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Wednesday, April 20th, 2011
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Norm MacDonald's Audience Problem

by | April 20th, 2011

When Norm MacDonald was hosting SNL's Weekend Update, his relationship with the studio audience was a serious chunk of his charm. He would repeatedly put the audience on the defensive, making them feel like they shouldn't laugh at something, and then force them to laugh anyways. It was that push and pull that made Norm feel a bit of a badass; he wasn't going to come to the audience, he was going to make them to come to him.

But the audience for Norm's new show, Sports Show with Norm MacDonald, is a different animal entirely, and not in a good way. Almost every joke he told in last night's show was met with hooting, cheering and applause. The audience was filled not with people he had to win over, as he had at SNL, but with people already looking to laugh at everything he says. And that sort of fucked him up.

Not that the show's bad, but it just feels…off. Norm's delivery is traditionally full of measured pauses where he waits for the audience to either catch up with or give in to his jokes. But when an audience is cheering at the mere mention of a subject without even needing to hear the punchline, it throws off everything that makes Norm Norm.

The problem was especially pronounced in last night's show, where the audience was so overwhelmingly obnoxious as to be seriously distracting throughout the entire episode. It was seemingly full of drunk frat boys just looking to yell and shout rather that see a comedy show. It was like the worst elements of a Daily Show audience, but even more weighted towards the cheering than laughing. That being said, you can't place the entirety of the blame on the crowd; if all the jokes you tell elicit cheering rather than laughter, that's on the joke teller as well.

And I'm sure Norm is aware of the issue. Here's what he had to say about cheering audiences in an interview:

When I first began in comedy, I would get people to clap, rather than actually laugh. You just say something that has no comedy in it at all but people agree with it. Like, if the point of your joke is, like, "Buchanan is a Nazi" — I could say that, and I guarantee that I could get people to clap, simply by saying that. But it's not even true!

So I was getting people to clap, but I reached a point where I never wanted to get people to clap, because it was, like you said, pandering. But there's a difference between a clap and a laugh. A laugh is involuntary, but the crowd is in complete control when they're clapping, they're saying, "we agree with what you're saying — proceed!" But when they're laughing, they're genuinely surprised. And when they're not laughing, they're really surprised. And sometimes I think, in my little head, that that's the best comedy of all.

By that rubric, Sports Show isn't quite there yet. And hell, filling a half-hour with desk bits about sports is hard, so it's natural that the show is still finding its footing. But regardless of the jokes getting better, Norm needs to figure out how to deal with an audience that's already aggressively on his side. It's the downside of being a cult comedy hero, I suppose.

Tags:

audiences, comedy central, Norm MacDonald, Sports Show with Norm Macdonald, tv

  • Jason Farr@facebook

    I agree that the audience is on his side rather aggressively, but I don't think you overstate it a little when you say we lost "everything that makes Norm Norm."
    We lose one of the great things that made Norm Norm when he was on SNL. But not everything. His greatest appearances on Conan weren't ones where he had to make the audience come to him. The audience wasn't even what made Norm Norm in those situations. It was Norm being intentionally distracting or a jerk.
    My point is, there are many parts to Norm. Sports Sshow's in-studio audience makes us miss one of those parts because they're so in his corner from the get-go.

  • http://mattpayton.tumblr.com/ BobSacamano

    For a long time now, I've wished that they would get rid of the audience at the Daily Show for the interviews. Stop applauding for every reasonable thing Jon says and let the two people talk! Naturally, I blame all the problems with modern audiences on MTV.

  • http://recursivebee.blogspot.com Patrick Mortensen

    The AV Club interview corroborates:

    "…Because they put lights on you and shit, and they light the audience. So it’s a completely false representation of what stand-up is. And the audience becomes a participant, rather than a true audience. That’s why I like stand-up, because the fucking audience can hate your guts sometimes and you can bomb, or they can like you. It’s always different. But on the TV, they’re participants. All of a sudden, they know when you stop talking, they’re supposed to laugh. It’s all different shit."

  • JoshUng

    I definitely agree, and it becomes very obvious at the end of the episodes when Norm does a "joke-off" for 90 seconds. About half of the time is used up by applause.

    I do like the show, but I do think it still needs some polishing.

  • http://mattpayton.tumblr.com/ BobSacamano

    I just finished this week's episode and you're right. It's a problem. They sound like the audience for Married With Children circa 1993.

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