COMOODY CENTROODY

AND THE NO-BUMMER 2013

 

For the last year or so, Comedy Central has been handing out TV shows to stand-up comedians like it’s the mid-nineties. The major difference is that they aren’t trying to wedge the comedian’s stand-up persona into the same family sitcom we’ve seen literally a hundred bazillion times, but instead letting the persona create the entire structure of the show. Anthony Jeselnik doesn’t seem like he would thrive in a skit show – it’s just not his thing, whereas to put Nathan Fielder as the host of a topical show set-up to skewer news and celebrities would fail automatically. At least, I think. No one knows who Nathan Fielder is. These four new shows have different levels of quality and promise, but definitely show that Comedy Central is making sure the talent has a say in how they get their talent across.

 

 

KROLL SHOW

MY PREVIOUS FEELINGS ON THE STAR:

Love. Huge fan. Not a big League guy, but will follow him and his stable of characters to any podcast.

DOES THE SHOW WORK?:

In the up-and-down, hit-or-miss world of skit shows? Absolutely. Kroll’s character work is unexpectedly great. His characters seem to be fully formed before a premise for the skit or a single joke is thought of. This seems to allow him, on the show or on podcasts like Comedy Bang Bang, to wring comedy from nothing just by being naturally funny as his unnatural self. The show is loud and frenetic, sometimes to a fault, but it’s hard to talk shit because most of the time it’s just a parody of the loud, frenetic world of basic cable reality TV. Some characters get grating, some premises stick around too long, but what skit show can you not say that about? A pretty triumphant first season, and hopefully the kinks that are here will get worked out in the second season it has already been signed for.

PREDICTIONS:

I’d be surprised if this was the crossover hit that Comedy Central has been looking for since Chappelle’s Show. Chappelle’s Show felt important, but it also wore its jokes on its sleeve, something that Kroll Show has a harder time doing. I can’t imagine kids quoting the nebbishy, gayish New Yorkers from the Oh, Hello skits, featuring the equally talented John Mulaney. But I can definitely see this being a big enough hit to anchor its own night, like the inexplicably popular Tosh.0, and the very explicably popular Workaholics.

 

THE JESELNIK OFFENSIVE

MY PREVIOUS FEELINGS ON THE STAR:

I, for some reason, cannot get enough of the Comedy Central Roasts, and as far as they go, Anthony Jeselnik was born to be a star. Since then, I’ve listened to all of his comedy albums, and this guy is pretty talented.

DOES THE SHOW WORK?:

Not yet. It’s a show that is perfect for AJ, as he does a Weekend Update-like trouncing of the week’s biggest stories, capped off with his patented joke style of “too funny to be offended.” The problem here is the segments that follow his “Headlines” portion of the show, particularly the ones featuring guests who come in and join him in trashing things. It all feels entirely scripted, but it seems like they were told to act like they were making it up. You can’t do both. You can have it scripted, and all of the comedy that comes from that, or you can roll the dice, let these comedians be funny on the fly, and take the chance that there might be some stinkers. How they present it, however, leaves it less like The Daily Show, and more like Hollywood Squares.

PREDICTIONS:

Even if they don’t work out the problems that I have with the show, I would never be upset that The Jeselnik Offensive is suddenly playing on my TV. Jeselnik is enough of a presence to carry an episode that may have a couple stinky jokes or a particularly bad panel. This show follows Tosh.O, which is great for two reasons: Tosh.O is very popular, and, compared to Jeselnik, Daniel Tosh seems even more like an unfunny bitch. I think this one will be around for awhile.

 

 

THE BEN SHOW

MY PREVIOUS FEELINGS ON THE STAR:

Ben Hoffman? Never even heard of him. A quick search on IMDB shows that he has worked on Roasts before, which is a bonus to me.

DOES THE SHOW WORK?:

Most of the time. This show, along with its partner Nathan For You, depends on how much you like, or can tolerate, the lead. The Ben Show is, I suppose, a skit show, but Hoffman spends at least half of the first episode as himself, depicting the in’s and out’s of a little white guy like him trying to buy a gun. Hoffman skates on being self-deprecating, even though he clearly thinks he doesn’t suck anywhere near as much as his persona lets on. This is where it gets tricky. When you can believe what he’s saying about himself, it’s much funnier than when you can’t, where it comes off like a pretty hack act. The skits are decent, where I found myself laughing the hardest at something called YoBitchuaries, in which a rapper raps about all of the people that died that day. Where the show really lost me is in a skit that attempted to show how desperate actors in Los Angeles are. It was a hidden camera skit, which leads us to believe that what we’re watching is unscripted. Hoffman brings old ladies in to read for a movie in which their character has to curse a lot and shoot a machine gun. This may or may not have been funny if it wasn’t scripted, but it clearly was. The giveaway? The wardrobe department. These old ladies are dressed like little kids playing old ladies in a high school play. Most of the time, despite what movies and TV would have us believe, old ladies just wear normal-ass clothes. Lose the bad wigs, old sweaters, and pearl necklaces, and we might have believed this.

PREDICTIONS:

I don’t have high hopes for this one. Ben Hoffman is someone you could actually hang out with, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but in the way that says all of your friends are kinda boring and not outrageously funny. People have to earn that Smug Life tattoo that Hoffman seems to have plastered all over his gut, and he’s just not there. Watch some Jeselnik, guy. He’ll show you how it’s done.

 

NATHAN FOR YOU

MY PREVIOUS FEELINGS ON THE STAR:

The same as Hoffman, only less so, until about a week before the premiere, when this guy popped up on every podcast I listen to to pimp the show.

DOES THE SHOW WORK?:

On paper, the show is brilliant. Nathan Fielder is a Canadian comic, who also happens to have a business degree. The show finds Nathan going to small, failing businesses and coming up with ideas for them to increase traffic. In the first episode he tells a frozen yogurt place to offer a controversial flavor, and a pizza place to tell their customers that they will deliver their pizza in eight minutes, or they get a free pizza. The Nathan Twist? The controversial flavor is poo, and the free pizza the customers get when the delivery is inevitably later than eight minutes is an inch long. Pretty good, right? And it is. The show just too often flat lines, due to the fact that it’s as impressed with its ideas as you are. A third skit features an appearance by H. Jon Benjamin, who shines way too much light on how dead the rest of the show is. This is all thanks to its star, Fielder, who is a pretty funny guy, but has all of the presence and voice dynamics of a Speak and Spell.

PREDICTIONS:

I think this has a much better shot of catching on than The Ben Show, even if people are just tuning in to see what the ideas are. It’s a show that makes for much better “Next Time On”s than it does actually sitting down to watch it, but I think that might just be enough.

-Ryan Haley