Try to change the select of that query and use the id you need in that select and not the id of the joined table.

I don't follow.

Right now I've got:

    $shows = Show::join('shows_titles', 'shows_titles.id', '=', 'shows.titlenu')
					->with(array('productions' => function($query)
						{
						  $query->with('production_location')
						  			->orderBy('prodsort', 'asc');
						}))
					->where('title_container', 'LIKE', '%'.$search_final.'%')
					->orderBy('sorttitle', 'asc')
					->get();

The join is causing id to become ambiguous and, since the productions relationship uses the id in Show, it's not eager loading the results for productions.

However, I need to use the join because I need to sort by sorttitle which is in shows_titles.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Does the show table also have and id field?

If so, rewrite your get() to the following:

get(array('show.*','shows_titles.field'))

This prevents you from getting twice the id field.