Ellen's Pandemic Laugh Track Is Bordering on Absurdity

Is it just us, or has the laugh-track operator at the Ellen show gone a bit trigger happy?

We get it. It's been a year now of audience-free shows, and we've all tired of that empty studio sound where there should be applause and laughter.

While some shows have leaned into the disconnect — Colbert and Fallon both moved into more intimate sets for their audience-free shows — others have tried to fill the gap with Zoom audiences. That's the route The Ellen DeGeneres Show took when it returned to the studio at the start of this season, but somewhere along the way, producers apparently decided the natural sound of the Zoom audience wasn't enough, and they began employing a laugh track.

Again, we get it. Anyone who's been on a Zoom call knows how stunted and time-delayed the sound can be. But if you ask us, Ellen's laugh track has begun over compensating. 

Nothing against Michael Che, but his conversation with DeGeneres on today's show seems hardly worthy of the repeated guffaws heard in the clip above, which is sweetened with all the frequency (and subtlety) of a Disney Channel sitcom.

Honestly, at this point we wouldn't be surprised to hear The Wilhelm Scream pop up on the show next.

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Jed Rosenzweig is the Founder and Publisher of Primetimer.