“Black lives bladder.”
The Eric Andre Show returns August 5!
Watch And/Or Listen to This: Eric Andre at the RNC
July 24, 2016
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Jeffrey Malone’s 50 Favorite TV Shows of All Time
December 9, 2015
30 Rock, American Dad!, Arrested Development, Arrow, Billy on the Street, Bob's Burgers, BoJack Horseman, Comedy Bang! Bang!, Community, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, Fargo (TV Series), Futurama, Hannibal, Happy Endings, Jeopardy!, Key & Peele, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Nathan for You, New Girl, Orphan Black, Parks and Recreation, Portlandia, Review (TV Series), Rick and Morty, Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, Stella, Television, The Chris Gethard Show, The Eric André Show, The Middle, The Office, You're the Worst Community, Favorite TV Shows, Jeffrey Malone 1 Comment
You can learn a lot about people from their favorite television programs. TV viewing involves spending a lot of time with fictional characters and more or less forming relationships with them. Who we choose to spend our time with says a lot about our own personalities. With that in mind, here are the current standings for my 50 favorite shows of all time.
Best Episode of the Season: The Eric Andre Show Season 3
July 19, 2015
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“Bird Up!”
An entire TEAS focused on the recurring “Bird Up” – “the worst show on television!” – was one of the best TV episodes of the year. Eric cavorted around in his greenscreen bodysuit, sprinting through an id-driven trip of insanity featuring guest director Chris Rock, a fake death prank, a desolately confounded focus group, and much, much more.
McLuhan’s Commonsensical Maxim Applied to Nonsensical Media
June 2, 2015
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This essay was originally written as my final paper for my Media Theory class, taught by Barry Salmon, in Fall 2013 at The New School.
If the “medium is the message,” then what happens if the medium is the medium itself, or the anti-medium? The past few years have seen the rise of the “anti-talk show” in the alternative comedy scene, as typified by the podcast-turned-IFC series Comedy Bang! Bang!, local New York public-access cult sensation The Chris Gethard Show, the Funny or Die webseries Between Two Ferns, and Adult Swim’s The Eric André Show. These shows all consider the artifice and tropes of comedy talk shows and then ignore, analyze, trash, invert, and/or subvert them. Marshall McLuhan’s classic text is presented as a common sense formulation of how to consider any medium: “the personal and social consequences” are a result of the new “extension of ourselves” (129). So how then do we apply this commonsensical approach to a genre that is purposely nonsensical? McLuhan would surely be pleased by this trend of a genre that is strongly conscious of how the medium is the message, but an analysis of how these shows deconstruct their particular medium and genre is sure to melt your brain.
Best Episode of the Season: The Eric André Show Season 2
July 3, 2014
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Season Analysis: I didn’t watch Season 1 of The Eric André Show, mostly because I wasn’t aware it existed. From what I know of it, Season 2 was more accessible, though not by much. After watching one episode, I wasn’t quite sure how to process it, but soon enough, its insane blend of nihilist television felt just like home.
“Scott Porter; Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake”
Every episode of The Eric André Show begins with André screaming like a lunatic as he destroys his own set. While this orgy of chaos lasts longer than rationality would dictate, he does eventually settle down and sit at his replacement desk. But in the Season 2 finale, the destruction lasts the entire episode, allowing the show to ramp its incomprehensibility up to 11. While André remains “busy” with his anarchy, an earlier episode from the season is fast-forwarded and overlaid on top of the video of the current episode. Ultimately, what is achieved is nothing less than the fullest realization of Eric André’s pure comedic unpredictability in the barest of structures.
Segment of the Season: “Ranch It Up”
Eric André, dressed in a green tank top, plaid shorts, and a backwards pink hat, confronts random people with a series of made-up, college campus-based slang terms, such as “Oriental background actresses,” “Cherokee chicks on the Trail of Beers,” “’Sup Mello,” and “buzz me, mulatto,” delivering it with the conviction of the fearless lunatic that he is.
Interview of the Year: James Van Der Beek
Joining Eric, Hannibal, and Eric’s former Bitch 23 co-star are lookalikes brought on to mirror their every move.
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