Friday, March 30, 2007

Things I hate

Tim and Eric on Adult Swim.
I hate "Tom Goes To The Mayor." It is a stupid, stupid show.
I hate "The Tim and Eric Super Amazing Show! Good Job!" or whatever it's called.

They try so very very hard. And it is the worst form of contrived "randomness." It's not Dadaist, it's not absurdist. It's the ramblings of two idiots who were once told they were funny by a bunch of stoned losers and have taken it way too seriously.

Here is what I miss:
Sealab 2021
Space Ghost Coast to Coast
Venture Brothers (the second season was nowhere near as good as the first - shoddy production values).

7 comments:

Seph said...

Yeah, genuinely absurdist humor is fantastic, and just about the most awesome thing in the universe (after, of course, silly putty). It's so easy to go wrong, though, and have it just come across as completely forced and not funny at all. I always think of Happy Noodle Boy, by Jhonen Vasquez -- everything else he's done (Invader Zim, Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) does a great job of balancing the surreal and random and fun. Happy Noodle Boy is just excessively random and totally incoherent, and hence I don't much like it.

Sydney said...

Yes, exactly! Sealab 2020 was great because it was totally random while still being totally coherent. In one episode Sealab is (predictably) about to blow up, but that information comes in while two characters are in the middle of a discussion of what robot animal could beat what other robot animal, which devolves into a discussion of what kind of robot they'd want to be, what features they'd want to have. As other characters enter, rather than addressing the actual problem at hand (holy crap, Sealab is about to blow up!), they join in the conversation about what kind of robot they'd want to be. It's this hilarious conversation made insane by context and then surreal by the fact that they all suddenly have robot bodies by the end. And then Sealab blows up. Such a good show!

But this Tim and Eric crap... man, it's fawking unwatchable. Their both kind of chubby and seem to think that this makes their very existance funny. I read somewhere that Will Farrell used to be ripped and that he gained 20 pounds for SNL because chubby was funnier. Note the morphology: -ier, not -y. That is the kind of stuff that Tim and Eric consistantly forget. A guy with love handles in tight, low-rider jeans is not inherently funny. Make that guy Will Farrell in the Blue Oyster Cult sketch that's become so famous ("I've got a fever for which there is but one cure: More Cowbell!") and that compination is hilarious. But make that guy Tim or Eric making kissy faces and random wild animal noises while the background color swirls and shifts like an early music video and it's just retarded. They're trying so hard, and it just makes me want to punch them in the nuts. Their motto seems to be "More is MORE!" and they just throw everything in. There's no craft!

Pete is totally sick of me complaining about how much I hate Vanderbilt's nickname during the sweet sixteen. "Vandy." It just irritates me, like nails on a blackboard. "It's Vandy at the three point line... Vandy takes the foul... Vandy Vandy Vandy!" But every time I say, "Tim and Eric suck and I hate them," he goes, "Yep, pretty much." They're show is so bad, even Pete can get behind my repetitions.

Sydney said...

Oh no! Bad grammar! Not "they're show"! "Their show!" Damnit!

Joe Streckert said...

I haven't seen this "Tim and Eric" of which you speak, but if you liked Sealab then I think you'd also like Frisky Dingo. The whole thing's on YouTube.
It's by the same people who did Sealab, and it is random and weird, but it does have a plot, albeit a really strange one. Basically, a superhero and a supervillian both suck at their respective jobs. It just sort of goes from there. One warning- it is quite violent.

I have to put in that I don't mind Happy Noodle Boy, as the premise is that it's a comic written by a homocidially insane person.

I think that the best and worst of surreal humor can be found in various Monty Python episodes. On one hand, the cleverness of things like the Argument Clinic or the sheer hilariousness of John Cleese getting hit in the face with fish are pure awesome. But, when it comes to stuff like over-enunciating idiot characters (you know THE! ONES! WHO! TALK! LIKE! THIS!) I'm left cold. Surreal humor, weirdly enough, needs to have a bit of subtlety and straighntess. The Anarchist Peasant bit from Holy Grail wouldn't be funny if the two characters were shouting at each other nonsensically- it's funny because both characters are trying to be quite reasonable, albeit in completely contrary ways. It's strange, then, that this bit of reasonableness and mundane behavior can be made quite absurd. There's nothing in the Peasant bit that, in the proper context, would not be strange. There really were kings. There really were anarchists. There really were Arthuran legends. It is the juxtaposition and the presentation that makes it so weird- not the content itself. That's not something, I think, that many humorists realize.

Unknown said...

Good God! Tim and Eric are the absolute worst thing to happen on Adult swim. For goodness sake can someone please cancel that show? I switch off to anything else whenever they come on. Its embarrassing how these two guys can make a show out of total retarded, unfunny (and I mean ZERO funny) and still be on Adult swim. Its like someone told them they were funny, but didnt realy mean it, and they believed it and made a show out of sad, idiotic, scatalogical attempts to be randomly funny, all of which falls horribly flat on the face of their absolute lack of anything even closely resembling funny, much less artistically satirical. I mean, satire requires a little intelligence and this show (from the few episodes I have sat through in the interest of trying to be objective) lacks in everything. The same adult swim that gave us Moral Oriel, family guy and robot chicken (?), I mean, every time I see these guys on TV I feel comedy die a little bit. I cant even stand to see the promo's on Adult swim for the shows. Like this craptacular nonesense is supposed to interest who exactly? You would have to be either really high, really drunk, or really really really retarded to find this crap entertaining in any way. CANCEL THE STUPID TIM AND ERIC SHOW YESTERDAY ALREADY AS, PLEASE we beg of you.

Anonymous said...

What can I say, Tim and Eric is a waste of a program slot. There's a difference between being stupid funny and just being retarded. I mean, Family Guy is stupid as all hell, but you know it's gonna make you laugh a little. And I swear at least one of them has to be a closet fag (unless he's already out). Do you think maybe it's the characters? Family Guy and Frisky Dingo have dozens of characters so someone can appeal to somebody. Tim and Eric is just the 2 same retards tarding their way through another shitty episode. The only good I could get from that show that when it comes on, I know it's time for Futurama. I TRIED my hardest to be fair and give it a shot -- NOPE. They screwed that up. Looking at the list of comments here, I know I'm not alone, so if there's someone out there who loves the show or disagrees with our disdain towards the show, please, give us your reasons because we really wanna know why this crap is still on!

Stentor said...

Three years later and this piece of shit is still on Adult Swim, WTF?!? Hello? They're still not funny, just awesomely retarded. I swear, if I ever see either of these two idiots in public, I'm going to rip them a couple new cornholes.