TVSquad

If there is one thing I learned during the Comedy Central TV Funhouse panel on Thursday night, it's this: they are not good with computers. For most of the evening panelist Robert Smigel and moderator Bob Odenkirk spent their time fiddling around with the Mac laptop provided to them so they could show clips from the TV Funhouse DVD that was released on Tuesday. After they got that squared away they spent several more minutes setting up an iChat so Funhouse host Doug Dale could join in the conversation. They even needed to ask a member of the audience for their Mac Powerbook in order to set the session up. Obviously, you don't want these guys on your technical support team.

Despite the technical difficulties, the TV Funhouse panel was the highlight of my Thursday at Comic-Con.

Gallery: TV Funhouse - Comic-Con 2008

When you make a living online and a big part of your job is to spend the entire day surfing around a hundred web sites, you begin to think that you've seen everything there is to see on the web. At least the good stuff. But sometimes you come across a site that makes you smile and say to yourself, "this is great!"

That's what I thought when I found the Sound of Young America podcast.

The folks behind some of my favorite series of the past decade talking about the TV comedy business? Yes, please.

Golden Fiddle has a transcript of a panel discussion with David Cross (Arrested Development, co-creator of Mr. Show), Bob Odenkirk (the other co-creator of Mr. Show), Chuck Tatham (writer, Arrested Development), and Wonder Showzen creators Vernon Chatman and John Lee.

Okay, so last month I told you Bob Odenkirk was creating a series for the comedy Website Super Deluxe called "Derek and Simon: The Show." I probably don't have to remind you since I assume you write down everything I tell you on this blog and carry it around in a briefcase everywhere you go, just in case someone asks you about it.

At any rate, I've placed an edited version of the first short, "Baby Talk," below. If you want to hear actual swearing, you can watch the unedited version here.

Quite honestly, I was underwhelmed by it. I was hoping for something more from the man who helped bring us Mr. Show, Tom Goes to the Mayor and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. I could see the punchline coming from a mile away, which is never a good sign. Perhaps subsequent episodes will be better.

The Web series will run for a total of twelve episodes.

Tom Goes to the Mayor began as a couple short short films on creators Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's Web site, and even then it was obvious that not everyone was going to be into it. If anything, the fact that so many people either absolutely loved the series or just found it confusing and unfunny is a testament to its success: one doesn't make a show like Tom Goes to the Mayor with the intention of pleasing everyone. You either grok it, or you don't.

Here's a little round-up of what some of your favorite comedic actors have been up to:

First of all, Bob Odenkirk and a few others have provided their comedy expertise to a new book from McSweeneys titled Comedy by the Numbers. The book breaks comedy down to its bare elements (see pic on the right) so that anyone can become a funny person. Despite the book's obvious tongue-in-cheek approach, I find it somewhat appropriate since I've often considered McSweeneys approach to humor to be a little too cold and clinical sometimes.

I had heard rumblings here and there about a pilot for a sketch series from Mr. Show co-creator Bob Odenkirk called Next!, but the series was never picked up for a full season. According to Wikipedia, the show was created in 2002, and as you can tell from the clips below, it featured Odenkirk and some of his Mr. Show co-stars, including Jerry Minor (Lucky Louie) and Jay Johnston (The Sarah Silverman Program and Moral Orel).

The clips definitely have a Mr. Show-like vibe, especially the ad for a car dealership featuring Johnston as the inept brother of the owner (Odenkirk), and Minor singing a ballad to the American flag and its booty ("it's only Panama, baby").

Anyway, here's a small sample of what might have been (or what once was and then wasn't):

[via Dead Frog and CC Insider]

(S01E01) I have no plans to review this new series from Eric Wareheim and Tim Heidecker every week as I did their last series for Adult Swim, Tom Goes to the Mayor, mostly because this new series is so random and eclectic it'd be almost impossible to write a coherent review every week.

I became a fan of Tim and Eric a couple years before Tom Goes to the Mayor was developed for Adult Swim, having stumbled upon the various shorts on their Web site. What immediately struck me was not just that these men were funny, but that their humor was constructed within an entirely different paradigm. I imagine it's somewhat how American audiences first responded to Monty Python, which at the time must have been so different from what people were used to that many were simply turned off by it. I'm not making a direct comparison between Monty Python and Awesome Show, but I am saying there's a difference between comedy that works because it's been done before countless times, and comedy that really dares to be different.