LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks.
.
Last edited by slothborn; January 19, 2013 at 7:06 AM.
Another great episode!
Did Lil Gary kind of look like food to anyone else?
NOOOO Recury! He's not foooood!
Where does Lil Gary's 20 second cameo rank on the pantheon of 20 second cameos? Because as short as it was, it was pretty great.
I was never crazy about Barry R. but I was completely won over by his 9/11 tribute album "Manhattan Just Got a Little Bit Smoother".
I obviously have nothing interesting to add to this conversation.
My wife has never heard a Li'l Gary episode and her reaction to his appearance was "That's.... disturbing."Originally Posted by jesterobobman
I obviously have nothing interesting to add to this conversation.
I thought it was awesome that Dave Thomas played Scott's dad
HOLY STAMPS!
Thought about this show: It has a pretty high production value for what it is ie. Shot like a movie at 24 frames, good special effects etc. I wonder what it'd be like/if it'd be more suitable if it were a little more low-rent or at least shot to look like a traditional talk show.
The Barry R./Greg Proops episode is one of my favorites where I think he makes the same 9/11 joke (or perhaps in a later appearance).
The action that resulted in that reaction made me jump so badly that I bit my tongue.
.
Last edited by slothborn; January 19, 2013 at 7:06 AM.
Did anyone see the little mini review of CBB in the TV section of this week's Entertainment Weekly? I can't seem to find it online anywhere, but it wasn't very complimentary. Basically it said the show was lame and mostly unfunny. It postulated whether the show might be trying to intentionally be unfunny, as like an Andy Kaufman "anti-comedy" kind of thing.
I think there is a little bit of that on the show, but it's really overstating things to say the show is entirely like that. There's still a lot of traditional comedy on the show. I understand Scott's sense of humor may not be for everyone though.
I read that. Even though I have been an EW subscriber for almost 15 years, they miss the mark a lot. I actually said aloud "Suck it, EW!" when I read it. (And I meant it.)
There was a moment in the most recent episode, right after the game, when Andrew Lloyd Webber gave Scott Aukerman a little razzing for saying "That's why we play" instead of "that's how we play." That moment right there felt just like the podcast. It was nearly my favorite bit of the series so far. Except, y'know, Li'l Gary.
Mysterious Exhortations | @monty_ashley on Twitter
Now that the season is over, maybe we can talk about what worked and what didn't on the show in the first season. I think overall the show was fairly successful in translating the feel of the podcast into a television show, although some episodes were better than others at this. I think the two best episodes were probably the Jon Hamm episode and the Adam Scott episode. The reason I say this is because I thought there was the best interaction between the guests and the character(s) in those episodes. Jon Hamm interacted really well with El Chupacabra in his episode, and to me that seemed the most like what usually happens on the podcast. Likewise with Adam Scott and ALW in his episode; the show works best when the characters and the guest interact with each other in a fun way. Other episodes like the Elizabeth Banks episode were less successful at this. Banks herself was quite funny I thought, but the stuff with her and David Wain as the entertainment critic fell kind of flat. Strange, because Wain has worked with Banks a lot so you figure there would have been more of a rapport there. Maybe it was just that Wain was kind of a unlikeable, off-putting character to begin with, so maybe some of it was intentional.
I think "Tsk Tsk Attaboy" was the funniest sketch they did, and the most like a Mr. Show sketch. I also liked the "Walking to Work Today" opening. Some of the other sketches like Man in the Street and Scott finding out how to make a TV show were OK. Unfortunately, a lot of the sketches (and this is just my opinion) were not that great. The movie trailer parodies in this last episode were kind of confusing- I couldn't really understand what the joke was. That the trailers were all based on cliched' sayings that were then awkwardly turned into movie premises?
In some of the episodes they tried to do a little too much. I forget which episode it was, but the one where Tim Heidecker suddenly came in at the end as an animal expert was one character too many for that particular episode. I felt like the episode with Jimmy and Matt did the best job of setting up something at the beginning and then coming back around to it at the end (also Mr. Show-like).
It's funny, but they maybe went to the well of "Scott says something marginally funny, and then there's a pause and Reggie laughs too long and too loudly" a little too often. I also am not a big fan of scenes where people are screaming and there's close-ups of their freakish faces, like the "drug freakout" scene with Ian Roberts. It seems like they did that 2 or 3 times within the space of 10 episodes, and it always strikes me as dumb Tim & Eric type humor that I'm not really a big fan of.
I'm not really sure what Scott et al can do to improve things if they get a second series, but my advice would be maybe to stick to one character per episode and really let them interact with the guest and let things develop from that. They can still do sketches at the top and end of the episode that feature additional characters, like the painting thing from the Seth Rogen episode.
But they don't need to keep jumping from interview to weird side bit to character to interview every 5 seconds like the show has ADD, the pace of the show can be slowed down somewhat.
Maybe make the show 45 minutes so it has a little more space to breathe, 30 minutes (probably like 22 minutes with all of IFC's commercials) doesn't allow for much of the improvising and fun conversation that makes the podcast so great.
Yes my only real complaint is that the show always seems to go by too fast, probably because I'm used to the hour plus long podcasts. I'd love to see them extend the running time next season, 45 minutes would be awesome, but I'll just be happy if it returns at all really, no matter what the running time. I love the show.
I've also been digging Bunk too afterwards, anyone else? The show has also introduced me to some great comics I've never heard of who I've since looked up to find more of their stuff -- like Michael Che and Ethan T. Berlin (who I didn't realize is the creator of the show), would love to see the CBB/Bunk combo return next year.
I have found "Bunk" to be pretty hit and miss; the episodes with people I like like Andy Daly, Bobby Moynihan and Tom Lennon I've found to be OK but some of the other episodes with people I don't know were less entertaining. Overall the show kind of seems like a show that would have been funnier back in the '90s on Comedy Central (during the era of "Win Ben Stein's Money" and shows like that), but comes across as kind of trying too hard now. There have been things I've laughed at on the show but overall everyone is trying so hard to be wacky and funny with everything they say that it kind of comes off as annoying. The sketches are really silly too and not in a particularly funny way. I have a feeling this is just a function of getting older because I'm sure as a teenager I would have really liked the show.
My opinion is that the less the show tries to be like the podcast, the better. I don't think that the humor that the podcast brings could ever truly be replicated in a scripted show. I think the show was great, and a lot of my favorite moments were unlike anything that was ever on the podcast or anything that COULD have been on the podcast. For instance, the running gag with the green screen stuff was hilarious to me and I thought it paid off really well at the end. I think that the TV show should be a completely separate entity from the podcast, perhaps even to the point of not using any of the podcast characters on the show. My favorite character stuff came from original characters. Bob's birdcall guy, Leo Allen's bike eater, Will Forte's pilot, and Kerri Kenney's character all were hilarious to me. It's hard for me to judge though since I've listened to the podcast so much, maybe your ALWs and Bob Duccas just don't have the same impact on me because I'm so used to them in an improv scenario.
But whatever, the show was great anyway and if it doesn't get a second season I'm encouraging everyone I know to get Dish Network.
Last edited by TacoSmith; August 12, 2012 at 12:08 PM. Reason: unnecessary apostrophes
Why would you encourage people to get Dish Network?
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote