May is almost here, and in the world of television, that means only one thing: Sweeps. In the world of broadcasting, the “sweeps” periods (the months of May and October) are when networks officially count up all their viewers, with the results determining exactly how much each network can charge for advertising. Because a good showing during the sweeps period is so critical, the shows pull out all the stops to attract an audience: The dramas set up their cliffhangers, the reality shows unveil unexpected twists and turns, and the comedy shows roll out the episodes that have been deemed “funniest.” And what if these shows aren’t that funny? Do the networks rewrite and refilm them? Hell, no… they simply create the illusion of hilarity using time-tested technology: the Laff Track.

Every time you watch a sitcom, you hear the laughter of dozens of people. This may come as a shock to you, but hardly any of these laughs are authentic. In the history of the world, there has never been a room full of people who thought the Munsters were that funny. I set out to discover exactly how much deceit went into these laughs, and unrelated to that, come up with a cool name people can call me when I get a jet pack. I did the second one first: Blast Fantasto.

In the ‘40s and ‘50s, almost all TV shows were broadcast live, and scored with the genuine laughs of a studio audience. It wasn’t until 1953 that an engineer named Charley Douglass invented the Laff Box and changed the way we listened to other people laugh at our televisions forever.

It’s not hard to make a studio audience laugh. If you promise them they’ll be on TV, they’ll be happy to laugh, clap, or even pretend their minds are blown at an affordable machine that turns fruit into juice. Which is why it’s so strange that TV executives decided we should give the job of laughing to a box. In some cases it’s understandable – you can’t fit a studio audience inside Car 54, and there is no way anyone would know when Car 54, Where Are You? was supposed to be funny without timed fits of recorded laughter.

At first, the laugh track was well received, but looking back with our modern laughter sensibilities, the early versions probably did more harm than good. Many shows relied entirely on the fake laughter for its reaction sounds, and would repeat the same laughs for each gag. Any viewer paying attention would notice, and it would take him or her out of the story. It’s too distracting when the same laugh is used for Jackie Gleason simply threatening to punch his wife in the mouth and for when he threatens to knock her entire head to the moon. And in addition to the fact that nearly every reaction was the same, it was a phony, desperate laughter… the kind of laughs you might force if you were new to prison and your cellmate, Asshammer Jake, made a joke.

Some shows’ laugh track sounded more real by using a combination of live audience and canned laughter, and only using the Laff Box if the studio audience wasn’t laughing hard enough. This was more humane than the Laughter Whips used by previous television producers, but this exaggerated reaction ruined a lot of shows. A failed joke followed by silence, or a few chuckles, is forgivable; no one’s perfect, and the audience might think the show was going for “cute” or “thoughtful.” But if they add an uproarious belly laugh after every bad joke, they might as well add a picture of our parents having sex, because we’ve already decided we hate it.

The laugh track eventually evolved to the point where it could react more in accordance to actual hilarity, and became advanced enough that it could “Awwww” at adorable kids and whistle at hot girls. Some say this was taking it too far, and that for the sake of the future, we should not program machines to be attracted to our human women. It’s bad enough we have these Laff Box robots laughing along with us while we’re learning and loving with the Bradys; we don’t need them catcalling Marsha. Because if your worst nightmare before reading this sentence wasn’t a studio full of R2-D2’s pleasuring themselves to the Brady children, IT IS NOW.

Laugh tracks were sometimes removed in the case of Very Special Episodes, where we replaced our funny bones with our important-lesson-learning bones. The lack of canned laughter during these episodes is hardly worth mentioning, though; if you actually watched these shows and learned about drug abuse and genital safety from TV’s Alan Thicke, the awkward silences you had to sit through after punchlines are the least of your problems.

Many sitcoms take pride in their lack of a laugh track by announcing they’re filmed before a live studio audience. However, most of them still “sweeten” audience responses with extra laughs. And in the case of multiple takes, network audio engineers may trade in the audio from whichever take got the most enthusiastic reaction. Plus, this all happens after a warm-up comic comes in to fluff the crowd and teach them to respond to the APPLAUSE and LAUGHTER signs. There are layers upon layers of treachery that go into every laugh you hear. So I say: Laugh along, because the type of people who’d go to such lengths just to let you know that it’s funny when Jeannie gets jealous of her master’s glamorous cosmonaut date... those people are dangerous.