Top Starkid Moments Part I: 21-15

Star Kid is a musical theater troupe started out of the University of Michigan. They uploaded a musical parodying Harry Potter in 2009, that was only intended to be seen by the immediate families of the members of the students as they were graduating.

They soon joined a class that includes Peter Hollens, Studio C, Brizzy Voices (which I've interviewed), Postmodern Jukebox, Kurt Hugo Schneider, Kaboom Production, Scary Pockets, Barely Productions, and Max Frosh (I'm probably missing dozens) of creators who win the YouTube algorithm lottery but step up to the task by managing to be inventive and fresh to deserve audience loyalty for years.

They've managed to finance many more musicals, sketch shows, and web series at this point and have been going for some 15 years and counting at this point.

I just discovered Starkid a little over 2 months ago, and already I've seen Black Friday, Twisted (my favorite), Holy Musical Batman, Nerdy Prudes Must Die, Ani, Trail to Oregon, Firebringer (my second favorite), Airport for Birds, VHS Christmas Carol, and the free sample of the reunion.

I'm going to count down my 21 favorite moments from my Team Stsarkid Experiencee, and hopefully, it will spark some debate. I also have a background in sketch writing, so I bring some of that analysis to it.

21. Christmas Electricity, VHS Christmas.

Jamie Lynn Batty’s out-of-left-field take on the ghost of Christmas past that I’m guessing is inspired by Olivia Newton-John’s music video Physical (?) takes the silver for commitment to the premise, but Christmas Electricity is the best thing about this show. James Tolbert looks like he's having the time of his life in the Christmas Present. Besides, it's kind of a given that if you have a catchy chorus, and you repeat it over and over again, it will get stuck in your head. It’s infectious enough that you could even see Scrooge crack a smile in-universe (which he does!), and bonus points, that moves the plot forward as well.

20. Lost Without You, Trail to Oregon

How debatable is it that Jamie Lynn Beatty is the best pure singer in the company? I haven’t really had any interaction with the rest of the fandom, and I am not the worlds' foremost expert on assessing vocal talents, but it seems like JLB is trying out for American Idol every time she flexes her vocal chords. If you wanted an older reference, you could see her as the Ruby Keeler character in 42nd Street, where the theater manager 1930s-style frantically tells her before going on that she’s got to succeed because the whole company right is riding on her. If JLB, had one song to save her life on, it feels like this one (although please debate me!). Other than a little bit of very clever fourth wall breaking (Cletus and the Bandit King want to sing their own musical number in the back?! Haha), it’s an entirely straight song that doesn’t add to the humor of the show. But comedic musicals need to change the rate of funny, so this works really well.

19. Nintendo, Airport for Birds

This is a case of humor often working, because it keys into hyper- specific) to our experiences. We probably never even voice it out loud to our own selves but yes, we did choose our friends as children based on who had cool toys. I know, I sure did, as my parents didn't buy the newest video game systems or ninja turtle collectibles as fast as other kids' parents. The humor of this moment is that sort of “yes, that’s totally me!” catharsis although it is heightened to comedy extremes. Unless you’ve actually had a date to Burger King, then God help you. This also has further fourth-wall breaking (a trademark of Starkid) that works wonderfully when Meredith can hear Brian singing. It's also great to see further group numbers in the sketch shows. I'm unclear as to the degree to how well everyone (say, the more sketch-focused members, or the dancers) can sing solos, but they're all clearly capable of not detracting from a group number vocally, so it's a good way to show off group harmony.

18. Alfred and Bruce’s dysfunctional relationship, Holy Musical Batman

The idea of Bruce Wayne being a stunted child has been notably done before (most notably in a collaboration between College Humor and Pete Holmes a decade ago), so it loses some points for familiar territory, but comedy is about a way in which we all can relate to, like the Nintendo example. I’m sure it's struck everyone that that the two have kind of a codependent relationship. I don’t know, would Adam West have really have been able to have his costume ironed or his Batmobile in such pristine condition without Alfred doing the grunt work?

Chris Allen nails down the Michael Caine impression which helps make the skewed elements of this parody so effective. Holey Musical Batman doesn’t entirely work for me because of the tonal whiplash. I get it because Batman itself has gone through so many degrees between the pitch-black 2022 pitch and the ultra-camp of the 1960s, and comedy can be mine from those contrasts. This was sent one such case where the warmth of the Alfred Batman relationship was punctured by these “F you” shouting matches, that broke up the mood. However, it was funny as hell.

17. The Bandit King’s Brazenness Around his Child Bride, Trail to Oregon

I can think of few funnier lines from the entirety of everything I’ve watched than “It’s not what it looks like, I was just trying to have sexual relations with your daughter.”

The bandit king’s warped view of love is simply hilarious and manages to walk the fine line of what TV Tropes refers to as crossing the line twice. It’s so absurdly offensive. It just goes back to being funny again.

There are also world-building elements to this as it shows he has a warped view of love. He doesn’t acknowledge his existing lover, he clearly has no handle on how to speak to a woman, and hilariously calls her “child bride.” There’s so much to unpack with this guy.

That it leads to Rachel Slogan’s show-stopping mama bear monologue is just icing on the cake.

16. High school is Killing Me musical number, Nerdy Prudes Must Die

It’s certainly darker than I would expect high school melodrama to be if you pay attention to the lyrics but then again, this is supposed to be a series that does genre shift towards horror midway through each installment. What stands out about this to me is that it really feels like Broadway level choreography and vocal arranging. The way that a plot is actively moving to a certain level of dialogue and the characters of Stephanie, Peter, and Grace are jumping back-and-forth between the Greek chorus is extremely impressive. It also sets the stage for a sweet, although marginally lopsided romance between the school nerd and the school rebel. Just don’t get any false expectations, nerds, but doing your crush’s homework will get you anywhere with her.

15. Bank robbery in an extremely loud space, Airport for Birds

In the sketch, a been customer wants to get a new credit card and the noise becomes so gradually overwhelming and that a robber comes in, takes the customer hostage, gets chased down by police, and no one in the bank even notices. Physical comedy isn’t always about tripping over banana, peels or throwing pies at each other’s faces. Sometimes, it’s the small things like a slow acceleration in intensity does the four bank tellers manage to pull off, while chaos emerges around them. Meanwhile, the sketch’s lead actor (sorry, I can’t ID him, he’s the balding one who’s not Joe Walker) appears to have suffered some serious trauma which some might also call Crossing the Line Twice humor.

Studio C (BYU TV)-Can child-friendly sketch comedy be edgy?

 Studio C (BYU TV)-From what I can gather, there’s a sketch comedy group on campus at BYU in Provo, Utah. Some kids from this sketch group decided “hey, let’s be professional sketch comedians.” I’m sure there are lots of other capable college kids in college sketch groups who have had those same thoughts before reality and student debt hit them. But these kids had two advantages: 1) The college owns a successful TV station with a base that pulls on the Mormon community which includes half the state of Utah and 2) These kids have a distinctive brand of comedy.

BYU, and Mormon culture in general, is watchful of things that are PG-13 rated entertainment-wise. As a result, all of BYU’s content is family friendly which means no swearing and limited talking about sexy stuff. There might also be other stuff they’re not allowed to do on TV- like portray demon worship, express enjoyment towards the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or show people drinking hot tea* — but I have absolutely no idea as I don’t have a copy of the standards and practices in front of me.

*They did a pretty clever sketch with a couple going on a romantic dinner and milk was used a stand-in for wine. Maybe that’s poking fun at a restriction the writers have on using alcohol in sketches?

The end result is a sketch comedy that goes out of its way to be family friendly. The show might be less edgy in terms of blue content but one can admire the way they work with less punchline options to produce more.

Another great thing is that, regardless of your religious affiliation, most parents wouldn’t let their kids skip straight from Sesame Street to Saturday Night Live. This show has the potential to get kids involved in sketch comedy before they’re old enough to watch Saturday Night Live.

The show’s cast was originally comprised of students transitioned from college to the show. They deserve credit for taking the idea and launching it successfully but it was clear that this was a college sketch troupe.

At some point, the old cast went to form a patreon-funded sketch troupe independent of the TV station and there was a nationwide casting call that drew in professional actors to the show. The show now has a new level of polish and a universality (the original cast relied on inside jokes) that takes the concept to a new level.

The cast is assorted with improv theater trained actors, university theater majors (Matt Galvan and Garet Allenn), musical comedians (Jetta Juriansz), and stand-up comedians (Arvin Mitchell).

Juriansz, for example, was on America’s Got Talent where she sang this song.

She brings her ukelele song-writing talents here directly to the show. The above number is performed with larger production values

The BYU TV station is entirely for free where individual episodes can be shown

What I'm Watching: Thanksgiving Edition

A Teacher (FX)-A thought-provoking look at female teachers who sleep with high school students as exemplified through one example. Kate Mara plays young teacher Claire Wilson who’s stuck in a bad marriage and forms a friendly relationship with an economically disadvantaged student named Eric (Nick Robinson). The characters are based on composites rather than a real person which gives the show freedom to expand in any which direction.

Watching the show and absorbing it’s aftertaste on the internet reveals a dissonance. The TV show is about a complicated forbidden love affair. Wilson makes bad decisions but so does Eric (who instigated the relationship twice) and it’s a progression of mutually consummated destruction that the pair goes through.

The internet chatter, however, wants to make clear that Claire is the instigator and this is a horrendous crime. I’m not personally well-versed on the psychological case studies on this phenomenon, but the TV show does what it should do by showing us complicated characters in a horrendous crime. It’s gripping drama. If you wish to know what’s behind this issue (as you’re supposed to do with every other work of fiction), research the cases behind it.

 

Studio C (BYU TV)-From what I can gather, there's a sketch comedy group on campus at BYU in Provo, Utah. Some kids from this sketch group decided "hey, let's be professional sketch comedians." I'm sure there are lots of other capable college kids in college sketch groups who have had those same thoughts before reality and student debt hit them. But these kids had two advantages: 1) The college owns a successful TV station with a base that pulls on the Mormon community which includes half the state of Utah and 2) These kids have a distinctive brand of comedy.

BYU, and Mormon culture in general, is watchful of things that are PG-13 rated entertainment-wise. As a result, all of BYU's content is family friendly which means no swearing and limited talking about sexy stuff. There might also be other stuff they're not allowed to do on TV- like portray demon worship, express enjoyment towards the Red Hot Chili Peppers, or show people drinking hot tea*-- but I have absolutely no idea as I don't have a copy of the standards and practices in front of me.

*They did a pretty clever sketch with a couple going on a romantic dinner and milk was used a stand-in for wine. Maybe that's poking fun at a restriction the writers have on using alcohol in sketches?

The end result is a sketch comedy that goes out of its way to be family friendly. The show might be less edgy in terms of blue content but one can admire the way they work with less punchline options to produce more. 

Another great thing is that, regardless of your religious affiliation, most parents wouldn't let their kids skip straight from Sesame Street to Saturday Night Live. This show has the potential to get kids involved in sketch comedy before they're old enough to watch Saturday Night Live.

The show's cast was originally comprised of students transitioned from college to the show. They deserve credit for taking the idea and launching it successfully but it was clear that this was a college sketch troupe.

At some point, the old cast went to form a patreon-funded sketch troupe independent of the TV station and there was a nationwide casting call that drew in professional actors to the show. The show now has a new level of polish and a universality (the original cast relied on inside jokes) that takes the concept to a new level.

Animaniacs (Hulu)-I grew up on this show and it personifies the 1990s for me. As a result, it’s a bit jarring to see this show updated to have Dot reference having a crush on Chris Pine and having the theme song discuss being pronoun neutral, but I’m no purist. Rebooting a good thing doesn’t ruin the original and the show does a pretty darn good job of keeping the spirit of the original in tact. It’s a little disappointing to see the lack of Slappy the Squirrel, Rita and Runt or the Goodfeathers. It’s interesting that those sketches were based on then-recent hit films (Goodfellas, Rain Man) but those films have survived the test of time and one would hope they’d do some of their long-storied rejected characters.

One thing I can appreciate is the way the animation supplements the comedy the way Mad Magazine or Futurama does. Everything from Easter egg gags in the background to the way faces are drawn to convey what we should expect from their personality sets the stage.

Bless the Harts (Fox)-I love this show. Each of the four main characters is extremely 

endearing and there’s been a lot of world building towards some of the lesser characters (the high-pitched Randy is becoming a favorite, the cheery news lady who’s mouth is glues into a smile like the Joker’s victims in the 1989 Batman, etc). The show is about a lower-class family in small town North Carolina features a waitress with modest aspirations to rise within her station, her sly mother (whose primary motivations in life are besting her rival Crystal Lynn, feeling young enough that she can flirt with construction workers, and pulling off semi-fraudulent schemes), her boyfriend (a trucker persona with a teddy bear persona underneath), and her dead panning daughter. It’s an extremely strong quartet of characters who exhibit great chemistry.  

Saved by the Bell (Peacock)-I’m not sure if this is needed past Saved by the Bell The College Years and The New Class. Let’s not act like this is the only sad attempt to revive the show. This show is a bit more woke but it’s also self-conscious about the limits of that wokeness. On paper, the show’s not bad but it’s far from the best teen comedy on the air right now  

Fargo (FX)-I’ve rarely seen organized crime justified so well through a work of fiction. Much of the television I’ve watched in the mob genre simply takes killing and mob violence as a necessity but this show portrays it in pragmatic economic terms. The show is a masterclass in visual storytelling and it shares the touch of Joel and Ethan Coen of a fascination with the quirky sides of dark characters.  

We Are the Champions (Netflix)-For a long time, I’ve been fascinated with some of the world’s craziest sports and have even played underwater hockey myself. This is a documentary-style TV show that’s heartwarming, revels in the bizarre, and tells a consistent narrative.

Nine Observations from SNL's First Season

I have to confess, despite watching a lot of SNL and having heard and read second-hand about much of the whole history, I’ve never seen a full episode from the Aykroyd-Belushi-Radner-Chase era….until this week and damn, mind blown!

Some urgent thoughts I have to get out:

1. So first, things first, I wasn’t expecting to like it

I’ve never been majorly impressed with these people or their later careers. I admire Ghostbusters which was written by someone from the first class (Aykroyd), but I didn’t ever think Dan Aykroyd was a must-see as an actor. I saw various sketches in isolation but out of context, they don’t give a picture of the full experience. Instead, I’ve always (perhaps wrongly) felt people were overly worshipping of these guys who were there first but not necessarily the funniest. I also feel like so many other casts (particularly the 1980 cast) suffered from having critics say “It’s not like it used to be” so I had that bias against it….

However, I should not have judged a book by its cover because…

2. This season was wild and certainly eventful

The sketches are not as fully-formed as today’s SNL and sketch comedy world and some of them don’t qualify as comedy but I can imagine turning on the TV in 1975 and 1976 when comedy on TV was in a very stale place and just being thoroughly shocked. Not that it was risque but it was just so bizarre and you never knew what you were going to get with each passing minute. There was Andy Kaufman acting like a nervous foreigner on stage, there was a brilliant comic named Valri Bromfeld acting like a disciplinarian school teacher in a monologue late in the first show, there was something with puppets called the Muppets even though they were different characters, there was a dance trope in one episode, there were Andy Samberg-like camera tricks, there were field segments, there were sketches that maybe lasted 45 seconds long and was just one joke, there was stuff that wasn’t really framed as comedy.

On top of that every stunt I’ve ever heard about like offering money to unite the Beatles, actually reuniting Simon and Garfunkel, pesrsonally going to the White House to film Gerald Ford, having voters decide if Andy Kaufman was funny happened in the first season.

Today’s SNL has had its highs and lows, but its format is rigid and predictable. Wayyyyy too many of its sketches are framed as game shows or talk shows. This cast was truly awful at celebrity impressions but at least they didn’t overmilk them like today’s cast does.

3. There were not seven original cast members?!

I have seen my fair share of pictures of the original cast and it always shows seven people.

As a pretty avid SNL buff (despite this embarrassing hole), I always assumed there were seven original cast members, but there were nine….and then some! There was an older broadway vet named Michael Coe and this shady fellow (he had a beard and sunglasses) guy named Michael O’Donoghue who was just nutty, who were there too and their names appeared in the opening credits. O’Danoghue’s did this bit where he says, “Here’s an impression of _______, oh and by the way, in the impression they’re getting their eyes gouged w/needles and then he sheiks in pain.” Some of the other stuff he did later in the season (that I haven’t seen but read about on Grantland) is even darker.

He seemed to behind the scenes be torturous enough in 1981 that he scared Catherine O’Hara from appearing on the show and wrote “danger” on the wall”, so he must have been pretty insane. I wonder if he was erased from history and the other cast members denied he was that prominent in later interviews?

4. I always assumed Belushi was a fast, slovenly type

Decisively less chaotic was John Belushi who I assumed was like this slovenly out-of-control fat guy and I always felt that was a turn-off so I never had much interest in his life. Comedians who are slovenly, fat guys and that’s their whole schtick, I never am drawn to. Maybe in later seasons he becomes obese, but he’s basically a regular joe sketch player who’s only heavy by comparisons to his co-stars who are generally skinny and tall (both Chase and Aykroyd are ridiculously lanky, Garrett Morris to an extent), so he looks heavy by comparison. I this other picture of him I googled, he’s not really that much heavier than the people in the shot.

5. Damn, Chevy Chase loved tripping

I have this feeling Chevy Chase never actually watched Gerald Ford do anything, but he just loved tripping. He tripped in the SNL audition. That’s pretty much the whole Gerald Ford shtick. Darrell Hammond sure would’ve been embarrassed.

6. Weekend Update’s hit to miss comparison is actually pretty good

Despite not being entirely aware of the news on any given week in 1975, I laughed quite a bit. The most traditionally comedic efforts clearly went into Weekend Update with solid jokes. Nothing particularly subversive or out of the ordinary about it. I really loved a bit where Chevy Chase did a field segment cutting to a reporter in Angola and getting the time zone wrong so she wasn’t there or cutting to her roomate

7. I don’t get the Blues Brothers

It’s just two guys singing the blues. I don’t even see it vaguely qualifying as comedic. A 1975 sketch didn’t necessarily require a punchline or an invitation to the audience to view a sketch as comedic but this was just two guys blowing off steam

8. I don’t specifically feel like these guys were bad boys or rebels

Michael O’Donoghue was bizarre but not cool, and the three main male leads (the show was really trying harder to market the personalities of the guys than the ladies) didn’t particularly strike me as cool or rebellious. As far as I can gather, it was heavily publicized that he press quite often that backstage it was a non-stop party of drugs, screwing and anti-authority attitudes as they thumbed their nose to the network and made things up as they went.

9. Garrett Morris might have been the best player on the cast

He seemed to have the strongest personality (outside of Michael O’Donoghue) and acted. Too bad he wasn’t marketed as highly as Chevy Chase.

Bring the Funny Season 1 (2019) Rankings

 “Bring the Funny” was a 2019 reality TV show (halted during COVID) encompassing all kinds of comedy from magic to puppetry to sketch to pretentious guitarists and mixing them with the traditional stand-up variety. And I’m obsessed with it. It’s one of those things that’s like apples and oranges but wouldn’t it be fun to judge apples and oranges (along with some cantaloupes and pistachios) along the same scale and see who moves to the next round with sudden death battles and audience picks?  

One problem, however, is the show’s three judges—Jeff Foxworthy, Chrissy Teigen, and Kenan Thompson—don’t give very much nitty-gritty critique. They likely are prevented by the rules of tact from being too harsh on the contestants (no Simon Cowells in this bunch, which is its own plus). They also don’t have very much reaction time or much time on the whole to articulate exactly what’s wrong and right with the comedian. Fortunately, I have more time to spare and don’t care.

My pick for the top twelve (where the show demarcated semifinalists out of the original 40) in order::

The Valleyfolk-(Competition winner)-The 4-person sketch group had premises that ranged from simple (an outcast at a mutant school) to pretty clever (an incomprehensible cowboy, a monster under the bed who wasn’t good at scaring) but they really had the ability to execute. The four best sketch actors in the whole competition were the four members of this group, so they’re lucky they found each other…..except six days after winning the entire competition, three of the sketch members fired the other member after working together for five years. They have a humongous Patreon and YouTube following but about 98% of it is not sketches and the band broke up so why follow?

Andrea Lopez-(Second rounder)-Fun fact: Melissa Villasenor once had an act like this on America’s Got Talent where she did a lot of voices on stage. She catapulted from that to Saturday Night Live making her (possibly) the only reality show contestant to land on the iconic sketch show. Lopez is far more clever and made complete sketches from her voice imitation talents and appears to have a wider range.  

Erica Rhodes (Semifinalist)-Somewhat reminiscent of Maria Bamford, Rhodes wraps thirty-something female singledom into a bundle of self-doubt and insecurity with a sharpness and authenticity that made her one of the strongest voices on the show. You just wanted to jump onto the screen and give her a hug. Many of these comedians who latch onto loneliness in their routines might not necessarily be lonely in real life but they do those routines because lonely people in the audience need someone to reassure them they're not the only lonely person in the audience. 

Frangela-(Semifinalist)-I’ve known about this duo since the mid-2000s with their hilarious takes on pop culture news on the VH1 show “BestWeek Ever.” With their powers combined (like Captain Planet), they are one of the best voices in comedy, let alone this show. Why they didn’t reach such high heights was because their comedy is largely reactive and they were entrusted with being the main stunt here. In their first outing, for example, they were the people talking too loud in the movie theater and while it was pretty funny, one had to wonder what the actual movie was that they were reacting to. It’s unclear why they decided to go sketch rather than stand-up where they could have killed it more, but watching them take their talents in new directions and their final sketch (possibly the best in the whole competition) was extremely well-suited for their immense talents from start to finish. 

Drennon Davis-(Second Rounder)-A manic impressionist who models his act off a shock jock with occasional hand puppetry thrown in. You have to see it to believe it. He’s a little raw but I found most of his material to be very cleverly conceived. His impressions always have a good twist to them. The best comparison might be the shock jock played by Jimmy Fallon (when he was funny) on SNL. But it's hard to find a really good comparison because this guy's a true original.

JK Studios (Semifinalist)-Originally called Studio C, this BYU-based sketch group has a popular YouTube following among the Mormon community and random people who like sketch comedy because they have pretty clean material. Six of those members appear to have broken off into a new group (including the best actors like Matt Meese and Natalie Madsen, fortunately) and showed off a proficiency in writing and performance that made them stand out. Their best sketch was a man who matched with Emma Stone on Tinder causing his long-lost father to want to reunite with him, a priest to lose faith in the lord, and a friend to come out of the closet. The sketch does a lot of zigging where you expect it to zag and adds a lot of great twists.

Kristin Key (Second Rounder)-The comedy guitarist had two catchy ditties that were great at taking things that seem pretty obvious and showing you they were under your nose the whole time like the fact that Cinderella is likely an ungrateful floozy. She really knows how to write a song. 

Morgan Jay (Semifinalist)-The comedy guitarist knocked Kristin out of the competition but it was a very close call. Morgan (who is Latino) has a falsetto and the musical stylings of a mariachi guitarist but when he sings about the traps of long-term relationships and the pain of whether to split a check on the first date, he turns those romantic tropes upside down. His tunes are a little simplistic (good parody rests on imitating the original with precision which is why I give Kristin the edge) but he also has a very good knack for crowd work which is hard to add on top of song.

Ali Kolbert (First Rounder)-She had an ingenious comedy bit comparing dating styles to Amazon and the Postal Service. The “Why can’t I find a guy” routine gets old but she found a really good spin. Check her out on the YouTubes and she’s performed on Fallon. Her comedy never hits easy targets.

Chris and Paul Show (Finalist)-This pair are masters at physical humor and can even make miming hilarious. They can also tonally shift sketches from lightweight to dark humor or chatty to a sexy dance between a man and a giant chocolate chip cookie (you had to see it for yourself, though it was a bit gross), on a dime. I felt there were slight tweaks that could have been made to not make situations as melodramatic but it was hard to deny their talent was insane.

Mandy Muden (First Rounder)-Magician/Comedian Jared Fell made it to the semi-finals and he had a certain manic energy that worked but his actual magic was a little thin. Mandy had a persona that was a little less manic but she had a faster pace to her actual tricks which moves the energy. Muden also had a strong persona described by Chrissy as something like a  sophisticated yet horny old lady. Pretty accurate. I personally wanted to adopt her as my grandmother.

1.      Matt Rife (Semifinalist)-A 23-year-old with a little bit of a douchey image who’s very clever tight with his sets. He relies a little too heavily on “oh you thought I was A, I’m actually B” but his jokes are strong, his act has a through-line, and he can talk about a lot of different things.

My Picks for the Second Round:

Michael Longfellow (Semifinalist)-Because he didn’t have a personality, he lacked a strong safety net in case a joke failed, but pretty much every joke hit. He would be my first runner-up.

Candice Thompson (First Rounder)-Had a lot of personality, the story about waxing didn’t end in a punchline but it was a tight set and most of her jokes hit hard.

Daphnique Springs (First Rounder)-A comedian talking about OCD issues. Her joke about the microwave needed more work but I found her highly intriguing

Mister Zed (First Rounder)-A robot who really committed to the bit. His work was slightly satirical of stuff like hackneyed crowdwork and made me massively curious. We also saw him in the finale.

Jared Fell (Finalist)-I probably would have put him through if there was room for two magicians

Jesus Trejo (Second Rounder)-Jesus Trejo did an extremely tight set about how their grandparents had 21 kids. I got the impression that he didn't use all the time allocated but every word was used well.

Lost Moon Radio (First Rounder)-Their full sketch about passive-aggressive Lewis and Clark was a little over 30 seconds of dialogue and that’s too short, but I was curious

Ali Siddiq (Finalist)-He made it farther than I would have liked but his act was solid and well-researched.

Ian Lara (First Rounder)-A comedian with a bit about going on a cruise that had a decent amount of energy and punctuation

Audrey Stewart (First Rounder)-She was a bit loud and obnoxious in a way that’s unusual for white comedians (I’d rate her intensity level as 60% Kathy Griffin) but I found her unapologetic energy attractive.

Armando Anto (First Rounder)-We didn’t see much of him, but I’m curious to see how a comic violinist would fare in the second round. He might even have more widespread appeal than Lewberger

Room 28 (First Rounder)-Their sole sketch almost felt like an excuse for impression-o-rama like SNL’s Family Fued. Still, the sketch followed through to the end.

Over-rated:

Lewberger (finalist)-The trio who I’ve seen before doing better stuff on Buzzfeed (history of misheard lyrics is a must) (did they quit?) are a good niche market if you like operatic parodies of musical theater with a modern twist (hence, YouTube popularity). In order to make it play to a broader audience, I would have preferred a wider range of styles

Harry and Chris (second rounders)-They were convincing enough in the opening round to show potential, but their second act performance was like a lounge act and more like an encore than a main act. Their subject was differences than British and American English and they completely missed that mates means a different thing across the pond. They used up too much of the song time thanking the audience for being there and saying they wrote a song (when I assume they write all their own songs). A major step back.

Ali Siddiq (finalist)-He was clever, but I was not a fan of the sitting down approach and it was indicative of a slight lack of energy.

Orlando Leyba (second rounder)-Comedy should be uplifting at heart. It’s ok to show miserable people to make you feel like your life could be worse. Leyba had some solid material in the second set but his comic persona felt kind of depressing

ISMO (second rounder)-This Finnish stand-up comedian has been very successful in Finland. In fact, he’s one of just 8 contestants (out of 40) with a Wikipedia page. However, in both his sets, he only had one joke. It’s a tremendous amount of set-up for a moderate punch line.

Willie Appleman (second rounder)-Appleman had two one-man sketches where he monologued and imagined the other members of the room. In the first sketch, he did some light crowd work with the judges but didn’t leave enough time in their responses to show he’s a great improviser. His second sketch lacked coherence as it combined two contradictory ideas (he’s a dentist trying to be cool and he’s in trouble with a cartel making him quite cool). It should also be noted that Upright Citizens Bridge has monologues going on all the time.

A super-belated top 10 tv shows of 2011

Doing top ten lists in December is overrated. I half-worked on this in December, shelved it while working on a top 25 characters of the year. The lag in time has allowed me to make a better and more accurate list as I have a better idea which shows resonated with me in retrospect. This is true even if the show took a nose dive after the New Year as is the case with Parks and Recreation. Like any blogger who aspires to be a TV critic and doesn't possess superpowers to slow down time so he or she can watch everything, compromises had to be made in terms of what to watch and what not to watch. The pool of shows I selected this from is listed down below.

1. The Onion News Network, IFC, Seasons 1 and 2-Even though this is my #1 slot, I don’t have a whole lot to write here except that this is the program I was most blown away by week in and week out. I know it doesn’t score too many points for originality or risk as it is was basically an extension of their youtube channel, but that doesn’t mean the show’s not on the edge creatively. Both the first and second seasons came out this year and the show added a new level of complexity in the latter as the show became experimental and semi-serialized in the form of Brooke Alvarez’s rivalry with do-gooder news reporter Brady O’Shaw. Examples of episodic arcs included the broadcasting of the apocalypse, the computer becoming a sentient being and falling in love with Brooke, and the revealing that the icy Brooke was once a famous Russian cosmonaut as a baby. I imagine that in the same way hard core fans of The Daily Show and Colbert Report cling to those shows as a bastion of cutting edge satire, I see this as program as both the most funny and twistedly honest program on television. On second thought, maybe I do have a lot to write about it.     
2. Parks and Recreation, NBC, All of seasons 3, 1^st half of Season 4-No longer in the shadow of Office, Parks and Recreation has an incredibly strong cast that didn’t lose a beat with the arrival of Adam Scott as geeky outsider Ben Wyatt and Rob Lowe as hyperactive city manager Chris Traeger. The show hasn’t just created a strong sense of place and time, but it’s created an inviting one. Leslie Knope was originally an irritating opportunity for Amy Poehler to try out a leftover SNL impression. Now, she and her gang of government bureaucrats have become the best definition of a great ensemble: you see them less as actors and more as a group of friends we want to hang out with.

3.      Archer, FX, Season 2, 1^st 3 episodes of Season 3-The show isn't just another spy parody but a first-rate spy parody and a wacky office comedy to boot. The key to the show is that the characters are uniquely idiosyncratic creations rather than the means to and end for traditional parody.

More of my review can be found here

4. Hell on Wheels, AMC, Most of Season 1-The show is beautifully shot but doesn’t do the glamor of the West any favors. The railroad camps and the life of backbreaking labor is so hellish that only marked men would go there. The show interestingly contrasts that with two Irish brothers who think they can get a slice of the American dream with their picture show, a preacher who wants to open up a church, a whore with scars from her time as an Indian princess and a newly widowed fair-haired maiden who was told by another character that, not being a whore or Indian, she doesn’t beloing out there. It’s the traditional Western told through a lot of unique and diverse perspectives.  Note: In retrospect, I've learned that not a lot of other people liked this show because its inferior to Deadwood. I never saw Deadwood and proudly stand by it.

5.      Jimmy Kimmel Show-ABC-With his brilliant ambush of Jay Leno last year during the Late Night wars or his faux romance with Matt Damon among other things, Kimmel’s antics have made for viral sensations on quite a few occasions. Too bad only a few people know him as a consistent entity night in and night out. It’s ironic that he was previously known as the co-host of the unforgivably crude The Man Show, because I could argue that he's the classiest and most genuine host out there. Like Conan, he relies on a stable of cast and crew members as go-to sources of humor, but the difference is there’s a clear sense of affection that drives their interaction. This was most apparent in Kimmel’s teary-eyed TV eulogy to his Uncle Frank which marked a high-water mark of his series, if not Late Night Television. On top of that, he’s a pro at interviewing and a gifted comic. In short, a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stagnant format.

6. Wilfred-FX-Season 1-It took me a couple episodes to get into this, but I loved it once I started seeing it as a drama rather than a gimmicky comedy. It has one of the most depressed characters on television, it doesn't treat his illness with kid gloves and it's a feel good story with no false moments which is a lot to say for a show with a talking dog in it. Read my review here.

7.      The Office-NBC-Back half of Season 7, front half of Season 8-In the post-Michael-Scott Era, The Office has provided easy fodder for Critics to show off their sophistication with analysis of just how and where the show fell from grace. I’ll happily take the opposite position and declare announcements of the show's demise to be premature. True, the show’s suffered at the top with Will Ferrell’s lacking in any identifiable characteristic and James Spader offering little to the mix other than creepy blankness, but come on, this is still The Office and the work of a writing staff that knows what it’s doing. As the Michael Scott storyline came to an end, the staff did an admirable job of steering the show through uncharted territory and twisted the storyline to revolve around Andy rather than Jim. Andy’s no force of nature like Michael Scott, but he’s a fully realized character and the writers haven’t betrayed his arc. The staff has also kept the momentum going with storylines and grown Daryl, Gabe, and Erin.

 8. Portlandia-IFC-Season 1-This sketch show’s backstory is almost as endearing as the show itself. It evolved around a platonic friendship between SNL star Fred Armisen and alt-rocker Carrie Bowenstein wanting to spend more time together and work on a project. Not only does the pair expertly skewer hipster culture, they help us articulate and define what it entails better than we would have ourselves had we never watched the show. A tangible chemistry between the two stars and a sketch show with a unique perspective are two good reasons for this show’s existence, which is two more than nearly every other sketch comedy on TV.

9. Once Upon a Time-ABC-First half of Season 1-Last year, I'm embarrassed to say, I somehow winded up with No Ordinary Family on my year-end list. I was a little bit too stubborn to get off that train and admit the horse I backed in the proverbial Fall Season derby was a dud. This year, I'm going to go with ABC's most ambitious production and again, I have a small fear that the show's reliance on a 10-year old to dictate the rules of its universe might wear a little thin. But at the end of the day, even if the show crashes and burns, it had a great opening run that set up the possibility of a great series. As hour-long entertainment, it's been solid and the show has gradually built up its world enough to arouse curiosity over what its future may bring. A full review can be found here.

10. American Dad-Fox-Front half of Season 7, Back half of Season 8-An under discussed animated entity, American Dad deserves mention for being consistently funny and inventive. Roger, that lovable extraterrestrial duex-es-machina, continues to lead the show in interesting directions signifying just how well the writer’s room has resisted the temptations to overextend his limitless personality. Unlike sister show, Family Guy, American Dad has distinctive characters which exist as more than just an excuse to get from point A to point B in the plot.

Honorable Mentions:

-It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia-FX-A couple duds, but one of the most consistently hillarious shows on television over the last few years, deserves praise

-Mr. Sunshine, ABC-I thought Matt Perry had a fairly impressive hit on his hands and some of the side characters (particularly Nate Torrence, Allison Janney, and whomever played Heather the psycho seceretary) added a lot of color. Deserves more praise than it got. I think the score and some of its other tonal elements gave it a bad taste and I think Matt Perry's downer character wasn't necessarily appealing. I'm a fan of his type of comedy and would not have watched Friends for as long as it did.

-Terra Nova, FOX-I-Unlike Rowan Kaiser over at AV Club or James Ponziewichii P. (however you spell that guy's last name) at Time, I never thought this show took that big of a drop after its initial run. I can't deny it was exciting to see a universe with such wide open rules and I didn't see the cast.

-Sing-Off, NBC-A reality show with three great judges, a lot of great groups and an overall take-home message of synergy and harmony. Who know that you didn't need a British asshole and a dog-eat-dog environment to make a successful reality show? It might have made the top ten is I feel the show strained its format by running a couple episodes too long and I also felt the judging up to the final four was erratic.

-New Girl, Fox-Zooey Deschanel is ridiculous and implausibly weird. Even more surprisingly, I've slowly come to love her. She's so over the top and hammy, it's more of a send-up than a performance to be taken at face value. Schmidt started getting good storylines after the New Year which might have affected my rankings because it's now more of an ensemble comedy. 

-The Looney Tunes Show-Cartoon Network-Every time, I watch Looney Tunes reruns on TV, I've not only seen the skit before but I almost know the lines. In other words, I've been hungry for new Looney Tunes material for a while, so it's really good to see Bugs and Daffy back on the screen again. Then again, I wasn't expecting to see Bugs and Daffy cohabitating together in a household tackling mundane tasks like double dates, holding down a job, earning membership into a country club, being the star of a bowling league. Even worse, Yosemite Sam doesn't see Bugs and Daffy as hunting trophies, but roommates to mooch off of. Still, Kristen Wiig kills it as Lola and it does kind of make me happy to see Bugs and Daffy openly admit to being friends
-Revenge, ABC-A good twist on the high society soap opera: Having an infiltrator out to secretly destory everyone
-Web Therapy, Internet/Showtime-I did not expect to like this show because I'm not a Lisa Kudrow fan at all. This show was highly inventive in premise and execution and I was taken by surprise as its characters grew into an intertangled web with each other. Guest stars like Alan Cumming, Rashida Jones, Michael McDonald, Selma Blair and Molly Shannon all deserve great praise.


Just to let you all know what I saw this year:
2 Broke Girls, CBS, 2 and a Half Men, CBS, 30 Rock, NBC, Big Bang Theory, CBS, Bob's Burgers, Fox. Bored to Death, HBO, Burn Notice, USA, Community, NBC, Conan, TBS, Cougartown, ABC, Daily Show & Colbert Report, Comedy Central, Eastbound & Down, HBO (just one ep. but I hated it), Family Guy, FOX, Free Agents, NBC, Funny or Die Show, HBO, Futurama, NBC, Glee, Fox, Grimm, NBC, H8R, CW, Happy Endings, ABC, Ice Road Truckers, History Channel, In Plain Sight, USA, Last Man Standing, ABC, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, NBC, Life and Times of Tim, HBO (or that might be 2010, not sure), Mad, Cartoon Network, Misfits, Hulu (Although the 3 episodes I saw were originally produced in 2009), Modern Family, ABC, Off the Map, ABC, Onion Sports Dome, Comedy Central, Outsourced, NBC, Pan Am, ABC, Playboy Club, NBC, Raising Hope, Fox, Retired at 35, TV Land, Ricky Gervais Show, HBO, Royal Pains, USA, Running Wilde, Fox, Saturday Night Live, NBC, S*$# my Dad Says, CBS, Sports Show with Norm McDonald, Comedy Central, Suburgatory, ABC; United States of Tara, Showtime, Waking Dead, AMC, Wipeout, ABC

Ten great Saturday Night Live Sketches from the 2010-2011 Season

SNL has faced a lot of criticism last season for being bland and repetitive but I firmly maintain that whether you find SNL lame or cutting-edge, it’s always been consistently infused with equal parts lameness and cutting-edge material. SNL recruits from among the best comics in the world for their writing staff and even in an off-year, it would be virtually impossible not to have a few good sketches.

If you consider SNL’s past season to be a disappointment, I’d like to present a few notable exceptions to the rule:

1. Sketch: Miley Cyrus Show with Johnny Depp (From the Bryan Cranston episode)

SNL’s achilles heel has long been their inability to resist running a good concept it into the ground. But while you may by tired of the Miley Cyrus Show after four viewings, you have to admit that the skit jumped out at you when you first saw it. For a variety show which overuses the mock talk-show concept, that’s nothing to shake a stick at.

One great thing is you don’t have to know anything about Miley Cyrus to appreciate the skit. Vanessa Bayer’s monotoned character is a fill-in for any commercialized starlet and it’s remarkably sharp from the creepily uneasy relationship with her father to the lack of historic pop-culture awareness (To guest  Johnny Depp: “I’ve been a fan of yours going all the way back to Willy Wonka”). I also loved the bombardment of questions all at once (although somewhat similar to Australian show “The Chasers” and the character “Mr. Ten Questions”). Points also go to the writers for working in a brick joke at the end: “Oh you’re from France? Did you know that…”

2. Christine O’Donnell Gets Vetted (From the Amy Poehler episode)

SNL’s opening politically-tinged sketches exist out of habit and sometime feel stale. I loved this one, however, because like the Cyrus sketch, it was just as hilarious if you didn’t have any idea who Christine O’Donnell is. The premise was gold regardless of the specifics of current events: Two campaign strategists sent to help a candidate manage her PR fiascos discover she has twice as many ghosts in her closet. Rewatch this sketch and take notice of how completely unexpected its twists and turns are: A strategist saying “this campaign is going to be a real dogfight” segues into a reveal that O’Donnell was in fact running dog fights herself. Great work by Jason Sudeikis as straight man and Kristen Wiig as O’Donnell.

3. Hassles at the Globe Theater (from the Gwyneth Paltrow episode)

This sketch poses the question of what it would be like if the hassles of our modern movie going experience (i.e. excessive previews, cell phones, oversized concessions) existed in Shakespeare’s time. It’s an incredibly simple premise and might not seem to offer much, but a creative approach brought out lines such as “In case of fire, the emergency exits are nowhere, so please make your peace with God” or “Please be sure to silence your falconer.” Because a black-eyed peas song was used, the sketch is not available online due to licensing issues, so please enjoy this transcript: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/10/10lglobe.phtml

4. The mom’s boyfriend talk show (Jane Lynch episode)

A great example of how a good sketch is supposed to escalate and surprise the viewer as it goes on. A kid (Andy Samburg) wants to interview his mom’s one-night stands (Jason Sudeikis) and turn it into a talk show. At first glance, the sketch seems like a cute but tired concept and given that the show overrelies on mock talk shows, I wouldn’t have expected them to have taken it any further. Then suddenly, the sketch morphs into something entirely different: When the son casually mentions that this is the 100^th episode of his show, this prompts the boyfriend to suddenly do the math and realize he’s in a lot of trouble. Panic ensues as the skit ratchets up into a whole new level of chaos and hilarity.

5. Mort Feingold: Celebrity Accountant (Helen Mirren episode)

That this hit sketch from last season was only repeated once this season might have more to do with the limits of the cast to churn out celebrity impressions on cue then anyone deciding that once a season was an appropriate number (When has that ever happened?). The sketch is essentially an excuse to package together a bunch of impressions, topical jokes, and one-note gags under the guise of a cheesy stock character played by Andy Samberg. The punchlines aren’t all showstoppers, but they’re enveloped into the flow of the sketch such that it all fits together seamlessly at. For example, when Mort Feingold counters Ricky Martin’s announcement that he’s gay with a mediocre line like “I got news for you, I’m Jewish,” he hams up the line and it segues to the next jingle, so there’s hardly anything lost on the viewer.  The skit also shows how talented and deep the cast can be with nearly everyone getting a chance to shine.

6. Catherine meets the Queen and King (Host Anne Hathaway)


As some Americans were soaking up the glamour of Prince William’s royal wedding and other Americans were scratching their heads about what was so monumental about a wedding in England, SNL took the opportunity to slay the golden calf that is the British royal house in hilarious fashion. Bride-to-be Catherine Middleton (Anne Hathaway) discovers in her first private meeting with the Queen and Prince Phillip that they are really thieving low-lives with cockney accents.


7. Stars of Tomorrow (Scarlett Johannsen episode)

Scarlett Johannsen and Vanessa Bayer play two of the greatest actresses of children’s theater according to various talking heads in this mockumentary. The actresses hilariously ham up monologues from “Forrest Gump,” “The Color Purple,” “On the Waterfront” “A Few Good Men” and “Brokeback Mountain.”

8. Osama Bin Laden’s video will

SNL can be so unimaginative with their opening sketches that I half-expected the episode following Bin Laden’s death to result in another Presidential or vice-presidential press conference. Instead we had a more imaginative alternative: Osama’s video living will in which he asks that due to his deadly fear of fishes he asks that noone bury him at sea. Other highlights include his trust of the Pakistani government and how diluted his estate will be when diluted among 750 grandchildren and 11,000 nieces and nephews.

9. Livin’ Single (Host: Russell Brand)

Vanessa Bayer was a great addition to the cast this season (not to take anything away from the other new arrivals) because she’s a great actress from which the burden can be eased on Kristn Wiig. This sketch works entirely because of her selling it. First, she sells us on being a woman who’s so fiercely proud of singledom that she can inspire other single women in her own talk show. Then she sells us on being someone who’s slowly being seduced out of it all by Russell Brand.