News: The Jeff Dunham Show Not Picked Up

Numerous media outlets including the New York Times confirmed that Comedy Central's The Jeff Dunham Show has not been picked up for a second season, or as the kids say it, "shitcanned."

...not that any of our five readers watch the show that we know of anyway. The show, which had Comedy Central's highest premiere ratings in history, dropped off quickly and was also reportedly a very expensive show to produce. Hence, no more show. There will, of course, be additional TV specials and merchandise to ironically gift your relatives come the holidays, only for you to be shocked and saddened to discover they're actually quite happy with the gifts.

Comedy Challenge: Secret Girlfriend

Now and then, I will be challenged to view something that our world puts out that is presented as funny, but is most likely horrifically unfunny, and live to write about it.

Secret Girlfriend

now playing on Comedy Central


Here now is a show that you won't like even if it is the sort of thing you like.

Secret Girlfriend on Comedy Central has a concept of this: you, the viewer, are presented as a character in the show in which your two loser friends  (Sam and Phil) help you try to get away from your current girlfriend and on to a girlfriend on the side.

This was originally a show on the Internet (from Atomic Wedgie TV) and it certainly shows it, with the episodes consisting of two 15-minute episodes within and probably the lowest production value of any show on Comedy Central.

So, where does the humor in this show come in?  It makes attempts with your loser friends being dumb and doing dumb things but they aren't "funny" dumb, just "dumb" dumb. For instance, in one episode, Sam, never having a wet dream in his life but wanting to have one, decides the best course of action would be not to masturbate or Interact with women so he can have a wet dream.  He eventually has a wet dream, and of course, it's at a party, which everyone films with their phones.  Fat guy having a wet dream.  There's your comedy.

For women, certainly this is not a show for you.  Even if you are a lesbian.  The women are portrayed as all hot and dumb as a lukewarm glass of tap water.  Women are shown as easily wooed by men with cute dogs or strip naked to signs that say "Nude Beach" hastily tacked up to public pools and so on and so forth.  If you have a boyfriend and see him watching this, watch it with him, and see how quickly you start hitting him.

For men, I don't know if this is a show for you.  Clearly it's aiming for someone who liked The Man Show, but that show had at slightly more nuance and much greater production values.  This doesn't have anything appealing for such types except half-naked women.  In this day in age, when you can go on the Internet and the other half of the naked women, putting things here and there, why watch something that is not the full experience? This show features no nipples and even the swearing is bleeped out, so why bother?

Overall, it's a show that is insulting to women, not satisfying to women who might like a show that is insulting to women, and perhaps an ominous portent for future comedy program in a recession, where the cheapest is appealing, even if it isn't funny.

Rhys Darby: Imagine That!

WHAT: 1-hour special of Flight of the Conchords' Murray
WHEN: You probably missed it, and that's OK
GOOD IF: You are not below 40

Have you ever wondered what it might look like if New Zealand tried to make a comedy special with the look and feel of something that would air after a Gallagher special on early 1980s HBO? Well, someone made it for you.

Aired as an anchor in a Conchords-themed special on Comedy Central, Rhys Darby made this special which, as far as can be told, started life as a direct-to-DVD comedy special sold overseas, licensed for air in the USA. Most of the material seems almost warm and fuzzy, while not necessarily funny, with occasional outbursts of cursing. Which doesn't seem to go well together.



(The promo is a little misleading, as the Rhys Darby in the wrapper segments is much more likable than the one performing.)

The comic lacks a clear voice, this special seems like it saw production before Darby managed to put together a really solid chunk of material. The more savvy comedy fan may initially view the show as being a joke about some of the hacky material you've seen other comedians do 20 years ago, then you find out that this is the actual show. He's really making jokes about mimes, and inkblot tests, and sheep.

While repetition is important in comedy, the amount of unnecessary callbacks to his robot bit don't get funnier as the shows go on. He keeps doing them, and other little beeps and blips and helicopter impressions, but it's nothing you haven't seen before. There's a lack of wit which was replaced by a light version of the career of Michael "Police Academy" Winslow.

Considering the likes of Eugene Mirman and Arj Barker were excellent supporting players on Conchords and genuinely funny on their own, it's a shame that Darby didn't produce the same kind of special. Imagine That! proves surprisingly bland for a performer that just recently came out of a highly regarded paid cable TV series. If you really dig Murray on Flight of the Conchords, do yourself a favor: hold on to that memory, and just watch DVDs of the HBO show instead. You're welcome.

Reno 911: A Comedy Is Dead

The great Thomas Lennon confirmed via Twitter:

Reno 911! was cancelled at 1:30 pm today. Won't be wearing the shorts again.

Spanning 88 episodes and a feature film, the series featured numerous players from The State as well as other familiar faces from the world of funny.

Also notable, it was one of those rare comedies that had a series of licensed Halloween costumes (pictured) made for it. It will be missed.

Review: Michael & Michael Have Issues

Michael & Michael Have Issues is the latest project from Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, formerly of The State, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer and a billion other projects you’ve probably heard of. It’s an odd mashup; part sketch show, part meta sitcom, and it’s hard to tell if it really works or not.

The premise is that Black and Showalter have their own standard-issue sketch comedy show, and about 2/3rds of each episode is basically a sitcom that takes place behind the scenes of their fake sketch show. Black and Showalter play “themselves” as the two worst bosses in the world. Black plays a totally unlikable self-obsessed, petty asshole, and Showalter is kind of a smarmy self-obsessed petty asshole, and the gag is that when they’re not busy being awful while ripping eachother down and fighting constantly, they’re being awful while running down the staff and making their lives miserable.

Interrupting that are the sketches that are supposed to comprise the show they’re working on, and notably, these are the only segments with a laugh track. They’re pretty hit-and-miss but the hits are funny and the misses are never offensively bad. They’re definitely not the focus of the series, though, and often they don’t seem to have endings (a’la most SNL sketches and a lot of other sketch comedy so that’s not a dealbreaker). A handful of them do appear to be satirizing bad sketch comedy, but the tone of the show is all over the place, so it’s hard to tell.

But the selling point here is clearly intended to be the sitcom stuff, and while it’s important to point out that it’s not an entirely laugh-free experience, Black and Showalter have committed to the “these two guys are the most unbelievable assholes on the planet” thing so much that it’s hard to find what they’re doing funny rather than just kind of annoying and terrible. Once they settle into a rhythm, you know what’s next – Black will always do the most selfish thing possible in any given situation, and Showalter will always lie to someone’s face and backstab them later. They’re passive-aggressively mean to one another until one of them snaps and starts yelling and then the other one starts yelling and maybe there’s a fistfight or something. Both of them are absolutely spot-on perfect playing these characters, but they might be too good at it.

"Comedy of the Cringe-Inducingly Awkward" has become increasingly popular over the last few years, with the rise of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office, but the secret behind those shows is that you don’t outright hate the lead character in spite of how awkward and ridiculous they are; they have some redeeming moments. Michael and Michael Have Issues pushes that character type to its absolute limit, and while sometimes it produces some funny moments, overall it’s more ‘unpleasant’ than ‘great comedy’. Black and Showalter are two very funny guys who have produced a lot of great material over the years, so if this is an attempt at pushing the envelope to dangerous new places, then more power to ‘em. It just happens to be more cringe than laugh. Which might be the point. It's tough to say.

The show’s website is here and new episodes are running at 10:30pm Wednesdays on Comedy Central. It’s worth checking out if you’re a fan of the leads and if you’re interested in something that may well be experimental rather than simply funny.

Aziz Ansari's Comedy Central Special Taping

We just came back from the taping of Aziz Ansari's new Comedy Central special. If you aren't sure who Aziz is, you might recognize him as part of Human Giant, an actor on NBC's Parks & Recreation, or one of the many voices on the "Invite Them Up!" CD collection.

It was pretty long, so we're not entirely sure if it will be a "Comedy Central Presents" or a longer show. The taping was at the Brentwood Theater, and it was like a three-act play minus the play part. I'm happy to say a good time was had by all, and the special is going to be one I suggest you watch when it airs... in the future.

Opener: Matt Braunger
This segment was not recorder. I've never heard of the guy before, but he did manage to warm up the crowd nicely. Taco Bell and shit jokes have a way of doing that. His web site has not been updated in a very long time. Nothing I'd say you had to check out.

Main: Aziz Ansari
A hair under an hour's worth of material, some I hear before, some was new to me. The audience loved it, and so did I. I don't want to give away anything too much, but it's really impressive to see such a diverse field of references in a single act. You'll see sheet thread-count issues, Kanye West, and child molestation joke flash before your eyes. If you generally dig the content posted here, be sure you watch this.

Closer: Raaaaaaaandy
Aziz' new character from the film Funny People, which I mentioned seeing briefly at Comedy Death Ray last week. The material is similar, if not identical, to what was shown at the UCB Theatre, although it is really funny to see this amazing synthesis of nearly everything wrong with comedy in a single, short set. As a bonus he performed a "remix" of a joke where all the sex jokes were turned to pizza references. If you're a dork for comedy, you'll get it and love it. If you're a mouth-breather, you might enjoy it as is. And if you're neither, you might not be sure if you're allowed to like it or not. You'll probably love it until people start quoting it back to you. Oh, and he brought his DJ pal too. It's a good send-up of modern comedy mega-acts.

The Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget

This review of the Comedy Central Bob Saget Roast comes late as every time I tried to watch the roast, my TiVo had already deleted it. I think perhaps my TiVo was trying to warn me as when I finally did watch the roast, I realized there's only about fifteen minutes of actual entertainment in it.

Bob Saget. He's not funny. Full House and America's Funniest Home Videos are complete shit. He's gay, yet he molested Kate and Ashley Olsen. Also, Cloris Leachman is old. That is about 90% of the jokes on this special. There's a lot of swearing in this show, a lot of pretty much every word you can't say on regular television. The show is hosted by John Stamos, which is appropriate. I would make a joke about that but there were already several terrible jokes in the special said about him already.

The special is shot on this lavish set. If I were producing this I would not have a lavish set. I would do it in a dirty basement with an audience of five masturbating hobos. Instead you get an audience full of celebrities, from Alan Thicke to Scott Bakula. The cavalcade of stars!

So, Saget is brought out, visual gag suggesting he likes to have sex with goats ha ha bleck, then on to the "roasting."

Let me just go through who I considered not to be funny:

Greg Giraldo - Read jokes from very large pieces of paper. I wanted the papers to gain the magical power to leap on to his face and suffocate him.

Jeffrey Ross - Called John Stamos "Chachi." You know, from that show nobody remembers anymore.

Susie Essman - not funny, from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Made a joke about how she heard a "Fat Lady singing" in reference to Saget. That's pretty much summed up her act.

Jeff Garlin - not funny from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Does this absolutely retarded character of "Saul Schwartz" who is supposed to be the person who put Full House on the air. Only good thing about it was that I can now sympathize more with Jeff Garlin as in watching that performance, I feel like I have suffered the same stroke he had a few years ago.

Brian Posehn - Usually a funny guy, felt like he was totally out of his element and needed a nap for a few weeks. Had the funny closer to Bob: "In all seriousness, I hope horrible things happen to you, tonight and for the rest of your life."

Sarah Silverman - Appeared in a video clip. Not really that funny. Had an actress pretend to be Saget's mom and talk about---oh, you'll never guess---wanting an abortion.

Jim Norton. Blarggggghhhhh. Stab in face.

John Lovitz. Known for beating up Andy Dick and killing any show he gets on. Sang a song about how Bob Saget isn't gay. "Bob Saget isn't gay, the sky isn't blue, grass isn't green and I'm not a Jew." Continues to imply Saget is gay. Makes up a fake diary entry about Saget in which h claims as a boy Saget would run to the church and ask the priest if he can volunteer for things: "Can you blow out the candles?" and Bob would say "I don't know, can you light your dick on fire?"

Now for the people who I thought were funny.

Norm McDonald - He was reading the newspaper the whole time when he was not at the podium. Looks up from the paper indicating he "Was looking for something funny, so I'm reading Marmaduke." When he gets up to the podium he reads from giant note cards, and he looks at them as he reads them. None of them are funny, which is clearly on purpose. I don't have any verification of this, but I heard that he simply Googled "funny roast jokes" and read some of those. Seems like it might be true with jokes like -

"Bob Saget was born not with an umbilical cord but with a bungie cord."

"You have a lot of well-wishers here meaning they want to throw you down a well, meaning they want to murder you with a well."

"Bob has a beautiful face like a flower, yeah a cauliflower. No offense but your face looks like a cauliflower."

He ended his jokes with deadpan stares. Which of course, made them funnier.

A disheveled Lewis Black showed up on video. "Full House - are you kidding me! What the fuck was that about? I think it's based on what passes through the brain of a comatose child molester?" Continued to tear up Bob Saget for a few more minutes. His anger completes me.

Gilbert Godfried - "Why would we pick Bob Saget who raped an killed a girl in 1990. First of all it's not true that Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990. If you have any proof that Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990, stop gossiping and go to the police with it!" He's a peach. The fact that his voice annoys others is almost a whole other peach.

Cloris Leachman - the old Mel Brooks player. People give her standing ovation. Clearly the funniest person there.

"I'm not here to roast Bob Saget I'm here to fuck John Stamos," This is what this seemingly nice old lady opened with. "John Stamos, you shouldn't talk so much your mouth is cancelling out all the hard work your ass is doing."

After taking so much abuse all night for being old, she had the joke of: "I don't know who any of you people are - that's because I go to the movies and watch television and read the trades."

Says of Bob Saget: "You didn't just kill sitcoms you raped them and left them for dead in a ditch, just like I did with Gavin McCloud."


What made all these jokes is that she delivered them with the appearance of a nice old lady. It was kind of like watching your grandmother casually disarm a mugger and then stab him in the neck with a ball point pen.

She ends her set with kissing John stamos full on the lips.

Finally, someone I can't quite classify:

Don Rickles - essentially Don Rickles. "Bob, you have no talent. Get a harmonica, stick it in your ass and try to come up with a tune." "Bob, do yourself a favor. Move to Israel and get picked off. Get Hamas to knock you off. It's all over."

Bob Saget ends the night and they shoudn't let him have a voice. He just says a of swear words. Almost as if he was actually mad, but I think he was trying desperately to be edgy.

Overall, this roast is likely about as funny as this review, except this review is mercifully short.

Brian Regan: The Epitome of Hyperbole

Named after a punchline in the special, Brian Regan's Epitome of Hyperbole is a surprise in a number of ways. For starters, it was developed for Comedy Central, it's clean, and it's funny. Seriously, when is the last time you've seen a comic do a set for more than a few minutes without being bleeped? After appearing on numerous shows and giving us catchphrases like "Take Luck," it's good to see that the man can still tell a joke-- even if the set is fairly impersonal and surprisingly timeless. This is both great, and not.

A lot of comics lean heavily on pop culture, politics, and current events. I don't think there was a single Bush reference in the entire show, which is pretty amazing considering about, oh, 100% of the stand-up you'll see has something to do with the man in the White House. Instead, Brian Regan goes for some fairly general subject matter. Like books. Also, he does a few minutes on the word "manslaughter," which is the closest his set really gets to the level of a PG-rated movie.

This is not edgy comedy. It's not bad, and it seems like it'd be a difficult set to pen. Rather than call other people or groups out on being stupid, the bulk of the laughs are at Brian Regan's expense. For example, he doesn't know a lot about art, or mingling at parties-- and the jokes work really well. I feel like a tool trying to write them up for you right now because trying to explain the set is a fairly difficult process. It's funny. You could let your mom watch it, or even your kids, and odds are you won't feel like a dork for laughing along. If you were a kid and you discovered comedy through this act, you wouldn't hate yourself down the road like you might were it any of a number of people who have had specials on Comedy Central as of late.

The Comedy Central special is so squeaky-clean you almost feel like you can't trust it. It's like a bag of M&Ms-- timeless, fairly enjoyable, and likely to be aired on Comedy Central constantly for years. (Well, maybe not the last one.) A DVD of the special will be in stores like nowish.

Lewis Black's Root of All Evil

Lewis Black's Root Of All Evil
Available on Comedy Central and

Take Lewis Black. Make him a judge. Then take two comedians and make them lawyers. Have the two of them argue over which is more evil in something that isn't really a trial. Sounds like a hilarious show, right? RIGHT??

The format is thus: Lewis Black is the judge. One comic makes an argument for one thing being the Root of All Evil, and another comic makes an argument for another thing. Say like, Patton Oswalt argues that bloggers are the Root of All Evil, and Andy Daly makes an argument that Ultimate Fighting is the Root of All Evil. This goes on for a while, to where the comics put forth a hypothetical monologue as to what will happen if their evil thing is allowed to continue. Then they give their closing arguments and Lewis Black decides which is more evil.

Essentially, it's a bunch of different ideas shoved together in a formula, which makes it broken.

So you have stand-ups doing material on a set subject. Okay, they've got some talented comics so that should be fine, but then you have them present the material as lawyers. This is kind of like going up to a gourmet chef and saying "hey, I know you are a gourmet chef, but could you do your cooking as if you were a gay pirate?" In essence, it takes people who are good at something and has them try to force it into a bad idea.

Then there is the concept of comparing two things and deciding which is the more evil. This is interesting, but it's done in a way that isn't interesting. It would be interesting if this was an actual jury of ordinary people giving their actual opinions as to what is more evil. That would be full of suprise and insight. This is just again, comics doing stand-up material on a set subject crammed up the ass of a bad idea.

I kinda wish that this has been more of a "This Week" format. You know, where comics sat around and had a round table discussion about what subjects considered evil. That would have provided a more open format for comedy and not seemed so forced. Also, it would have made a trifecta of news show satire. You would have the Daily Show for fake news, the Colbert Report for fake Fox news, and Root of All Evil for fake NPR-like discussion.

Ah well, I'm not the programming director of Comedy Central. If I was, then Mind of Mencia would be about cutting open Carlos Mencia's skull to see what brain processes make him suck so bad and develop gene therapies to prevent that in future comedians.

I want to like this show as it is. I really do, because I like the people in it. I like Lewis Black, and I like Andy Daly, Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins....and the others, but this format really doesn't work at all. It's kind of sad, like watching Eddie Murphy's career since 1991, except so much more so.

Expect Root of All Evil to run for five more seasons on Comedy Central.

The Gong Show with Dave Attell: Premiere Episode

The Gong Show, for those of you/us not old enough to remember the original, was this unique program from thousands of years ago that could loosely be called a talent competition. People would come out and do something vaguely funny, musical, or sexy, and as long as people didn't get bored, they could show America their talent. If what they were showing America irritated the judges, they'd hit a gong and that'd be that. This image of the gong is so powerful that it transcended the show, becoming a reference you could trot out and people would understand. "Oh, this show sucks. I wish he could be gonged." They even use it at film festivals in Tucson, AZ, to move things along. Simple. Easy. Effective.

Because nostalgia isn't so much a place in your heart than it is a cave of intellectual property to be mined, Comedy Central brought back a program that, really, is more of a game show than anything else. The first episode of the new show has aired, and it brings Dave Attell with a decent selection of cackling cronies celebrity judges. There's Dave Navarro, he of Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. As no women judges were on this episode, he also qualifies as the prettiest of the panel. Andy Dick appears, looking as creepy as one might expect, with numerous references to his liklihood of jumping the contestants. Rounding out the trio was JB Smoove, who I must confess I know only of his wonderful stint on Curb Your Enthusiasm as one of the Blacks. I mean, one of the people Larry took in from Hurricane Katrina. (You know what I mean.) Future judges scheduled include Jim Norton, Brian Posehn, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Adam Corolla, and many others. It's a mixed bag.

The acts were all over the place. There was a trash rock act (named "Trash" if I can read my notes right) which sounded like the kind of sleazy garage act you'd hope to see open for a band at some random dive on a weekend. (They got gonged.) There was also some stripper act involving some chick and a guy in a monkey costume that seemed like it came straight from Chris Katan's "Mr. Peepers" character on SNL. (No gong here.) There was a guy who played wine glasses, a couple of guys who slapped their chests and pants, and even a "magician" who ripped a rabbit out of his stomach. The chest-slappers won, despite the stripper actually whipping out her boobs. Hey, I know what America likes, and it's the booby. The grand prize? $600. That sounds about right.

I have to say I'm a little surprised there's not a single female judge planned for the show, and I'm even more surprised that they were so hesitant to use the gong. It's called The Gong Show. You have a gong. USE IT. Seeing the show updated for the generation entertained by 30-second YouTube clips and aired on Comedy Central means that what you're getting is a show geared for a post-The Man Show world. The humor is aimed at college-ish men, and unfortunately, there's not a lot of it. Attell doesn't get a lot of opportunities to shine. On Insomniac he was a walking physical manifestation of enthusiasm. Someone would ask if he wanted to see them clean sewage, and he made it fun. Granted, he was drunk, but still it made for some engaging television. Hopefully we'll see more of that Dave Attell next week.

Andy Dick steals the show to do whatever it is he does every chance he gets. If I wanted to see Andy Dick just being an ass, I could tune in to any of a number of late night talk shows and get basically the same thing. The commentary of JB Smoove seemed to totally fit the show, be it the original incarnation or this 2008 version. He seems to get what they're trying to do without looking too cool or too edgy or anything. He's perfect. You'll probably like him.

This episode was engaging enough that I'll tune in and watch at least one or two more episodes, but not without a limited amount of personal shame. I have a hard time believing The Gong Show with Dave Attel is going to get picked up for multiple seasons, especially given Comedy Central's itchy trigger finger as of late. Check it out while you can, odds are it's going to be on for a month or two, and then rerun at 4:00 AM at some point in 2011. I suggest you watch it. If you don't like it, you can take solace in that the 30 minutes of airtime this show uses prevented another encore airing of Mind of Mencia. Bless you, Dave Attell, just for that.

Additional Bitching:
- Too much "show", not enough "gong."
- Navarro was totally making out with one of the girls they hired to bring out signs and stuff. Or so it seemed!
- Andy Dick is still a man whore, and creepy. Even without his recent arrest on the brain.
- "Hey Mr. Dick, want to spank my monkey?"
- Anyone want to take bets on when someone will come on to perform The Popsicle Twins routine again?
- Are we going to see any more amusing bands? Bad or good, slimy bands always make for good TV. Plus the original show had Oingo Boingo on it, so yeah, maybe we'll see some future talent here. But probably not.