Stay Tuned #2: BrandFX and Other Issues
Time to visit the world of late-night cable television, where you can toe the PG-13 line, and in some cases, blur it with your foot when no one is looking. Problem is, only one of today's offerings has seen fit to bother.
First up is Anger Management, based too loosely on the Jack Nicholson/Adam Sandler film of the same name. Instead of Nicholson's borderline psychotic "method" therapist who screams that his eggs are cooked wrong ("I said OVER EASY!!!"), we get a watered-down, cliche-spewing Charlie Sheen, who uses the show as an opportunity to wink and smile at his own viral video breakdown ("Come on! Everyone deserves a 23rd chance!" and "They thought I was a loser. But I'm not losing, I'm...well, you know...."), not that he hasn't used every interview of late to do the same (On Good Morning America: "I still drink a little. Who wouldn't? We live in a nation where it's always Miller Time." In the "Clone Cologne" skit on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon: Fallon's Charlie - "Duh. Winning." Real Charlie - "We don't do that anymore."). Anger Management is funny, but barely so, resting more on the personalities of B-movie star Barry Corbin (Critters 2: The Main Course), Selma Blair (Hellboy, reviewed here), and Shawnee Smith (Saw, reviewed here) for the most genuine of mirth, while Charlie (whose character's last name is Goodson, like he's trying to make us believe something ad nauseum) delivers dialogue like he has a breathalizer on his face and a profanity-triggered shock device strapped to his scrotum 24/7. C'mon, people. It's FX for cryin' out loud. Your parent network is Fox, and you can't shell out some gratuitous partial nudity or a spray a hint of blue on the dialogue?
I hope Charlie Sheen can revive his career, but contrary to what Fiat might have told you, house arrest doesn't look that fun right now.
C-
Up neXt is BrandX with Russel Brand, a weekly half hour of stand-up, in which the Essex-born actor/comedian tries his hand at the brand (LOL) of mock news commentary made famous by the likes of George Carlin, Dennis Miller, and Jon Stewart. Mostly, he's successful, rounding out the funny with some extremely well-thought-out rhetorical academia and a profound message or two for this generation's politically ignorant youth (and let's face it, the collegiates and the thirty-something crowd aren't too bright, either). I learned two things about Brand from watching his show. The first, as you will gather from the "well-thought-out rhetorical academia" statement above, is that Brand may come off as childish, but he's more intelligent than he lets on. The other is that Brand has the short attention span of a hummingbird with ADD on crystal meth. At times during the show, he will begin to interview people from the audience, but inevitably cut off what they're about to say with the first relevant funny thing that crosses his mind and bulldoze his way through the rest of his act soon thereafter.
He's his own personal achievement, and one to be admired, but I wouldn't want to talk to him for more than five seconds because he might get bored and find himself to be better company.
C+
Finally, we get to Louie, the show that dares to go there. I had no idea who Louis C.K. was, nor did I know that his eponymous show was in its third season on FX. And according to the Entertainment Weekly article "Almost Famous," that's just the way he likes it. I recently watched his stand-up special Live At the Beacon Theater (also on FX, but you can buy it on buy.louisck.net for five dollars), and found him to be brilliantly vulgar and self-deprecating. I could not stop laughing at his material because you know it's personal to him, and it's all the clever things in the average person's head that are too socially unacceptable to say out loud, like how he'd go so far as to violate the school bully's father mentally and physically to protect his daughter, or how he destroys his children at Monopoly.
The show, though is a work of art. It's like the anti-Seinfeld as filmed by Woody Allen (actually, Allen's film editor, Susan E. Morse, is in charge of editing this season): where Seinfeld was billed as "the show about nothing," Louie's episodes have no continuity, but each one is about something, from breaking up with his girlfriend because he can't fathom a no-parking sign, to his parents fixing him up with an alcoholic who likes to exchange oral sex by force, and Louie's music-accompanied meanderings through the streets of New York have "Woody Allen travelogue" written all over them.
C.K. and Morse do disgustingly beautiful work.
A
From one slumpbuster to another, Stay Tuned for tomorrow's tour of the USA (Network, that is), where we'll be visiting the New York Hawks on Necessary Roughness and New York's Pearson-Hardman law firm on Suits before West Coasting it to the LAPD with Common Law.
I hope Charlie Sheen can revive his career, but contrary to what Fiat might have told you, house arrest doesn't look that fun right now.
C-
Up neXt is BrandX with Russel Brand, a weekly half hour of stand-up, in which the Essex-born actor/comedian tries his hand at the brand (LOL) of mock news commentary made famous by the likes of George Carlin, Dennis Miller, and Jon Stewart. Mostly, he's successful, rounding out the funny with some extremely well-thought-out rhetorical academia and a profound message or two for this generation's politically ignorant youth (and let's face it, the collegiates and the thirty-something crowd aren't too bright, either). I learned two things about Brand from watching his show. The first, as you will gather from the "well-thought-out rhetorical academia" statement above, is that Brand may come off as childish, but he's more intelligent than he lets on. The other is that Brand has the short attention span of a hummingbird with ADD on crystal meth. At times during the show, he will begin to interview people from the audience, but inevitably cut off what they're about to say with the first relevant funny thing that crosses his mind and bulldoze his way through the rest of his act soon thereafter.
He's his own personal achievement, and one to be admired, but I wouldn't want to talk to him for more than five seconds because he might get bored and find himself to be better company.
C+
Finally, we get to Louie, the show that dares to go there. I had no idea who Louis C.K. was, nor did I know that his eponymous show was in its third season on FX. And according to the Entertainment Weekly article "Almost Famous," that's just the way he likes it. I recently watched his stand-up special Live At the Beacon Theater (also on FX, but you can buy it on buy.louisck.net for five dollars), and found him to be brilliantly vulgar and self-deprecating. I could not stop laughing at his material because you know it's personal to him, and it's all the clever things in the average person's head that are too socially unacceptable to say out loud, like how he'd go so far as to violate the school bully's father mentally and physically to protect his daughter, or how he destroys his children at Monopoly.
The show, though is a work of art. It's like the anti-Seinfeld as filmed by Woody Allen (actually, Allen's film editor, Susan E. Morse, is in charge of editing this season): where Seinfeld was billed as "the show about nothing," Louie's episodes have no continuity, but each one is about something, from breaking up with his girlfriend because he can't fathom a no-parking sign, to his parents fixing him up with an alcoholic who likes to exchange oral sex by force, and Louie's music-accompanied meanderings through the streets of New York have "Woody Allen travelogue" written all over them.
C.K. and Morse do disgustingly beautiful work.
A
From one slumpbuster to another, Stay Tuned for tomorrow's tour of the USA (Network, that is), where we'll be visiting the New York Hawks on Necessary Roughness and New York's Pearson-Hardman law firm on Suits before West Coasting it to the LAPD with Common Law.
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