My vision of the apocalypse.I'm a pretty avid viewer of the Adult Swim block of programming on Comedy Central. (Heck, according to my own labeling, I've written about it a dozen - now 13 - times on this here blog.) However, one aspect of that programming that is severely played out to me would be all of the various Tim and Eric programming.
Of the shows they've done, the only one I liked a bit was Tom Goes To The Mayor. Between the odd animation and quirky situations, the show had its moments. Too bad some episodes were just horrifically depressing. Anything involving Tom's wife was just painful and awkward to watch.
However, "painful and awkward" is the best way to describe any Tim and Eric program after Tom Goes To The Mayor. Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is meant to be horrifically bad, and thus funny, but I find it more horrifically bad, disgusting and tedious.
Part of the appeal of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and spoof movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun is that the actors are never in on the joke. Given the whole format of TaEASGJ, I can never shake the feeling that they feel the whole show is an effing joke, and they're in on it. Meaning, Tim and Eric know the show is crap, and there is an effort to maximize the crap by them.
Where is the fun in that? Congo is a horrible movie and funny to me partly because people are actually trying. They are not meekly reading horrible lines - They are enthusiastically talking about using diamonds to power lasers that they will then use to kill gorillas who are guarding King Solomon's diamond mines. This adds a layer of enthusiasm that simply isn't present in most of the "this is so bad aren't we cool?" hipster stuff like TaEASGJ. Mr. Show had some great "this is so bad, it's good" moments, but they also balanced it legitimately decent song-and-dance numbers by Jack Black and funny spoofs of infomercial pitchmen.
Which brings me to Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule. Poor John C. Reilly - you've gone from hosting Saturday Night Live and hanging out to Will Ferrell, to crap like this? Come on, you're better than this. Shake N Bake!
The show is meant to spoof horrible local newscasts and their bad broadcast quality, but what actually happens is that Reilly has an awkward interview with people who aren't really in on the joke. So really, all that happens is the recreation of a horrible local newscast. The first two shows were on "Food" and "Relationships", and both were horrible, except for some non-Brule segments with cheesy local commercials.
But thankfully, both episodes were only 11 minutes each. Yay?
Grade: D+
My estimation of you just went up. I can't stand their same recycled junk. I finally saw an episode of Funny or Die's show on HBO and it was them and their bland of meta humor for half an hour.
ReplyDeleteI've seen the commercials for Reilly's new show but despite thinking he's a great actor and fantastically funny, I just don't have the heart to try it. You've just confirmed what I thought it would be.
haha, Thanks TS. Yeah, people send me Funny or Die links all the time - Most of them, I find pretty sub-par. There are only so many times that I can see a celebrity ironically mock themselves online before I am numbed to the sensation. I preferred the days when celebrities acted like they were a big deal, and only rarely were self-deprecating.
ReplyDeleteHis show... yeah. He's better than that, so I have no idea why he thinks the show is so good. His doctor character feels like a poorly developed idea from SNL.