Mea Culpa to Acceptable TV
Mea Culpa to Acceptable TV by Roxanne McDonald
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Okay! Okay! I was a bit hasty in my future-of-TV paranoia and all that. And from what I understood then and know now, I admit my erroneous ways. In fact, I applaud this “Project Greenlight” “On the Lot” hybrid for being one of the funniest programming choices avaialable now, in a fairly bereft of humor prime time. |
But first, you have to give me some slack–for trying to get an idea of “Acceptable TV” based on two promos which did NOT do the show justice.
Next, I can see what they are considering “interactivity” is not all that different from the interactivity of Idol (where voters call in) or “America’s Funniest Home Videos” (where public sends stuff in). Then again, “Acceptable TV is a far, farrrrr cry from “America’s Funniest Videos”…for “Acceptable TV” (a name which also does not do it justice) is actually funny.
Very, laugh-out-loud funny. Hysterically funny.
In this understated Wayne’s World type living room sit the
creators and host, quietly chatting about the titles of the upcoming shows, sharing premises and puns and soliciting our votes and contributions.
Then the shows, one at a time, air. Each one is titled and numbered, and each one is crude, amateurish, funny, and fresh. Some are more character-driven. Others are more costume-heavy, but at least one (in this case, the first week, two) are so funny that even if you are a malcontent moping about your pad or a curmudgeon carping about the future of TV as a form of social control, you will laugh. Out loud. Even with no [thank God] laugh track or one else in the room to share in the prepare to catch the contagion of laughter thing that happens when more than one watches a comedy.
The five shows airing the first night were as follows:
#1 Joke Chasers
#2 Who Farted?
#3 Homeless James Bond
#4 The Teensies
#5 Mr. Sprinkles
#1 killed me, what with the pee pee in the Coke and more…and the characters were more delivering that wry humor than they were chasing it. And #4 was so delightful in its delivery of funny lines and oversized items that I was bummed the piece was only a few minutes long. I want to hear more about how Mother has to drag giant corn cobs across the living room. I want to get to know such silly but soon-to-be sympathetic characters as the son, who hides a giant joint in his bed and claims it’s “not mine” and likes the giant deadbeats living over their heads cause “they’re cool! They’re in a band!”
And most compelling, most delightful, is how producer Jack Black shows up, wearing kick-back clothes and having that slacker slouch, and chatting in that quiet but most sarcastic of ways that makes you laugh just to look at him. He laughs, too, which is infectious in the way that any good comedian who is so funny he makes himself laugh makes you crack up, as well.So my apologies to one or all of the following–Demorge Brown, Eric Falconer, Jenny Flack, Drew Hancock, Jen Kirkman, Ryan Nagata, Ryan Ridley, Justin Roiland, Romanskicq, and/or J.D. Ryznar. My pleas to Jack Black, whom I would give a couple of teeth to have more of in my living room. And God strike me dead, now, for having that “hands off my TV” approach a couple of weeks back. I knew not what I had done.
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