Track Fail

Why Sunny’s Not Funny

What makes a show funny? What makes a show good? Can a show be funny without being good? With an impalpably large and loyal audience, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is one of those shows random friends and strangers rave about over the years and you end up watching on Netflix, getting addicted to it like crack—though you’d hardly kill your mother to watch it.

With four late-twentysomething friends running an Irish pub in Philly, it’s not exactly Cheers—a show that brought disparate characters together for a successfully synergistic tension of backgrounds and personalities. A bar is a great place to convene people from all walks of life. In Sunny, though, a bar is only a convenient prop to set up easy one-joke episodes (i.e. underage drinking). Nothing on the show seems to be based in any kind of reality. Thus, it’s all one long “improv” sketch with new suggested plot fillers supplied every twenty minutes.

This is a pattern for the show. Just as the background fails to knot itself to the core of the show (which is as hollow as a tree trunk), the characters are dependably flat, one-dimensional, and unreasonably callous. Seinfeld may have started to slip into nihilistic self-caricature toward the end of its run, but its characters were rich enough by then to see the show through. Even Arrested Development, an overrated but clever and skillfully made dysfunctional melo-comedy, gave us deeper, more interesting people than these four walking props.

After one, episode, you know exactly what to expect. There are no surprises, no multiple arcs or layers. Cynicism rules the day as the show blindly races headfirst for the most offensive punchline and the cheapest laugh. In rebellion against decades of sitcom conventions, this new brand of “comedy” pits yuppy comedy teams against one another in a race to check the most socially provocative topics off the list inherited from better shows like All in the Family and (even) Married with Children, many of which are plain vanilla by now. The pilot tackles race relations…really?

At best, Sunny is a live-action South Park where supposedly taboo subjects (rehashed from superior shows that have dealt with these issues far more deftly) are Sunny’s thrust and reason for being. At worst, it’s a discarded rough draft of Arrested Development executed by UCB rejects. Curb Your Enthusiasm and Extras are the only shows that have successfully driven cynically charged vehicles because even they have found ways to embrace their characters, to at least allow for the possibility of heart and depth. Sunny has successfully exploited the general public’s thirst for ADD comedy, but like any addiction, the drug is going to run its course and leave you craving more with no lasting satisfaction.

Lenin and Leonardo

It was quite a week for our Russian friends in Belarus and France. First, a drunk-retarded 21-year-old Belarusian dies when Lenin's head, heavy from ponderous dialectic, tumbles down upon him. Bohemigrant is concerned about the loss of a historical monument dating back to 1939.

Then, a deranged Russian expatriate chucks a Louvre gift shop souvenir at Mona Lisa who, thanks to prior attempts on her life, was safely ensconced behind bullet-proof glass.

Disturbingly Cute

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1205022/Koda-born-health-problems-doctors-worried-But-turns-hes-just-little-horse.html

Cramped Quarters

A first date is not just a tryout between the parties concerned. In the literally tightknit world of small New York bars, the first rendezvous often becomes an audition in front of total strangers not invested in the outcome. You know, your neighbors at that cute little oblong candlelit table, whose knees inadvertently rub up against your own as you struggle to figure out whom you’re with—the girl across from you, the girl next to you, or the guy who’s spitting in your hefeweizen. Every word can become scrutinized—wittingly, willingly, or not—and should be weighed with precision. Your date might suck. You might have lost interest five minutes into it—or five seconds—but now you’re alienating a totally different segment of the population. Watch what you say. Words that fall harmlessly down on your companion can seem totally hilarious to a perfect stranger enjoying the social writhing in clownish awkwardness and first-date faux pas. For hypothetical example, “Your online profile has a 12.0 Flesch-Kincaid rating.” That kind of thing.

On the bright side, if you’re not having an amazing time, you can take solace in the fact that your neighbors aren’t either:

“What’s up with all the silence?”

“How can these two stand each other?”

My jokes are vastly superior to his. You want to think all these, especially that last one.

Of course, what you definitely don’t want, is to be attracted to the girl you’re not with—the one sitting right next to you with her girlfriend, trading much wittier jokes and stroking her hair seductively. The one who accidentally overhears your life dreams and interjects, excusing herself, because she just wanted to say how right you are and she’d never met anyone who felt the same way she does.

Space, always at a premium.

Specter P0wned

Cucurrucucu Paloma

Fedor p0wned by Bad Management

Ironically, Fedor Emelianenko's legacy will largely be determined by the outcome of his promoter's bout with the UFC. The man who has destroyed opponents large and small, been slammed head-first into a ring and recovered instantaneously to humiliate his enemy, is now looking greedy at best, and a capricious prima donna at worst.

The best line in the Fedor Emelianenko-UFC kerfuffle? It belongs to the frequent jerk/currently reasonable Dana White: “How are they going to come in and help us co-promote? It’s basically them coming and saying, ‘We’ve got this guy and some people say he might be the best heavyweight in the world. So for that, we want half your business.’ Yeah, OK. That sh-t probably works in Russia. Not here.”

Well put, Dana.