The great cosmic studio audience has finally turned off its collective laugh track. James Burrows, the man who directed more episodes of television than most of us have had hot dinners, shuffled off this mortal coil at the age of 85. And so the world of broadcasting, already a dodgy carnival of reality shows and baking contests, has lost one of its last true ringmasters.
Burrows was the fellow who taught America where to chuckle. He directed nearly every episode of 'Cheers,' that beloved Boston boozer where everybody knew your name, and then moved on to orchestrate the hormonal hijinks of 'Friends' for its first few seasons. He was the man behind the couch, the unseen boffin whose timing was so impeccable that millions of viewers believed laughter was a natural organism, not something triggered by a blinking red light in a room full of spinsters with clipboards.
The tributes are already rolling in, a veritable tsunami of gushing platitudes from every BBC studio and Hollywood soundstage. They call him a 'genius,' a 'legend,' the 'Michaelangelo of the multi-camera setup.' And who am I to argue? The man gave us Norm Peterson, for god's sake. He gave us 'The One Where Ross Gives Up on Love.' He gave us the immortal image of Ted Danson slouching against a bar with the world-weary resignation of a man who's just discovered his beer is warm.
But let us not forget the darker side of this legacy. Burrows was also the man who helped bury the single-camera format for two decades, convincing network executives that live audiences were the only way to ensure comedic fidelity. He turned the sitcom into a theatrical event, a weekly communion with a surrogate family. And in doing so, he perhaps inadvertently paved the way for the modern plague of 'laugh tracks' that accompany even the most putrid jokes in generic kitchen-sitcoms.
Still, the man had an eye for a decent gag. He discovered Kelsey Grammer, for heaven's sake. He made us believe that a bar full of neurotic Bostonians was a viable alternative to actual human companionship. He directed 237 episodes of 'Cheers' alone, a number that boggles the mind of anyone who has ever tried to wrangle a cat into a carrier bag. That is ten solid years of will-they-won't-they sexual tension, pontification about the Red Sox, and the occasional foray into miniature horse ownership.
The BBC is leading the tributes with all the solemnity of a state funeral, which is fitting because Burrows' death marks the end of an era. An era when television was a communal fireplace, when families gathered round the box to watch people who were funnier and better-looking than them. Now we just scroll through Netflix alone in the dark, occasionally grunting at a particularly gormless Tinder profile.
So raise a glass of something cheap and fizzy for Jim Burrows. He made us laugh at a time when laughing felt good, before irony and Twitter ruined everything. He was a craftsman of manufactured hilarity, a puppeteer of the punchline. And now he's gone, leaving behind a legacy of re-runs and a bunch of actors who will never again be this famous. Cheers, Jim. You certainly knew how to pull a cork.
