Second Episode of Thank God You’re Here Extends the Pleasures

Second Episode of Thank God You’re Here Extends the Pleasures by Roxanne McDonald

Caricature. Sustained characture. Exaggeration. Play on words. Poopie jokes. The literal. The figurative. Extended motifs. And shock. With costumes and improv formats, “Thank God You’re Here” boasts a variety of comedic approaches tucked nicely into a variety show-reality TV competition format.

Installment two of “Thank God You’re Here” is just as entertaining and satisfying as the “pilot” episode which aired right before it. Following Bryan Cranston, Joel McHale, Jennifer Coolidge, and Wayne Knight was not as they say in clicheland a hard act to follow, though, as the competing comics have brought their talent and skills and experience to the improvisational format with as much richness and aplomb as the first group.

Mo’Nique (comedienne and host of the upcoming “Charm School) offers a kind of fish-out-of-water game show co-host performance; Kevin Nealon (SNL and a zillion funny shows and films) gives us a flip self-aggrandizing famous

high-altitude guide; Richard Kind (best remembered for his Mark on “Mad About You”) does a definitively geeky radio show foley artist; and Edie McClurg (the adorable and quirky next door neighbor, Mrs. Patty Poole, on “Valerie,” and character actress in over 100 works) does a kind of repressed wife with verbal Tourettes as the wife at a marriage counselor’s.
David Alan Grier, while locked into a fairly muted emcee “role”, and Dave Foley, who is so damned funny in any role, and now in the role of judge and aooga button monitor, I suspect audiences will be wishing they also joined in on the acts.

And the ensemble cast bring a skilled and engaging eventfulness to each of the scenarios or skits, so it is only right to say to Chris Tallman; Maribeth Monroe; Brian Palermo; and Nyima Funk a big Thank God you are here, too!

Thank God You’re Funny

Thank God You’re Funny by Roxanne McDonald

Reminiscent of “Whose Line is it Anyway,” “Thank God You’re Here” is equally funny and entertaining, but with costumes and special sets.

“This is a dramatalurgical cage match, as it were,” says Dave Foley, co-host and solitary judge for “Thank God You’re Here.” The winner doesn’t have to kill off all the other comics, but does need to kill ‘em in the audience as well as at least knock Dave Foley over with laughs.

Thank God, they do so. In fact, so many of the celebrity comics nail the scenes in the impromptu environs of the mini sets of the show, that Foley struggles with determining a winner.

The rewards are many—bragging rights, Hollywood street credit, and an award of awards that beat all but the Harvard Hasty Pudding of the Year Award: a hand-crafted, shatterproof, poly-something (plastic) Award.

In the first installments, which, aired on April 9th have seen “Thank God You’re Here” as picked up for the whole 2007

season because of its success (in the UK and elsewhere, too), the motivation toward that plastic plaque on a pedestal saw the following stars in scenarios where they successfully delivered command performances and improvised dialogue and action that was indeed delightfully funny to dangerously hysterical:
Up 1st is Wayne Knight (aka Newman of Seinfeld). He is dressed in a white lab jacket and pushed into a morning TV show (with a kind of QVC bent), wherein he must push the OrcLife vitamins (with Knights face on the bottles and packages) he has produced. Knights honors his role with a stoic dismissal process that makes for a caring doctor who really doesn’t care for much more than his pickle-extending pills.

Up 2nd is Bryan Cranston (Hal of “Malcolm in the Middle”), who gets into character faster than I tuck into a triple decker BLT. Even before he is on the set/in scene, he is showing his but, grinding his hips, and responding to host Grier’s comments and questions in an exaggerated British accent. By the time he is ushered onto the set, he has endeared himself to us already. This helps even more to keep us in stitches as he kisses the girlfriend, then the wife, then the male agent, as he stays in irresponsible but groovy rock star character.

(read more…)

Thank God Dave Foley’s Here

Thank God Dave Foley’s Here–or Will Be by Roxanne McDonald

Or, thank God Dave Foley’s back in the act (sort of, anyway)—on “Thank God You’re Here.”

We fell in love with him (among others) in “The Kids in the Hall”—a satirical skit series that saw him playing the everyman as often as the everyman’s wife.

We were thrilled that though “Kids…” stopped airing, Foley made cameo appearances in every subsequent comedy from the tendentious Stuart Lamarack in “Will and Grace” to the malleable shrink on “King of Queens” to the inimitable Dr. Hendrick on “Scrubs”.

And I know I was more than delighted, addicted, to tuning in to every episode of “Celebrity Poker Showdown” because Foley was hosting…knowing I would get great laughs from the sometimes slurry-mouthed emcee who was often visibly and audibly less than thrilled to be there. (Still, Foley injected mock or mawkish (?) humor into what could have been an otherwise unfunny show, save the

rounds where other equally hilarious performers appeared to play poker.
So when the show to start airing April 9, on NBC, has a comical premise or promise, and that show, “Thank God You’re Here,” is announced as having Dave Foley as judge (along with also funny David Alan Grier [“In Living Color”]), we who were missing the Canadian comical genius are now excited and looking forward.

Continued proof in the hasty pudding that is Foley funny business can be found in Comicon writer Jennifer M. Contino’s interview….

(read more…)

Thank God for Aussie TV

Thank God for Aussie TV by Roxanne McDonald

They borrow from us, we borrow from them. This time, American TV takes on a kind of “Whose Line is it Anyway” hybrid from Australia, “Thank God You’re Here.”

A year and two seasons in, Australia has successfully brought improv back to celebreality TV. On April 5, 2006, Working Dog Productions premiered “Thank God You’re Here,” pulling an impressive 1.7 million viewers a week (according to NineMSN “Entertainment News”).

Now the U.S. has caught the improv wave, planning to surf the celebrity contestants into unknown situations through a blue door, where on the other side a scene is ensuing. The celebrity has no idea who he or she is but hears the relieved greeting, “That God you’re here!” and must plunge into the scene accordingly—bluffing, or, as Aussie production people put it on their website, “bull—“ his or her way for five minutes, without, TV Squad notes, teleprompters, cue cards, or heavy scripting.

Australia takes the one scene for all contestants even further—by putting them through rigors earlier in the

week, says a writer at Wikipedia, including “a commentary booth where the contestants have to comment on an unfamiliar subject, an office where they are being interrogated (by police, customs officials, etc), or showing customers things for sale, such as cars, boats, houses, etc.” When all have done these challenges, they reach the finale challenge, called the “all-in group challenge”.

But as the Australian home website for “Thank God You’re Here” blurb reveals, no one gets voted off by anyone else, public callers included. Instead, celebrity (and seasoned comic) judges who of the episode’s contestants have gotten the biggest laughs. It is then at the show’s close when the judges award “honourable and dishonourable mentions…[with]the player who “doesn’t get a dishonourable/honourable mention…usually [named] the winner.”

The Australian pioneer version of the promising improv show, televised in over ten countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Israel and The Netherlands (according to TV Squad, features host Shane Bourne (”Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday”) and judge Tom Gleisner (”The Panel,” “The Late Show”).

The U.S. version will feature judges Dave Foley (”Kids in the Hall,” “Celebrity Poker Showdown”) and David Alan Grier (”In Living Color,” “My Wife and Kids”).

(read more…)