This is the first thing that came to mind for me as well. Have always loved how mean everyone seems without the canned laughter to tell us "hey, this is funny!"

I've never really enjoyed this show but I found myself liking this clean version much more.

It feels slower and more natural. It also helps because I wouldn't have laughed at any of those spots with it without laugh track.

You won't find me defending The Big Bang Theory, but it's worth noting a lot of actually funny television would have this kind of dead energy if you removed the laugh track, because it's both written for that environment and paced and acted for the audience reaction breaks.