When Mad Men covers big history, it’s a dual-edged sword: while often touching to see how they face elections, assassinations, and the culture of the day, it can also play as a reenactment at Plymouth Plantation. After forty-two minutes and change about the week of Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination, I wished I was filling in for recaps on one of the nights in which this show is about issues of bed-and-barroom deceit and betrayal, those of sex, liquor, and […]
Scott Aukerman Has Learned from Kelsey Grammer’s Mistakes
IFC’s Comedy Bang! Bang! is, on some level, a talk show hosted by comedy veterans Scott Aukerman and Reggie Watts and loosely tied to Aukerman’s hit podcast of the same name. But it seems to occupy a terrifying reality that only bears a loose resemblance to our own: on any given episode, a lovable talking bird might get eviscerated, Scott might accidentally send himself to hell, or an attempt to show a movie clip might devolve into a disorienting feedback […]
Chickens, Psychopaths, and Surfing: A Chat with Kurt Braunohler
There’s something profoundly dystopian about Bunk, the not-exactly-game-show that’s finishing up its first season on IFC. On it, stand-up comics and sketch performers are forced into improv-based challenges that include insulting puppies or drawing new appendages to the crotch of Michelangelo’s David. And all the while, the barefoot host — played with terrifying confidence by New York-based comic Kurt Braunohler — will do things like force his intern to sift through glass shards or threaten to murder his viewers. […]
HBO is one step closer to looking like your bookshelf
Posted by Jason Diamond The title of this post is the answer to the question, “What do Jonathan Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Sam Lipsyte, George R. R. Martin, Jonathan Ames, Michael Chabon, Malcolm Gladwell, and now Karen Russell all have in common?” From The Hollywood Reporter: HBO is going to Florida with Scott Rudin. The premium cable network has picked up Swamplandia, a half-hour comedy project from Rudin based on Karen Russell’s book of the same name.