Tag: comedy

Master of None

Natalie Minor Leave a comment

This week has been a monster filled with to-do lists, late nights and early mornings, which is why I definitely should not have started Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix series, Master of None. And yet there I was last night, telling myself that if I just watched the first episode while eating dinner, it would be fine! Because how much could I get done when my hands were otherwise occupied by feta bread from Pizza House anyways? (Shout-out to my roommate for only slightly guilting me into stopping there for her student org’s fundraiser.)

If you’ve talked to me in the last 24 hours, you are probably not surprised that I am once again talking about this show, because I have grasped at so many straws today in order to bring it up in conversation. I’m not playing – I brought it up in a Women’s Studies class. To make a serious point. That’s how geeked I am about this show.

The first episode in the series, appropriately titled Plan B, starts off with a casual hook-up for main character Dev, played by Aziz, that culminates in an uber ride to the drug store to pick up the morning-after pill. The scene serves as an intriguing look at the lives of our generation and our reliance on technology, showing the two characters Googling whether or not his hook-up could get pregnant and then calling an uber X to pick them up, all while still undressed and under the covers.

The main character is then sent down a rabbit hole full of babies, trying to figure out if he should be thinking of settling down and starting a family. He attends a birthday party for his friend’s baby (but only for the bounce house, of course) where he gets a look at the beauty of parenthood, only to see the other side of the coin when he babysits his friend’s devilish children later in the day. When I say devilish….this woman’s 7 year old son took out his genitals at the grocery store and rubbed it on 30 boxes of frozen waffles because “it feels good!”

At the end of the day, Dev is left exhausted and the viewer is left with a more moderate view of parenthood, which is generous for a show created by Aziz, who spent half of his newest comedy show talking about how awful the concept of parenthood is. We learn that Dev is definitely not ready to have children (as alluded to by the numerous instances in the episode where his actions mirrored those of a child), but that parenthood in general is a collection of wonderful and hair-pulling experiences.

I went into this show expecting something larger-than-life out of a comedian who screams half of his punchlines (I love you Aziz, I promise I do), but what I was with was a show created by a super intelligent dude full of social commentary. He touches on some really interesting issues and brings a fresh take to some issues that some might think have been talked dry. It’s the kind of show that you start for the laughs and stay with for the message, which is why I think that it will reach a broader audience than some of his stand-up.

I would definitely recommend this show, so I’ll leave the trailer here:

(Shoutout to Dev Patel from Meet the Patels, and also Aziz Ansari’s real dad who plays his father on the show)

The New That’s What She Said

Natalie Minor Leave a comment

Ah, the sexual innuendo. Comedy at it’s best. Simultaneously low-hanging fruit and a playground for elaboration and weird twists and turns. Just this past Friday ComCo ended their improv show with some downright dirty “I like my men like I like my…” jokes – not only a refreshing departure from jokes about women (been there, done that), but a great way to compare men to clocks. Those dongs though.

The best token innuendo to carry around in your pocket in recent years has been the well-renowned and oft-overused “that’s what she said,” the catchphrase of one Michael Scott, manager of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton office. I would give you some examples of this timing-reliant joke, but it might be better to show you one of the best scenes in which it is used:

Though the fad of the “that’s what she said” has passed, it is still one of the classic meme’s of our generation, and a safety net to fall back on when in a war of wit and out of retorts.  As generally happens, though, there is a new kid in town, thanks to a very special detective from Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Detective Jake Peralta will never pass up the opportunity to turn a relatively innocent comment into a slight about one’s sex life, and as a result has developed a pair of spectacular comebacks. “That’s the name of your sex tape” and “That was your nickname in high school” might seem innocuous enough on first glance, but timed right and land hard. Here are a few examples of titles/nicknames, because there isn’t a good montage online:

“Kind, sober, and fully dressed.”
“It’s not your fault, I was terrible.”
“I’m terrible at this, when can we stop.”
“But seriously, what is taking so long?”
“I’m sorry about tonight!”
“It was slightly less unbearable with you.”
“Not even going to touch that.”

These jokes haven’t quite caught on yet, but I imagine that their day is right around the corner. In a country where we turn everything into sex, we might as well enjoy ourselves while we do it, which is why I carry these two quips around with me, waiting for just the right moment to pull them out. Until they set their roots in pop culture, I know I will get more than a few confused looks, but it’s worth the last laugh.

Now, about the Aristocrats…

The Life and Lies of George Costanza

Natalie Minor Leave a comment

Sometimes I sit alone and wonder whether there is a better or worse character in the history of television than George Costanza, who if you don’t know is one of the four ensemble characters on Seinfeld. Many times I have cried from laughter watching this dysfunctional, irrational man getting himself in and out of tight spots (both literally and figuratively), but just as many times I have cringed at the thought that this walking farce is based on a real person. Let’s just consider some of the things that Georgie (as his mom so affectionately calls him) has gotten away with relatively unscathed:

  • He creates a fake charity called the Human Fund so that he doesn’t have to get his coworkers Christmas presents by making a donation on their behalf. He then accepts a hefty donation to his fake charity by his boss and tries to keep it for himself.
  • He leaves his car in the New York Yankee’s parking garage for a week and his boss George Steinbrenner assumes he’s DEAD, so he fakes a bunch of injuries to cover for the fact that he just never goes to work.
  • His fiancé dies from licking too many toxic envelopes while sending out wedding invitations, and he doesn’t mourn her so much as he mourns the giant fortune he finds out they would have inherited together.
  • He tries to get Elaine to set him up with Marisa Tomei (yes, that Marisa Tomei) even though he is engaged at the time (which he is aware of, thank you very much.)
  • He has a contractor alter his desk so he can sleep under it instead of doing work. When George Steinbrenner comes looking for him and sits in his office for over 3 hours, he has Jerry call in a bomb threat to get him out of the office, only to have Steinbrenner and his grandkids hide under his desk and find him.
  • He goes on a date with a waitress from Monk’s and while walking through the park talks about how, when you break it down, manure isn’t so bad. It’s just a newer, with a ma in front of it!
  • He starts dating a woman in prison because she won’t be able to “pop in” on him unexpectedly, and then tries to break up with her when she’s up for parole (she doesn’t get out on parole but then does the ultimate pop-in when she breaks out of prison and shows up at his apartment.)

This is just a taste of the absolute chaos that is the life of George Costanza. His life is like the opposite of the whole “I can’t make this up” in that it’s complete nonsense – there’s no way his life isn’t made up. And yet somewhere, at this very moment, Larry David is walking around causing some raucous. The genius who created Seinfeld based George off of himself, a fact that simultaneously leaves me disturbed and feeling better about my own life.

As I so often do, I will leave you with a little bit of George Costanza. Here’s a best of:

 

Miranda Sings: Alter Egos and Women in Comedy

Jeannie Marie Leave a comment

In case you hadn’t noticed, I love Jimmy Fallon, and during midterms week I may have slightly overdosed on YouTube videos during study breaks…or instead of study breaks. Oops.

But no, I’m not going to talk about Jimmy Fallon yet again, he was merely the mechanism for how I found out about my current topic.

Sasha Fierce. Lemony Snicket. Gorillaz.

What do all three of these things have in common? It’s not music, because Lemony Snicket isn’t a musician, he’s an author. At first glance, it may not be obvious, but when you think about it, they all do have something in common.

They are all alter egos. Think back to when you were a kid, reading A Series of Unfortunate Events (or, if you’re like me, you were probably reading them in the recent rather than distant past). Do you remember how the mystery about who Lemony Snicket actually is intrigued you? Do you remember wondering if this was actually a true story because the narrator was so convincing?

I don’t know what it is about alter egos, but they always seem to fascinate me, especially when they reach a certain level of dedication. When I met “Lemony Snicket,” or rather Daniel Handler, I was fascinated by his willingness to play with this alter ego to entertain all of the kids sitting in front of him on the carpet of the library we were in. And I was thrilled when I walked up to have my book signed by him, only to get witty sarcasm and a note in my book that said “Jeannie! Hi! How are you? Me, too.” Alter egos are simply fascinating to me.

Which is why, when I first saw Miranda Sings playing pictionary on Jimmy Fallon, I became mildly obsessed with her.

The skit is hilarious, but where Jerry Seinfeld and Martin Short were obviously making jokes, Miranda was not. She was withdrawn, and yet I found her the best part of the skit. Instantly I looked her up on YouTube where most of her audience comes from. I scrolled through the videos and though I didn’t automatically realize it, I intuitively knew that this wasn’t a real girl, this was a character and there was a “real” Miranda somewhere.

But I couldn’t find her real YouTube. If you’re familiar with the way YouTube famous people promote themselves, you’ll know that typically the YouTuber will have the “famous” channel, the channel for skits and parodies and music videos, and then will have a separate channel for behind the scenes content as well as personal vlogs for those who are interested. This is meant to separate the two “lives” of the YouTuber in a way that TV and film rarely does – it separates the creator from the creation, pulling the curtain back and showing the audience that yes, these are real people rather than just funny script writers/actors. So as I scrolled through Miranda’s videos, I tried to find a link in the description for the real Miranda channel, the one that isn’t playing to the camera. There was none.

I tried the website, figuring in some small part there had to be a note that said “Miranda Sings is the creation of Miranda Smith, an actress from Atlanta, Georgia” or whatever. There was none. Her entire YouTube channel was completely in character, and her bio was simply her character talking about herself (like she does on YouTube). There wasn’t even a hint for who she was.

This intrigued me further. It’s one thing to have an alter ego, like Sasha Fierce. But there wasn’t a whole lot of mystery; Beyonce was still Beyonce, and she just became Sasha for a short time. Miranda, on the other hand, seemed to do everything in character, purposefully keeping her true identity a secret.

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Unfortunately, after about five more minutes of searching, I typed “Miranda Sings” into Google and one of the suggestions read “Miranda Sings real name” and the first result that came back was a video by Colleen Ballinger entitled “Becoming Miranda Sings.”

As you can probably guess, this cracked the code, although I still found her video to be hilarious as she still keeps the character a mystery. Colleen in the beginning claims her and Miranda are “good friends” and once she “becomes” Miranda Sings, she says “Colleen who was in the beginning of this video with me will be in my shows with me,” referring to the Colleen/Miranda comedy tours she takes.

The mystery was solved, and I began watching Colleen’s videos, finding her to be a lot more tolerable than the…um…special Miranda.

And yet, I’m still willing to believe in the mystery behind the ego. I know who she is now, but that doesn’t ruin Miranda’s videos for me. In fact…it makes me like her more.

As I was watching Miranda videos, looking at comments on the Jimmy Fallon video (Miranda’s first big television debut), and thinking about her “acting” with Jerry Seinfeld, I not only gained respect for her as an actress/comedian, but also started thinking more about comedy than I ever had before.

I knew that comedians like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler often talked about the gender inequality in television and media as a whole, but I never stopped to think about women in comedy because I never wanted to be in comedy. But as I thought about it, I realized that the majority of famous stand-up comedians are male, and here I’m talking about stand-up as a genre rather than stand up as a gateway to acting in comedy. When Amanda Seales went on CNN to slam some dude about catcalling, I looked up her YouTube channel and watched her hilarious stand-up. And that’s the only female stand-up comedian I think I’ve ever watched. Ever. Maybe this isn’t telling because I don’t really watch stand-up ever, but when I think about stand-up Bryan Reagan, Louis C.K., and Dane Cook come to mind, rather than Margaret Cho (bless her) or Sarah Silverman.

I know I talk about female equality a lot in my blogs, but it’s only because I’m not only passionate about it but I also see women disproportionately represented in the arts. Like I said, I’ve never wanted to be a comedian, but I have huge respect for them, especially the ladies of SNL (you kill it Leslie Jones), so seeing a young comedian like Colleen makes me so incredibly happy. It’s also interesting that she isn’t doing stand-up (though that could be part of her live show line up), and to me, her character work would shine somewhere like SNL. However, for now, I think she’s happy with YouTube.

 

Why I Think Jimmy Fallon Revolutionized Late Night Television, Part 1

Jeannie Marie Leave a comment

When I was little, I obviously had a concrete bedtime that my mom and dad used to enforce fairly strictly (mostly my mom on this one). But as I got older, they loosened up, because honestly, their bedtime habits aren’t the best, and it was hard to make me go to bed when they weren’t going to bed themselves. So around the time I was in middle school, I discovered late night TV and all the wonders it held.

And by wonders, I mean…not wonders. Sure, I thought it was cool to stay up so late that I get to see David Letterman, and maybe sometimes I’d get some of the jokes, but most of them flew straight over my head. However, I did enjoy the guests they brought on the show, especially when I started exploring music on my own terms rather than just based on what my mom played in the car. As I got older, I watched more late night TV, maybe not religiously but often enough that I decided who my favorites were. I wasn’t a big fan of Letterman, so I often fluctuated between Leno and Kimmel – Kimmel was crass (I got the jokes now) but funny, and Leno was mean but funny, so they evened each other out. There was even a period of time when me and my mom would curl up most nights and watch Craig Ferguson together, because we found him to be hilarious for some odd reason.

Late night TV, for me, was always a kind of frivolity. Like, if it’s on, sure, I’ll watch it, but I never went out of my way to see something. But then I realized that this was actually kind of a problem. As I learned more about general pop culture and became invested in it, I realized that my generation, the teens/young adults, we were the audience that was hard to crack. Not only are we apathetic about the world, we also had weird, unpredictable taste (Backstreet Boys? Really?). According to them, that is. According to me, late night was just boring.

But then something happened. My mom told me that there was a new guy on the Late Show, some comedian named Jimmy Fallon. She would call me into her room every so often, because Emma Stone was on or they were playing some wacky game.

I don’t think I need to say anymore about how Jimmy’s popularity skyrocketed. Also being a casual watcher of SNL, I learned that Jimmy had been on SNL years before, and for some reason I was surprised. Jimmy as a sketch comedian? Really? He was perfect for late night. But then it made sense. Jimmy isn’t perfect for late night…he’s just a funny guy. Period.

Over the past few days I’ve found myself pulling up videos of him and showing my friends his hilarious videos, whether it be his “show” “Ew!” or the lip sync battles, and then asking them why they like Jimmy Fallon so much. It’s no surprise that I talk to my friends and they all agree that he is hilarious and we all love him.

At first I thought it was just because he cracked the code somehow. Like he “gets us,” and he gets the age of technology. Leno had Headlines, from newspapers, Fallon has Hashtags from Twitter. But then I thought that wasn’t exactly right. I mean sure, his YouTube videos have tons of hits, but it’s gotta be more than relatability.

And I think what I’ve come up with is a pretty solid explanation. Jimmy’s show is clearly different from other late night TV. I mean, where else can you see a host and his guest get up spontaneously and sing “It Takes Two?” But more than his structure, it’s Jimmy himself. He makes fun of other stars, to be sure. But it’s not like Letterman, where there was a hint of poison in his barbs. Jimmy is like your best friend making fun of you. They can make fun of you because you know so clearly that they’re joking. You can’t help but to laugh along instead of being offended. And when he’s not doing a monologue, he’s having his guests do crazy things that are starting to revolutionize late night TV (okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I repeat: lip sync battles). He’s making late night TV fun instead of following the usual monologue-guest-guest 2-music format. And my age group is responding to it, if 28 million views on #Hashtag says anything.