of people murdering other people, and the folks who are desperately, futilely trying to fix broken bodies. The writing isn’t just humor geared toward eliciting a response from the audience; it’s more introverted.

There’s the one character, Frank Burns, a straight-laced, stuck-up, frequently racist officer who is dedicated to living by the book (everyone just haaates him). Except in his private moments, when he opens up to Nurse Houlihan (with whom he’s having an affair). In these scenes, he turns into a whiney, tantrum-throwing man child. It’s a grotesque parody of vulnerability, and with a laugh track, scenes like these seem like throwaway clownery. Without the laugh tracks, you see a deeply flawed, unstable individual who is on the verge of cracking under the weight of his own self-imposed sense of obligation; his pitiful interpretation of what duty means. It’s sad, but it’s also fucking hysterical.

Radar is a corporal who handles clerical work, announcements, stuff like that. Just some barely-18 kid from the Midwest. Naive, well-meaning, heart of gold, and kinda dumb. With laughs: he’s a boob who accidentally slips some double entendre, or we get some “Oh, brother…” reaction at being uncomfortably roped into some crazy scheme or another. Without laughs: he’s just a fish out of water, forced to grow up too fast, probably on the spectrum, in an environment that’s perpetually uncomfortable for him. You just want to give him a hug.

Corporal Klinger, desperate to get kicked out of the army, always dresses in women’s clothing. He wants to come off as so batshit crazy that he’s (gasp) a crossdresser. It never works, but he perseveres. Laughs: Har-har, look at the fella in the dress! Without: Absurdist gold; he’s not really a transvestite. But goddammit, he hates being there so much, that he’ll spend his salary on a pair of 4-inch pumps if it has even the slightest chance of getting him back home. And, yeah, what the hell, he likes it a little, too. 

Captain Pierce, lead character, played by the incredible Alan Alda. A “meatball surgery” guy who had a medical practice back home, and was forced into war. Machine gun wit; always some slippery scheme on his mind; a gin still in his tent. With laughs: a carefree, snarky, hyper-intelligent guy with a razor-sharp tongue and a sense of Fonzerelli cool. Without? His quick quips, catty insults, and functional alcoholism are the masks he wears to just keep himself fucking sane. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful. When the show turns into a drama, as it sometimes does, you get these lovely layers where the mask comes off.

And I think that’s why M.A.S.H. is resonating with me, particularly right now. Haven’t we all been struggling this past year, trapped in some impossible situation where, on some days, we’re just barely hanging on? Where we’re fish out of water, stuck, willing to try anything, dedicated to maintaining this false decorum, playing it cool, but just languishing on the inside? I’ve felt that way. Def hits in the Covid feels. 

M.A.S.H. is a masterpiece, objectively. With laughs: it’s escapism; without: it’s a rabbit hole. Misery loves company, sure, but there’s also some near-magical quality this show possesses, transmitted across the decades, that almost makes you feel like you’re being heard. People have been through struggles before; their struggles don’t devalue yours; it’s hard; it’s gonna get better. Just try to keep a sense of humor, and you might make it out alive.

It’s the only thing I’ve binged, in a year defined by binging, that makes me think, “Yes. Finally. This show gets it.” And I’m sorry — that just feels good.