Comedy Central

Top 10 – South Park Episodes

Getting you primed for The Stick of Truth.

This coming Tuesday marks the release of the long-awaited game, South Park: The Stick of Truth. The anticipated RPG promises deep gameplay with the wild humor that South Park brings on a weekly basis, and I feel it best to honor the series’ storied success with my personal Top 10 favorite episodes, in advance of the game’s release:

10. “Royal Pudding” – If tradition is more your speed, then saddle up for some wacky Canadian customs. Some examples, you ask? Well, how about ripping off your bride’s arm and then shoving it up your ass? Covering your arms in butterscotch pudding, then having the bride scrape it off and spread it on her face? There actually is a story to be had, too, and that is the rescue of the Canadian princess from the evil Tooth Decay by Ike.

9. “Crème Fraiche” – Ever wish for a sex hotline for foodies? This episodes brings such a desire to life. After becoming addicted to and seemingly sexually aroused by the Food Network, Randy pursues cooking while Sharon discovers the Shake Weight when she believes that she is no longer attractive to Randy. While she’s working out, he’s appearing on challenge shows after taking over the school cafeteria. Eventually, Sharon realizes the true purpose of the Shake Weight, which is what we’re all thinking every time one of the commercials airs: handjobs.

8. “Super Fun Time” – Go back to 1864 in this “super fun” episode where a class trip to Pioneer Village turns ugly real fast. A group of armed men who had just robbed a Burger King show up and take everyone hostage. Meanwhile, Butters and Cartman had ditched the trip (Cartman wanted out and Butters is his buddy for the field trip, so he’s forced to go along) to hit up Super Phun Tyme, a nearby arcade. Since the people of Pioneer Village can’t break character, the hostage situation only gets worse in the most hilarious ways possible. Eventually, Stan plays this to his advantage and saves the day.

7. “Fishsticks” – A rather benign joke from Jimmy turns into a crisis when Kanye West believes he’s been called a gay fish (sources say that this might actually be true) and as he’s done with most of his career, Carlos Mencia claims credit for the comedic sensation. Meanwhile, Cartman spends most of the episode convincing himself that he was the one who came up with the joke, and that Jimmy stole it from him. Finally, Kanye comes to terms with being a gay fish, and swims happily among his own kind.

6. “Cripple Fight” – Jimmy and Timmy throw down in what I consider to be the greatest fight in South Park history. Here is the iconic fight in all its glory for your viewing pleasure. I need not make a further case for this episode’s inclusion on the list.

5. “The Return of the Fellowship of the Ring to the Two Towers” – What do you get when you cross Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and a misplaced video that happens to be the most vile and disgusting porno ever? A completely traumatic and golden episode that ranks with the series’ best. In this instant classic, the boys embark on a mission to return the porno to the local video store while Butters takes on the role of Gollum in search of the tape, predictably referred to as his “Precious”. After successfully returning the tape, battling both Butters and a bunch of 6th graders, the boys receive a lecture from their parents about some of the less traditional aspects of sex. Problem is, the only one who actually saw the tape was Token.

4. “Imaginationland” – I’m grouping all three parts as one episode here because they truly capture the essence of the show as a whole rather than separate parts. The saga begins with another argument/bet between Kyle and Cartman. Cartman believes that leprechauns are real, and naturally Kyle does not. If Cartman can prove they exist, Kyle would have to suck his balls. If not, Cartman owes Kyle $10 (kind of a lopsided bet, in my view). After stumbling upon one and later being transported to Imaginationland, the boys embark on a mission to save all the fabricated creatures from their evil counterparts in an attempt to cram as many awesome references as possible into three incredible episodes.

3. “The Losing Edge” – If you’ve ever heard someone yell out “I’M SORRY, I THOUGHT THIS WAS AMERICA” while impersonating Randy, this is the episode they’re referencing. The boys are stuck playing baseball, a sport they all hate, and continuously try to lose games to no avail. Randy takes the “being a crazy parent at their kid’s sporting event” archetype a bit too far when he constantly gets wasted and fights fans of the other team at every game. Eventually, he meets his match when he takes on Batdad, and when the fight spills onto the field he gets the South Park team disqualified to the delight of the boys.

2. “Good Times With Weapons” – What if South Park tried an anime episode? Take the kids to the fair and let them buy ninja weapons, and you have your answer. Cartman creates an omnipotent persona for himself as the boys fight evil and other ninjas with their very real weapons. After Butters (as the nefarious Professor Chaos, who I hope appears in The Stick of Truth) catches a shuriken to the eye from Kenny, instead of taking him to the hospital and admitting fault they dress him up as a dog and try to take him to the vet.

1. “Scott Tenorman Must Die” – If there’s one episode of South Park that will always appear in a top whatever list, it’s this one. If it doesn’t, tell the person who made it that they’re wrong. Kicking off the show’s fifth season, this episode features Cartman being bullied by 9th grader Scott Tenorman. Mostly centered around money and pubes, Cartman gets trolled by Scott at every turn. That is, until he hatches the most brilliantly evil plan I have ever seen in action. It’s so evil that I could never do it justice by trying to explain. Click here and enjoy the deliciousness.

Up @Midnight? That’s Justification Enough.

by Michael Tyminski

@Midnight: Monday to Thursday at Midnight on Comedy Central

One of the most surprising and underlying stories of the last year or so has been the resurrection of Chris Hardwick’s career. Hardwick, who once had the task of being the “other guy” next to Jenny McCarthy and Carmen Electra on MTV’s dating show Singled Out. After Singled Out ended, Hardwick seemed to disappear, becoming a footnote in the pop culture landscape. However, in 2011 the older, wiser, and more openly geeky Hardwick started the Nerdist podcast network, which has become one of new media’s larger conglomerates and in many ways is becoming the face of pop-culture geekery. From there he launched Talking Dead last year, a post game show for AMC’s hit The Walking Dead (and already spun off at least once as a Breaking Bad post game show). Needless to say, now the face of new media, Hardwick is now in demand, with Comedy Central being the newest network to call on his services with his new late night show @Midnight.

@Midnight in a lot of ways brings Hardwick full circle. If Singled Out was an irreverent take on dating that happened to be structured like a game show, @Midnight is an irreverent take on social media that happens to be structured like a game show. Part Tosh.O, part Whose Line, and part Around the Horn, Hardwick’s show takes three stand-up comedians and lets them tee off on the day in social media with Hardwick awarding points for particularly funny or unfunny lines with the winner being proclaimed “the funniest person for the next 23 ½ hours”. The show also benefits from having two of the best lead ins a show can have for a midnight air-time in the form of Comedy Central’s late night tandem of The Daily Show and Colbert Report.

In a lot of ways, the grading rubric for a show of this variety tends to boil down to: is it funny? Well if you like the panel segments of The Jeselnik Offensive, you’ll probably enjoy this, as it’s full of rapid fire ripping on the “best” of the internet (the infamous “Chinese Food” video gets particularly ripped on tonight). The show also doesn’t hesitate to plunge the depths of the internet for its’ humor, going well beyond celebrities on twitter and ripping on Tumblr, Etsy, and even OKCupid (the “this or that” style games such as Etsy or Porn? and Serial Killer or OKCupid? are show highlights), so there’s an added comedic bonus based on exactly how much web-based content you consume.

The secret strength of @Midnight lies in its’ deep guest roster, which tonight brought in the who’s who of the comedy podcast scene (Kumail Nanjiani, Natasha Leggero, and Doug Benson), as the improv-heavy nature of the show (it does follow the tropes of a game show after all) seems to mesh well with veterans of the free-wheeling podcast format. The looseness of it’s game show style premise also ensures that we’ll often see multiple takes on jump-in questions, and it seems that the rule of funny will often take precedence over any sort of hard rules of a given mini-game (albeit not quite to Whose Line? levels, as here the points do matter). Conversely, its’ often at the point where it plays the game show premise straighter (mostly in the first segment where the show focuses its’ emphasis on recalling the day in social media) that it tends to lag a little.

A large part of the show’s success has to go to Hardwick, who as emcee keeps the pacing of the show as quick as reasonably possible, while maintaining a fairly loose atmosphere and kept the whole thing from going off the rails. While the format itself can use some tweaking (audience response to each of the sub-games will help drive this and it will likely emerge over the course of a few weeks, and the random elimination at 25 minutes leading to the Final Jeopardy-esque FTW round seemed fairly out-of-place), there’s enough good in the “comedians stuck in competition to massage their ego” premise to keep the general format over that of say, a Jeselnik Offensive style talk show.

The Final Verdict: @Midnight successfully mashes up a variety of established formats in order to make a lighthearted late-night complement to the more hard news oriented humor of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. While all the pieces are not perfectly in place, the show manages to find enough ways to set up its’ guests on slam dunk style jokes that you will laugh more often than not. Check it out if you’re stuck with insomnia or looking for some new late-night TV as there’s not a ton that you could recommend over it in those situations (except for some of the stuff Adult Swim throws up on it’s Thursday live-action lineup).

Drunk History is Funny Even When Sober

by Michael Tyminski

Drunk History: Tuesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern on Comedy Central

Have you ever been to a bar and someone you barely know walks up to you and starts talking your ear off about something neither you nor they are particularly knowledgeable about? Comedy Central is banking that what you may find irritating at your local watering hole you’ll find entertaining in 22 minute chunks on your TV screen with it’s newest show, Drunk History

Drunk History revolves around a simple (and pretty self evident) concept: Various people recount important events of American History under the influence. These events are then re-enacted by guest star, and are often of dubious factual stature.

Drunk History tackles multiple topics a show, which helps keep you from tiring out on each rambling story (and expect each story to ramble). Our premiere episode tackled three of the most influential events in American History: Watergate, Lincoln’s Assassination, and that time Elvis came to the White House to meet Nixon in the early 70’s.

With shows like this, the most important question you can ask is: did I laugh? Well I did. Derek Waters does an excellent job staying out of the way of his guests, existing solely to ensure the guests are inebriated enough to tell the stories, which take already interesting moments in American history and turn them up to ridiculous levels.

What truly makes this show work however, is its ability to strive for accuracy while striving for complete inaccuracy at the same time. Since we only hear the voice of our original storytellers, the reenactments are entirely lip-synced, and lip-synced well. This commitment carries over to the drunk moments, leading to scenarios like Richard Nixon or John Wilkes Booth comically veering off course as the storyteller reacts to having a cat in the room or stumbling over his speech. Conversely, the bare minimum is often put into making our guest stars look like their counterparts, leading to Bob Odenkirk and Stephen Merchant looking nothing like Richard Nixon or Abe Lincoln respectively.

Speaking of the guest re-enactors, we get to see a who’s who of the comedy world attack these roles, with our debut episode also showing cameos by Dave Grohl, Jack Black, Nathan Fielder, Adam Scott, Fred Willard and others in addition to Odenkirk and Merchant.

Drunk History also works because it fearlessly takes the absurdism and cranks it up to eleven. Hearing about how Elvis’s ego made him a narcotics officer who tried to run down a plane in order to catch a jewel thief during the apex of his “Fat Elvis” years works on a fundamentally different level coming from someone whose enthusiastic because he’s drunk as opposed to merely being stubborn while playing ill-informed (like say, Stephen Colbert’s character on his self titled show).

The Final Verdict: For a show that extols the virtues of drunk, loose, sloppy storytelling, Drunk History succeeds surprisingly well at being a tight, detail oriented show (even when it’s trying to get details wrong). Between it’s mixture of A-list comedic talent on the re-enactment side, relatively short story lengths, and a full bore commitment to it’s major conceit, it’s a show whose laughs come from unexpected depths. Check it out, it’s a pretty funny take on the weird but true events of our nation’s past.

Inside Amy Schumer is Funny, Raw

by Michael Tyminski

Inside Amy Schumer: Tuesdays 10:30pm Eastern on Comedy Central

2012 was a busy development cycle for Comedy Central as they locked up large numbers of stand-up comedians in full fledged developmental deals. It is now, in 2013 that we have started to see many of those series hit the airwaves, including Kroll Show, Nathan For You, The Jeselnik Offensive, and their newest offering Inside Amy Schumer.

Inside Amy Schumer is the eponymous comedienne’s newest project and follows a sketch comedy format much like other Comedy Central star vehicles, probably most closely hewing the Chapelle’s Show/Key and Peele mixture of stand-up in front of a studio audience and pre-taped bits. In addition to the sketch and stand-up segments, Schumer also performs a number of woman-on-the-street interviews over the course of the show.

With sketch comedy in general, I think the first and foremost question one needs to answer is: Is it funny? In my personal opinion, very much so. Schumer succeeds in carving out an incredibly seedy and neurotic alter ego for herself (unlike many other shows of this ilk, it doesn’t rely on the SNL model of recurring characters, instead focusing on slices of Amy’s life). Much of this work is set up in the premises of the show’s sketches, whether it’s Amy planning out a full life with a guy she just hooked up with the night before or being unable to identify an African-American sales clerk at a clothing store and then followed up by Schumer’s trademark raunchy style of comedy.

That being said, there were a few minor flaws I found with the show that can be easily addressed without necessarily changing the funny foundation on which the show is built. First and foremost, I found it odd that the show’s reference pool was firmly stuck in the later Bush years, devoting its opening segment to “Two Girls, One Cup” and riffing on veteran Biography Channel Series I Survived…. This seems like a weird gap in time to reference because it’s just old enough to feel dated while being just new enough that nostalgia has yet to build for it yet.

Secondly, while funny, the stand-up bits felt tacked on and gratuitous, where other similar shows monologue segments often served the purpose of setting up the show (Chapelle’s Show and Kroll Show were particularly strong at this style of introduction). Hopefully later episodes better tie the stage segments to their surrounding sketches, as Schumer’s stand-up act is fairly strong.

The Final Verdict: Inside Amy Schumer is very funny for sketch comedy and a strong enough premiere to warrant further viewing. I think a strong premiere says a lot about the potential that the series possesses, as many comedy shows often need a few episodes before becoming fully self-actualized. Minor quibbles aside, the show is a near-perfect mix of self-deprecation, cringe humor and gross out gags and looks primed to succeed in its’ post Tosh.0 time slot. If you get a chance, check it out: you won’t be disappointed.

Seems So Wrong But Feels So Right: Jeselnik’s Offensive is Dark and Hilarious

by Michael Tyminski

The Jeselnik Offensive: Tuesdays at 10:30 on Comedy Central.

As a TV critic, I normally feel like it’s my job to favor quality, intelligent television over the supposed crass dregs that “drag down” the legitimacy of the medium.

That being said, I laughed at The Jeselnik Offensive way too much to hate it.

The Jeselnik Offensive, starring comedian Anthony Jeselnik, is a subversion of the late night talk show format and built around the concept of trying to offend yours (and everyone else’s sensibilities) as much as possible. It opens with a monologue where Jeselnik shoots off a number of one-liners riffing on the news stories of the day, follows up with a couple of short comedy segments before hitting the real meat of the show, his panel.

The panel is a pretty novel concept, as instead of following the traditional late night format of interviewing one guest usually a celebrity at a time, Jeselnik instead brings on both celebrities (which will usually be name comedians, this week he had on Amy Schumer and Aziz Ansari) simultaneously in order to get their opinions while also trying to get under their skin.

The show shines most when Jeselnik has people to play off of, whether it’s telling jokes about cancer patients to cancer patients, riffing on an oncologist retorting “You’ve got cancer!” after asking her to soberly tells him he has cancer or working with his panel (which usually composes the last two segments of the show).

If there’s an area where the show seems a little weak, it’s in Jeselnik’s delivery, which often feels monotone and a touch robotic, often intruding upon the timing of some of the jokes. This however is a fairly minor quibble as the jokes themselves were often hilarious and sidesplitting (one in which he compared a Tibetan monk in self-immolation favorably to the dress of Food Network star Guy Fieri made me almost spit my drink at the computer).

The Final Verdict: Comedy Central has found the ideal show to pair with Tosh.0 in a frat-boy oriented comedy block. The jokes already are hitting their mark in a way that makes me believe the show has legs beyond the shock jock style humor that the show is sold on. It’s the short of show that I know as a critic I should probably loathe, but I can’t help but loving it, and if dark comedy is your sort of thing (which admittedly, as anyone whose ever dealt with me can attest, is most definitely mine), you could do a lot worse than giving this show a shot.

Next Time: I’m doing a liveblog for the Oscars similar to the one I did for the Grammys this Sunday night. The show airs on ABC this Sunday night starting at 7pm Eastern/6pm Central, so my first post will likely hit around 6:30 Eastern Time.

Kroll Show Brings Lots of Guest Stars to the Table, Little Else

by Michael Tyminski

Kroll Show: 10:30 Eastern Wednesdays, Comedy Central

“Try to watch the Kroll Show in one sitting. It’s impossible.” — A personal friend’s Facebook status.

When I read that statement, I wasn’t entirely sure that any half-hour show could be truly that awful. I was only half wrong. As a result, I took the chance last night to watch a replay of the first episode and watch the second one live.

The sketch show loosely operates under the basic format of the Harold, which is commonly used in long-form improvisation and involved three different scenes being accessed at 3 different points in time. Generally the idea of this format is that it allows for rapid-fire bouncing between multiple isolated scenes with the hope of branching them together towards the end of the production. The show also differs from standard issue sketch fare by relying on a large list of guest appearances (the most visible in the first two episodes being Jenny Slate, Ed Helms, and Andy Milonakis) as opposed to a standard repertory troupe.

The reason I mention the structure in this case is because it really shows a lot of what is wrong with Kroll Show. I feel that the one thing many of the bits lack is a form of escalation. This escalation is critical because the dissipated structure of the show makes many of the sketches feel longer than they actually are, so when they stay on the same one joke through all three beats, it makes the show seem interminable. This lack of escalation was particularly apparent in the Ref Jeff sketch from episode 1 where the entire joke revolved around a referee trying to go out for drinks with players, but the antics never got out of that very basic level.

The other main flaw of this show is it often prioritizes pushing recurring characters over better and well developed jokes. The first two episodes alone gave us a one-note valley girl publicist (Liz G.), a one note club sleazeball that you’d find in your average Jersey Shore/Long Island club (Bobby Bottleservice), the Ref Jeff character mentioned above, the Rich Jerks (which of all the characters on the show were the strongest because there was slightly more to these guys than “we’re rich, and we’re jerks”, and Dr. Armond, Canine Plastic Surgeon (which fell flat because there just isn’t much of a character there period).

The show shines in those rare moments where it moves away from Nick Kroll’s characters as the focus of sketches. In particular, the ChikClub ad at the beginning of episode two was hysterical, as they advertised a chicken sandwich so good that people would sell out their beliefs for it. Similarly, the Sex in the City (for Men) sketch was equally strong, with its juxtaposition of the bubbly salaciousness of Sex and the City for the incredibly mundane conversation pieces of Sex in the City (For Men) while interspersing increasingly ridiculous bumpers in the middle every 10 to 15 seconds.

In general, the second episode seemed stronger than the first, though that may be because the Rich Dicks segment of the show escalated and twisted in a way that didn’t feel particularly trite (Rich guys need drugs, go to Mexico, get kidnapped, almost get killed, but then the head of the drug ring is one of the Rich Dicks’ friends from Manhattan so everyone goes home happy). The sketches also seemed to integrate together a little better (ChikClub found its’ way into all three main segments) I also happen to think that the writing seemed a little more focused (there was nothing that grated as badly as the argument in the PubLIZity sketch which devolved into full blown incoherence). Additionally, I find that the more that Jon Daly (the only consistent series regular besides Kroll) appears on the show, the funnier a sketch becomes, as he brings his trademark intensity and boorishness to every scene.

The Final Verdict: It’s not nearly as bad as my friend implied in the Facebook post at the top of the article, but it’s definitely not something I would go out of my way to watch unless it just happened to be on in the background while I was preoccupied with other tasks. The foundations for something greater are there, but the overemphasis on recurring characters was the sort of thing that also has turned me off to Saturday Night Live at points and that factor feels 100 times worse on Kroll Show. The end result is something middling and inconsistent, and if the show felt less like elongated versions of stand-up impersonations and more like the tight rapid-fire sketch show it aims to be it could be the perfect post-Workaholics anchor for Comedy Central.

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Getting you primed for The Stick of Truth.

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Getting you primed for The Stick of Truth.