Like its unusual and loquacious title, Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job!, a live-action sketch comedy show on Cartoon Network's [adult swim], doesn't play by the rules.
The first season of this admirably preposterous series, currently in its second season, is now available on DVD so avid watchers can view the 11-minute episodes over and over again to collectively kill about an hour.
Creators, eponymous stars and best friends Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim parody and satirize all kinds of television shows and commercials. There are nearly constant visual effects in the background to keep the show as animated and colorfully vivacious as a cartoon, since the show is mostly two guys fooling around in front of a green screen.
The series ventures into the unknown with its bizarre brand of rapid-fire, random comedy a la another off-beat [adult swim] creation, Robot Chicken, and, in a historically comedic sense, Andy Kaufman.
The fragmented structure of sketch after sketch offers a jolt of strangeness: If something doesn't work, then it's on to the next gag. The running time of each episode is so brief that they can't get boring, unless you have a case of ADD that can't be soothed by hours of [adult swim].
For a show created on such a diminutive, budget-from-their-wallet scale, it hosts a crew of celebrity cameos. The most surprising being John C. Reilly, who appears in more than half of the first season's episodes as Dr. Steve Brule, a correspondent on a local news show, which is one of Tim and Eric's regular sketches. The scenes with Reilly, especially the "Brule's Rules" segment, border on brilliance. Reilly's Brule, donning a Disco Stu-esque afro, expresses a nervous enthusiasm and repressed despair as he stares into the teleprompter.
The list of guest actors includes David Cross, Michael Cera, Zach Galifianakis, "Weird Al" Yankovic and Paul Reubens. Their appearances in commercials or fake programs contribute to the duo's nonsensical vision with mixed results. In a grotesquely funny commercial that worked, a spokesman (Will Forte) for Lazy Horse Mattresses and Bedding lies down on a mattress and immediately dreams of biting off someone's arm with blood spurting out. One of the season's most visceral sketches, it concludes with Forte's head exploding.
Scintillating faux commercials include one for B'ougar, which is advertised as a cross between a stuffed bear and cougar that sits by your bed so you have something to be legitimately afraid of when you wake up. "Keep your imagination in check," the announcer says.
The gags are relatively harmless, ranging from incomprehensible to side-splittingly hilarious, but more often than not the viewer is trying to understand the joke instead of reacting to it.
The manic surrealism and scatterbrained structure of Heidecker and Wareheim's sense of humor is an acquired taste, but its potent aftertaste has accrued a devoted following who cerebrate on similar wavelengths.
For the rest of us, Tim and Eric: Awesome Show, Great Job! can be seen as a commendable effort. One can't help but appreciate their bold and absurd originality, but at some point, their left-field routine has to return home.
Grade: B-
