Back to Sitcoms

Perhaps I should start off by saying that I never really enjoyed either Everybody Loves Raymond or Frasier. Perhaps I should start off by saying that I never really enjoyed sitcoms. Perhaps I should start off by saying that when I read about the new show Back to You I rolled my eyes. I think that covers my ass adequately.

Well I write a blog on comedy and Back to You is one of the most anticipated comedies hitting this new season, maybe I'd be amiss if I didn't blog about it at least once. So I made myself catch the tail end of the premier. I wasn't all that impressed. But you know to be fair perhaps I should watch the entire show before I pan it outright yeah? So I found myself a download.

When I checked out the credits I was sort of excited to see Christopher Lloyd was a co-creator. Doc Brown knows a thing or two about funny. Unfortunately there are multiple Christopher Lloyds in this universe and this is the bloke behind Frasier and Wings. Alas.

So onto the show! The pilot actually starts with a youtube clip of Grammer's character blooping on live TV. I think a few other comedies (and reality) have hit this joke first, but keep trying guys. The show centers around the production of the daily news and the team of characters doesn't really provide the audience with anything they haven't seen before. In fact the characters are strangely reminiscent of folks from Bruce Almighty and The Anchorman. The one character that wasn't immediately recognizable was the news director but that's quickly rectified with a brief monologue. He's an internet geek promoted to TV news director and is 26. Him and the sports announcer provide the closest approximation to humour (ie I laughed at each of them once).

But the real point, I guess, of the show is the chemistry between our two leads, however, the scenes featuring Grammer and Heaton were some of the most awkwardly acted scenes I've seen on television recently. I don't know if it's a lack of chemistry or just poor acting, but their scenes come off like some low quality local theatre. Both of these cats are sitcom stars, what's the deal? Mysteriously, the show also attempts to pull on the old heart strings with the revelation of Grammer as the father to Heaton's 10 year old daughter. The last scene is Grammer sipping some sort of bourbon or whiskey and calling Heaton to tell her the child is magnificent. This was the third time I laughed at the show.

Back to You isn't original in any regard. Unfortunately it isn't really funny in any regard either. The young geeky news manager and sports dude don't provide consistent laughs and the actual main characters/main thrust of the show are actually painful to watch. Hell though, I bet this show will be a hit and I'll have another reason to loathe Fox.

The Office returns this week.

So I started reading my monday morning webcomics....

Who the hell is Ryan Estrada?

Comedy Spotting

Being the second post of Now That's Comedy I decided to start off with my FIRST comedian feature. When I feature a comedian I'll try to write something a little interesting on his/her style and where you can see/hear some performance. Demetri Martin gets the honour of being the first featured comedian because, well, my roommate said so.

I was introduced to Demetri Martin on The Daily Show via his Trendspotting segments. His quirky sense of humour and delivery earned him a returning role on The Daily Show and in my ... heart. So! I obtained his comedy album These are Jokes and didn't delete it after a run through. The album is a live show bookended with some studio songs that are actually not immediately skippable. After listening to the performance I often enjoy Demetri's song on grapes. They are so delicious.

What Demetri does right is his delivery. His jokes are admirable in their simplicity but his delivery adds an almost childlike whimsy and sense of discovery to the material that moves a joke on sweater vests into the joke my sister will demand anytime any semblance of the topic is broached. Along with his delivery Demetri also knows how to punctuate his jokes with both music and graphics. Some of my favourite bits involve one of those paper standy-jobs our elementary profs used to make long brainstormed lists of what type of animals in the sea we could do our projects on. And who doesn't like a joke that utilizes a pie chart? I'll toss out the word multimodal here because I know some of you cats like that sort of thing.

Check out his videos on Comedy Central (though I have no idea where you could find them).

See ya soon.

Never open with a fart joke.

Why do people get so excited when they are the first to post in a comments section? Does “w00t, first post!” even count as a comment? Why am I discussing this instead of making the first *actual* post for Now that’s Comedy? I blame Dan Akroyd.

Do you even want back-story? Seeing how this is the first post maybe readers will be more forgiving and thus interested in why they're reading this blog. Then again perhaps they won’t. Jerks.

The story is simple. I read a lot of music blogs. I enjoy them. I do, however, also enjoy the comedy, but only really stumble upon comedy news tangentially. And my involvement in some sort of comedy discourse is limited to the conversations I have with my roommate when we’re doing our laundry. So I thought popping out a blog that tried to keep up with comedy news and commentary seemed like a good idea. Then again, so did Pickle Gak when I was eight.

Proposal: Now that’s Comedy hopes to blog (consistently) on what’s going on in the world of comedy. I’ll be blogging about comedians, their projects, their gossip, and also their hygiene habits if I can get a certain judge to overturn a number of restraining orders. Also, in the coming months I’ll probably be spending some time discussing the new block of comedies that’ll be appearing on your neighbourhood visiontube since new sitcoms (and new forms of disgust) are just too good of an opportunity to pass up given the comedy blog nature of this whole endeavour.

That’s it. Hope to see you soon.