Dads Pilot

Oh my, how long I’ve been waiting for this moment. Anyone who’s read a decent portion of my blog knows that I do not find Seth MacFarlane to be the most revolutionary TV show writer, and although I like Family Guy, I’ve blasted him and pretty much all his shows as well as this one, Dads.

Now where do I begin? How about the laughter track? The purpose of laughter track escapes me. The only way a laughter track could be good was if it featured everybody from the Skype laughter chain, and even then, if they split their sides at every little fucking line, it’d get annoying. If anything, it only served to remind how me how utterly unfunny and shitty the jokes were.

Seth Green’s face here perfectly mirrors my exact reaction while watching Dads.

Oh, and the amount of cheap jokes about stereotypes in this show could pose some problems later on in the series when they inevitably run out of stereotypes to repeat. Let’s play guess what culture the jokes are talking about!

“My dad beat me with a math book till I was sixteen.”

“No, because you’re going to dress up as a sexy, [blank] schoolgirl.”

“And thanks to your beautiful maid for making all this food”/“I’m his wife.”

“The [blank] are lovely and honourable people, but you can’t trust them.”

“That creepy translator texted me a picture of his tiny penis.”

Did you get it? It went Chinese, Chinese, Latina, Chinese and Chinese. I’m not offended by the stereotypes (despite the first and last ones actually reinforcing them), but it seems like extremely lazy writing directed at people who laugh more than punk criminals in 90’s action movies.

Now, obviously due to my well-documented but largely unseen dislike towards this show even prior to its release, you might think I have been really fucking bias. And I understand. But I was well aware of that before I started watching it, so I decided I would try my hardest to smile if I found anything they said or did even relatively amusing.

Now if that’s not the most airtight solution in gaining a fair balance, I don’t know what is.

I smiled twice, once towards the end when Seth Green’s character, Eli sees his dad in the taxi at a red light and another time when I saw a funky light-up PS3 controller that Eli and Warner were using, which turned out to be the best thing about this show.

An extremely lame and forced deus ex machine, fittingly, resolves the plot. After a deal went wrong earlier in the show, Eli, Warner and their fathers walk into their workplace, talk for a while, before Brenda Song’s character comes in and says they got the deal. How? The translator texted her a dick pic and she threatened to make it public unless he convinced his bosses to take the deal. Because fuck it.

I don’t know much about businesses, but how much power does a sub-par translator (who didn’t seem very fluent in English considering he was working for a company that is investing millions) have?

The show ends with each one of the characters making a separate joke about the penis picture.

If I had to rate this show, its unlovable characters and its half-assed, overused plot, I’d give it a “fuck you” out of 10. Because that’s what I’d say to any fans of the show and that’s what Seth MacFarlane is saying to original comedy.

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist Pilot

You’ll never see lazier drawing than what you’ll find in this show. The characters don’t move apart from their eyes and lips. Everything around them is coloured in grey except the things they’re using or going to use. It’s like Schindler’s List, but with more Jewish people.

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist was the first animation to introduce Squigglevision. Which means that the characters’ outlines constantly move and wave, making everyone look like they were drawn by nervous, jittery meth heads. Their noses also look like smiles, which can get distracting and downright freaky.

It’s a comedy that mostly revolves around a therapist Dr. Katz (Jonathan Katz) who listens to the problems of his many clients, most of whom are well-known comedians including Ray Romano, Louis C.K. Emo Philips, Jeffrey Ross, Jon Stewart, Patton Oswalt, Ben Stiller, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Sarah Silverman, Dave Chapelle and a lot of others you don’t know. As you can see from the inclusion of Emo Philips and Dave Chapelle, this show is not recent, first aired in 1995 and ending 1999. It also included the voice actor messiah, H. Jon Benjamin’s (Archer, Bob’s Burgers), first TV role.

The therapy sessions serve as a stage for the comedians to perform their comedy routines with cartoon representation (a bit like The Ricky Gervais Show) and Dr. Katz replying to their words. This just makes everything more funny because whatever jokes are made just make them sound stranger. You’ll understand when you watch it. Or not, but to be honest, I couldn’t give less of a fuck.

These therapy sessions are absolute gold. Listening to Ray Romano talk about not remembering whether he shampooed his hair in the shower cannot be presented in a funnier way than this show allows. The back-and-forths between the characters outside of the therapy sessions aren’t always as good though, especially the scenes between Ben (H. Jon Benjamin) and Laura (Laura Silverman). Although Dr. Katz’s conversations at the bar with his two friends are usually pretty awesome.

As the ultra-observant may have spotted, I’ve included lots of links to clips of the show in this post because this show could easily be enjoyed through clips of the therapy sessions alone. Check out one of the clips and tell me why this show isn’t more well known.

The Venture Bros. Pilot

I know I’ve not posted for three days. But you probably didn’t know that.

The Venture Bros. is a cartoon action/comedy on Adult Swim that I’d heard of many a time but ignored until my love for cartoons re-emerged.

It sets it’s premise by taking the piss out of children’s adventure shows like Jonny Quest, The Hardy Boys and Scooby-Doo as well as repeatedly referencing comic superheroes and supervillains. The story itself focuses on Dean and Hank Venture, the innocent, over-energetic and extremely vulnerable sons of Rusty Venture, a scientist working in the shadow of his father.

Now, in sheer awesomeness, we also have Brock Samson. The baddest ass- I mean the badassest? The most badass character ever. When I saw he was on this show, I instantly recalled this GIF I saw. Fuck Yeah. To further demonstrate how he’s THE fucking man, he is voiced by Patrick Warburton (Family Guy, The Tick, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and basically every beefy character in any animated series).

In the first episode alone, Brock kills a mummy, an alligator and two robbers. Despite this, I was disappointed in the first two episodes. But the third episode and on were phenomenal. Fucking phenomenal even. I mean…there’s this

Is that not the most fucked up, twisted-looking, nightmare-inducing contorted, creepy smiling Sasquatch you’ve ever seen?

This show really is something else and the Venture brothers themselves are insanely naive and a real joke on the all American, “gosh!” “golly!”, adventurous, but inexperienced teenager. Plus, thanks to it being a cartoon and not real life, Brock’s violence is so over-the-top that I curse physics and common sense for not making reality more like it.

All hail the Monarch.

Moone Boy Pilot

Moone Boy is an Irish sitcom created, written by and starring Chris O’Dowd, who’s known for saying “Have you tried turning it on and off again” in an accent on The IT Crowd. The woman in The IT Crowd, Katherine Parkinson, just ended up being in a cringe-worthy Maltesers advert which made me less likely to buy Maltesers because I would feel emasculated. In fact, all chocolate adverts seem to suggest only women eat chocolate, which should generally be hidden away in a drawer. Snickers and Yorkie, which are packed with extra testosterone, are the only chocolates directed to men for some reason. It’s a bit strange that chocolate bars with girth and nuts are the ones that men apparently like. What is Moone Boy? Why’d I write it in the title? Was I saying something about it?

After my little tangent induced by Katherine Parkinson, let me get back to Moone Boy. It’s a sitcom about a quirky kid who sees an imaginary Chris O’Dowd and calls him Seán (the accent means you have to say Sean as the Irish would say it), This kid, called Martin, lives in some village and the show revolves around his family and school life. His unusual imagination is brought to life in his drawings which, if seen by an adult, would seem rather worrying.

Having your child draw a picture of himself on a bike with a mysterious bearded fellow hitching a ride definitely warrants a serious discussion.

Martin is a charming little freak, who is lovable if you’re an adult, but I feel that, as a kid, I would have despised his well-spoken, confident joy. But that might just be me. His openness would have frightened me. Luckily, I’m all grown up and I’m only slightly unnerved by his mousy smile.

The sitcom itself is unique in the sense that the plot in the pilot seemed to be unexpectedly different from usual sitcoms. Or maybe it’s not different, but done differently. Either way, I enjoyed it. It was definitely funny and interesting and other positive words.

Overall: POSITIVE WORDS!!!!

Human Giant Pilot

Human Giant is a sketch comedy created by and starring Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation), Rob Huebel (Childrens Hospital) and Paul Scheer (The League).

I’m not usually fond of sketch shows. There’s always a massive hit and miss factor that makes me think “fuck this” and give up on attempting to watch every episode. Key & Peele is an exception since I can’t remember an unfunny sketch and I was sure that it would be the only sketch show I ever devoted time to (fuck never ending on a preposition).

Until today! I didn’t want to watch Human Giant because it was aired on MTV, a channel which has shows like Teen Mom, fucking Jersey Shore and generally features a bunch of people you genuinely believe should be euthanised in the hopes that we might progress considerably faster as a race. And sharing a channel with Snooki is not a promising sign. But Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer are all brilliant comedians and this show is surprisingly good considering the channel, but expected from the comedy trio.

There’s not really much to say about this show since it’s a sketch show, there’s no story. But there is Ghostface Killah hitting Aziz Ansari with a baseball bat. It also has Rob Riggle, who you may know as the shouty police officer from Hangover who gets children to taser the main characters. He plays an over-excited civilian that’s typical during street magic.

It only ran for two seasons in 2007-2008 so I can only hope that each sketch is as consistent, which is less likely with sketch shows since each sketch is like a mini-episode, it’s easier to run out of ideas as well. I think. I dunno, I’ve never tried to write one, Little Britain scared me away from the idea of sketch shows. I don’t like it. But I came to realise that Little Britain is really just a unique pile of shit. Yeah but no but shut the fuck up.

Maybe that was a bit harsh. Probably not. Here’s a strange painting I found on Google Images of the Human Giant cast, featuring Aziz Ansari’s nipples.

In The Flesh Pilot

It’s summer and I don’t really have anything to do. That bunch of free time I’ve used to find every TV show I haven’t seen that looks slightly interesting to me and watch the pilot. Which also means I’m going to write about each pilot. Golly, are you guys in for a wild ride!

BBC’s In the Flesh is the first show I watched. It’s set in an England where some kinda zombie uprising recently took place, with a regiment called HVF (Helmet Vendetta Fathers probably) used to stop them. The main character, a guy with a face that looks constantly worried and lost, is recovering from his zombism in a zombie rehab centre and he is going back home for the first time since he turned. How will he be treated when he is labelled with Partially Deceased Syndrome.

Get your facts straight. PDS is only passed through biting. It’s ok to touch one of them.

But this guy’s little sister, who seems oh so hateable at the start, fought in the HVF. So BAM! Conflict, straight off the bat. Speaking of which, the show features a cricket bat with nails in and a chainsaw. And I think I speak for us all when I say I look forward to seeing to seeing both of them in action.

Another conflict is that the whole town thinks the rehabilitating dead are a huge threat. For some reason. With the religious beard fucking riling up the town and what have you.

Don’t tell me that the premise to the show isn’t just making all the zombie-fetishists wet themselves. Or do tell me actually, I really need the comments. In any case, this is kinda a review so I’ve got to say, it was good.

Really good, in fact. Better than Walking Dead. I assume. I haven’t seen it, but that’s because I’m not fond of intense dramas like that. Especially when there are zombies being ignored. Plus there are only three episodes in the first season of In the Flesh, so all the unexpected and expected action and revelations are kinda thrown at you one after the other like old vinyls.

The acting was…convincing. I mean, I know it wasn’t real, but they kinda tried to make it seem so, like they were other people, which is supposedly the point of acting. So well done guys. Especially constantly anxious Kieran. And the Cillian Murphy look alike. I like how his story ended. Oh, and the stuttering, panicked politician trying to alleviate the crowd. He was arguing for the good cause, but my God did I want the mob to hang him by his tie.

I think that’s good enough a review. The majority of it is fact…which isn’t really like a traditional review I guess. Because I’m nonconformist (or that’s how I’m trying to paint myself at least) who is modernising things. For…the worse!

Is that Adrien Brody behind you? Scared you right? Fucking pterodactyl face freak.