Tim & Eric & the comedy zeitgeist

Two new sketch comedy shows joined the airwaves—interestingly, both are produced by Abso Lutely productions, the brainchild of Tim Heidecker & Eric Wareheim (of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Good Job! fame).   The company espouses a particular brand of humor that targets the mundane by exaggerating its mundanity.  The result is absurd and generally a bit humiliating for the performers, but comments on something that we, as a culture, often ignore—the totally ordinary.  How do things become ordinary?  Should we default to the ordinary without examining it? These shows don’t perform that examination—mostly, they mock it and mine it for giggles—but they remind us that the ordinary is worth examining.

Hot Package (Cartoon/Adult Swim, new.  Absurdist sketch comedy.)

Watched: one episode

Premise: 15-minute parody of entertainment newsmagazine shows.

Promise: Another in the rapid-fire-absurdity genre, a la Robot Chicken.  But where Robot Chicken uses toys to mock various pop culture references, Hot Package uses file footage to mock entertainment newsmagazine shows like Access Hollywood, Extra!, and Entertainment Tonight.  And, like Robot Chicken, the bad news is that only some of the show’s retro-nonsequitur humor is funny—but the good news is that none of the bits last more than a few seconds, so if something is offensive or not funny, at least it’s short.  Pat O’Brien stars, essentially reprising his hosting role from The Insider.

Verdict:  Not important by any means, and only sometimes funny, but if you like Robot Chicken and its ilk, or if you like the idea of mocking entertainment newsmagazines, the 15 minutes goes by pretty quick.

The Birthday Boys (IFC, new.  Sketch comedy.)     

Watched: pilot

Premise: Sketch comedy troupe performs parody and occasional absurdism.

Promise:    Apparently, Bob Odenkirk discovered this troupe and joined them for purposes of the show.  His presence is a blessing and a curse because, much like the celebrity guest in a Saturday Night Live sketch, he is two things at once (himself and the character) when the rest of the troupe is only one thing at once.  The troupe members are good actors, and the sketches are very well-produced.  (One, a parody of documentaries about the history of the personal computer, wove through the pilot episode and really captured the look and feel of those documentaries.)  No particular theme ties the sketches together, but like Kroll Show, there is a single recurring sketch throughout the episode and the other sketches often connect to each other through overlapping gags.  Aside from that, the show is as effective as most sketch comedy shows—some of the sketches are funny and some aren’t.   Most of them are one-joke sketches, so their relative humor depends on whether the joke can carry a whole sketch.

Verdict:  A little weak, but promising enough that I’ll give it a couple more tries.

On the DVR:   Lucky 7 (canceled), Masters of Sex, Betrayal, Sean Saves the World, Witches of East End, Reign...and more starting next week...