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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
"Drawn Together"
While the laughs on Comedy Central's animated reality spoof "Drawn Together" are sometimes few and far between, the mere existence of a show featuring a bunch of animated characters living in a house together, "Real World"-style, is enough to make it clear that this is the year comedy flew off the map. From Xandir the gay video game hero to Princess Clara, the naive, fairy-tale racist, "Drawn Together's" miscreants are ludicrous and twisted, and the situations they find themselves in are over-the-top offensive. In other words, this show can't be all bad. At the very least, "Drawn Together" paves the way for more fare that's just as bold and absurd . . . and maybe a little bit funnier? Hey, why not dream big?
"Chappelle's Show"
After two years on the air, it's official: Dave Chappelle has the most inspired sketch comedy show around. From "Roots" outtakes to Nelson Mandela's boot camp for teens, Chappelle seems to have an endless supply of great ideas, such as his quiz show, "I Know Black People" (sample question: "What is a badonkadonk?"), which features some of the most hilarious improv ever seen on TV. But best of all, Chappelle isn't afraid to throw himself behind absolutely absurd concepts. Who else would dream of doing a sketch that featured a first-person account, by Eddie Murphy's little brother Charlie, of meeting and hanging out with Rick James, let alone allowing it to fill most of a half-hour show? But between Charlie's self-deprecating, deadpan delivery, Rick James' conflicting first-person account of the same events, and the reenactments featuring Chappelle dressed as James (screaming his trademark "I'm Rick James, bitch!" line), the episode is hands-down the best to date. During the second segment, Murphy describes a second run-in with James.
Charlie Murphy: [to the camera] . . . you know, here we go again.
Rick James: [to the camera] Cocaine is a hell of a drug. [Laughs.]
Charlie: [to the camera] Rick is incorrigible, you know? He shows up at my brother's house f***ed up.
Chappelle as Rick James: Nice place, n*****!
Charlie: [to the camera] So he had dirty cowboy boots on. Pushed us out of the way, barged in the house. My brother had these brand new couches, they were suede, right? And he gets on the couch and says ...
Chappelle as James: Why don't I stretch out? Ha ha ha!
Charlie: And he just started grinding mud on this couch, man!
Rick James: [to the camera] Yeah, I remember grinding my feet on his couch.
Interviewer: Do you remember why you did it?
Rick James:[to the camera] Because Eddie could buy another one.
Charlie: And we stand there looking at him, and he's looking right in our eyes as he grinds this mud ...
Rick James: [to the camera ] See, I never just did things just to do them. Come on, I mean what am I gonna do, just all of a sudden just jump up and grind my feet on somebody's couch like it's something to do? Come on, I have a little more sense than that. [He pauses.] Yeah, I remember grinding my feet on Eddie's couch.
"Instant Replay" flashes on-screen, and the remarkable clip rewinds.
Rick James: [to the camera] See, I never just did things just to do them. Come on, I mean what am I gonna do, just all of a sudden just jump up and grind my feet on somebody's couch like it's something to do? Come on, I have a little more sense than that. [He pauses.] Yeah, I remember grinding my feet on Eddie's couch.
It takes a lot of confidence to build a whole skit around this kind of insanity, but Chappelle highlights not only the bizarre nature of the story itself, but brings out the delectably real quirks of the players involved. James, of course, died later in the year, and cocaine was likely at least a contributing factor to his fatal heart attack. But the sketch is still amusing to watch in no small part because Chappelle never stooped to just making fun of James. He didn't have to, really; James was hilariously outlandish enough on his own, and Chappelle found a way of perfectly capturing it. And that's the genius of Chappelle; he has the perfect grasp of the absurdity of real life, knowing which details to highlight and exaggerate, without going overboard and drowning the whole thing in his own hubris. "Chappelle's Show" easily represents some of the best sketch comedy of the past two decades.
"Fahrenheit 9/11"
Michael Moore isn't exactly a master comedian, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" featured a surprising array of satirical elements, from its ruthless attack on the "coalition of the willing" featuring stock footage of outrageously costumed foreigners meant to represent the questionable contributions of Palau, Romania and Costa Rica, to its footage of Bush's face, superimposed over Lorne Greene's in the opening credits of "Bonanza." Or what about that ruthless footage of Bush, all beady-eyed and sneaky-looking, preparing to go on the air and announce the invasion of Iraq? Such tactics might seem more at home on "South Park" ("Then Mel Gibson strips to his undies and begs Stan and Kenny to torture him ...") than in the highest-grossing documentary of all time, but tough times call for tough tactics. The toughest of all came when Moore stood outside the Capitol and confronted congressmen who supported the war, trying to get them to agree to sign up their own sons and daughters to fight in Iraq, and pointing out that only one of the 535 members of Congress had a child enlisted in the war in Iraq. As devious or dirty as Moore might be, his provocative soup of fact and found footage not only exposed the folly, vice and stupidity currently knocking around in the Oval Office, but galvanized a mass of antiwar spectators, many of whom had been silently seething before they spotted lines of like-minded people winding around the block to see the film.
The Onion Sure, the Onion isn't quite the source of pure hilarity it once was, but what could possibly stand up to such classic headlines as "Perky 'Canada' Has Its Own Laws, Government" or "Area Students Prepare Breasts for Spring Display"? And who can forget the classic CNN-style graphic, after 9/11, blaring in gigantic type, "Holy Fucking Shit!"? No matter how great the Onion was in its heyday, you can't deny that it continues to be the funniest satire of bad newspaper writing around -- particularly in the face of so many shoddy imitators. Just scan a few recent headlines, from "World's Scientists Admit They Just Don't Like Mice" to "Local Woman's Life Looks Bearable in Scrapbook." And then, of course, there are the columnists -- take Smoove B, who discusses in great detail how he'll wine and dine you and then take you home and "freak on that ass." Whether the Onion's writers are capturing the twisted nature of our most trusted institutions or summing up just how pathetic our little lives actually are, they don't pull any punches. It almost makes you want to bake a cake in their honor.
