Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hey guys, today's video is sponsored by Dollar Shave Club. Head to dollarshaveclub.com/drew to get your daily essential starter set for just 5 bucks. *clears throat* I hate laugh tracks. [ Laugh track starts ] I think they're annoying - - unnecessary, and honestly I find them to be kind of an insult to the viewer's intelligence. It's like the show doesn't trust you to know when to laugh so they have to basically hold up a big sign after every joke And say "look that was joke it time to laugh now", but then at the same time it also kind of feels like a lack of confidence in their own jokes. Like the writers know that these lines aren't that funny So they have to like peer pressure you into laughing Because listen to how much these other people are laughing you should be laughing - most of all though I hate laugh tracks because as a viewer when I hear the sound of canned laughter I am completely taken out of what in my opinion Should be an immersive experience I want to watch a show and feel like a fly on the wall during a realistic human Interaction and yet a laugh track serves as a constant reminder that these characters whose lives You're trying to get invested in are not actually characters They're just actors acting on a stage in front of a live audience That reacts to every joke like they just woke up from a long coma and this is the first joke they've heard in 20 years Joey: "Closeness schmoseness, there was 3 of us for cryin' out loud!" [ audience laughs like they just woke up from a come and is this the first joke they've heard in 20 years ] In addition to being an auditory distraction laugh tracks also mess up the flow of Every scene even if you remove the actual sound of the laughter it's still evident that these conversations Have a very unnatural rhythm Pink Shirt Lady: "Get one yourself!" [ awkward silence ] Beer Nerd: "Oooh Somebody's been taking bitchy pill!" [ even more awkward silence ] Pink Shirt: "God, he's an ass when he drinks" Outfit Matching Nerd: "Well, he's an ass when he doesn't, you just don't hear it." [ silence ] Line! Long pause. Line! Long pause. I've never in my life had a conversation with that cadence It's just not how people talk, probably the worst thing about these laugh tracks Is that they don't always Correlate with the quality of the joke every response seems to indicate the same level of hilarity when here's the thing Some jokes are just better than others I don't expect every line to elicit this room wide eruption of laughs and cheers And I don't hold it against a show if a joke doesn't make me audibly laugh but when a throwaway line is followed up by several wasted seconds where I'm just waiting for the next joke and Then it happens again And again and again I get impatient And I don't want to watch the show anymore these episodes are about twenty two minutes long And it feels like I'm only getting maybe ten minutes of actual comedy, and that's when my brain hatched an idea Exactly how much of an average episode of Friends is just laughter? What percentage of each episode's 22 minute runtime is wasted by a glorified sound effect? And then to take it one step further how many jokes are there in an episode of Friends, Compared to an episode of, let's say, The Office? Obviously quantity and quality aren't the same thing and one good joke is better than a hundred bad ones But in this case I do think quantity is a pretty good indicator of overall writing quality. So I had to know I had to get to the bottom of this 00:03:01,450 --> 00:03:02,540 But how? And then I remembered I have a youtube channel I can do stuff like this [ Elevator Music ] Now keep in mind about 90% of this video is simply gonna be opinion based I may present a lot of what I'm saying as if it were fact But what most of it comes down to is simply personal preference So let's start with The Office. The Office is my favorite show of all time I'm a bit of a basic bitch, so no I'm not talking about the British version nor the Japanese version for that matter I'm talking about the American office because here in the USA We may not be the first to do and stuff But I'll be damned if we aren't the best. The office combines everything I want in a comedy show Again, personal preference. It's hilarious, it's quick, But there's also a lot of depth to it. Characters develop deep meaningful relationships that have ebbs and flows and give each episode more of a purpose. Particularly in the first three seasons with the back-and-forth between Jim and Pam. More than anything though I love the way The Office is directed. You can tell there's so much deliberation involved in setting up the perfect shots. Which is something that may seem small But I think the movement and position of the camera can contribute so much to the tone of a scene.. As well as even serving as a joke in its own right. For example in the season 2 episode entitled "The Carpet", After it's been established that someone took a dump in Michaels office And no one can go in there because it smells so bad, Michael has a talking head bit where he kind of rambles about how this is like his fear factor audition Eventually he can't stand it anymore and starts to rush out of the room. But it's at that moment that the camera zooms out to reveal that even the cameraman didn't want to be in that room. It's a small detail, but it was enough to make me chuckle and feel smart for noticing it. But I'm rambling.. I love the show. I could talk about it for hours, But the title of this video isn't why I like The Office, It's The Office vs. Friends So I will try and get to the point. How many jokes are in one episode of The Office? Now, no scientific endeavor would be complete without taking an educated guess beforehand, so here's my hypothesis I'm gonna say that an episode of The Office averages 140 jokes Which is roughly 1 joke every 9 seconds. On the other hand, I'm gonna guess that an average episode of Friends contains about half that. Let's say 80 jokes or one joke every 15 seconds. In addition, I'm gonna guess at approximately three and a half minutes of every Friends episode is just laughter, And I'm also gonna guess that roughly 7% of you just clicked off the video when I started rambling about math So let's speed this up a bit for the office. I chose season 5 episode 14 "Stress Relief Part 1" this episode is near and dear to my heart The opening scene alone is an absolute work of art Dwight for awareness reasons Intentionally starts a fire in the office to see how prepared everyone would be in that situation which is funny enough on its own But then he has this self-righteous attitude throughout the scene while everything Deteriorates into chaos led by Michael who immediately puts his safety before everyone else's there are so many hilarious Details like Kevin going back to break into the vending machine.. Angela hurling her cat into the ceiling.. Stanley ultimately having a heart attack as Dwight explains that this was all a test. From start to finish, it's beautiful, and there are 41 jokes in it. After the opening theme, The next scene is a meeting between Michael Dwight and 2 corporate higher-ups. Halfway through the scene michael casually gets up and sort of waltzes over to the other side of the table Trying to subtly switch his role in the situation and then starts lecturing Dwight. There are 16 jokes in the scene, 3 during their car ride back to the office, and 11 in the next scene Where Stanley comes back to the office and Michael offers him a wheelchair. Quote: "Until he's back on his feet." Stanley: I'm going to die. After a commercial break comes one of the greatest scenes in television history.. The CPR training scene. If someone asked me "Hey, Drew! I want to get into comedy writing. Where do I start?" I would say... "I don't know... I just make Youtube videos." But I would tell them to study this scene. I don't even know where to start with this, so I'll let Steve Carrell set it up. Michael: "We found ourselves on the... less prepared side of things. When Stanley had his... When his heart went berserk... I knew exactly what to do, But in a much more real sense I had no idea what to do. so I thought we should have a CPR training class." So this woman has been hired by corporate to teach the office CPR. Michael instinctively volunteers Stanley, You know, the guy who just had a heart attack 3 days ago? But then after the rest of the office starts to express concern, He decides that the boss should go ahead and everyone how it's done. Instructor: "Okay, too fast." The instructor has to try repeatedly to get things back on track... Inst: "No, it's [singing] 'uh, uh, uh, uh, stayin' alive, stay-' " Michael: "Okay, that's it." Creed: "You were in the parking lot earlier, that's how I know you!" Oh! And Creed... Fucking Creed! He has two lines in this entire episode And they're both hysterical! Dwight: "Check for an organ donor card. If he has one, we only have minutes to harvest." Creed: "He has no wallet, I checked." This scene is so well written the way everything slowly gets more and more heightened the way each character progressively gets more involved it's fantastic And there are 37 jokes in it so after Dwight destroys the very expensive CPR dummy he and Michael are once again forced to go meet with David Wallace in New York This is a short scene with only five jokes we then cut back to the office where Jim, Pam, and Andy are watching a movie He downloaded illegally Which doesn't exist outside of the show. So props to the producers for actually shooting clips from a fake movie where Jack Black falls in love with Cloris Leachman I counted nine jokes in this scene, eight in the next scene where Dwight issues his statement of regret Dwight: "I state my regret." And another eight when Jim Pam and Andy finished the Jack Black movie The episode ends with Michael leading a relaxation exercise Which you guessed it is not very relaxing. There are 28 jokes in the scene and the episode is over In total, I counted 166 jokes in 21 minutes