The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. There’s a classic gag where a character gets his pants pulled down to reveal his heart-patterned boxer shorts. It’s the kind of vaudevillian punch line you rarely see anymore outside of comic strips like Garfield. But midway through Oh, Mary!, as Mary Todd Lincoln climbs onto a desk in the Oval Office in a fit of passion and fury, flinging her hoop skirt up at the audience, there they are: white and red and, no matter how sophisticated you think you are, likely to rip a belly laugh out of you.
Tim Heidecker. Big news for fans of Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s Adult Swim series On Cinema: an actual cinematic experience is coming to your local cinema this fall. According to Variety, Magnolia has acquired the North American rights to a feature film in the On Cinema universe called Mister America, which follows Tim Heidecker’s campaign for San Bernardino district attorney last year. Eric Notarnicola — who has worked on Decker, On Cinema, and the duo’s annual Oscar specials — directed the film.
Legend has it that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to be able to play the blues, and that Weezer front man Rivers Cuomo sold his to write “Beverly Hills.” Or at least that’s the assumption that’s plagued the band over the last decade—even though, by traditional measures of success, that infernally catchy cut from their 2005 album, Make Believe, marked a triumphant breakthrough in their career. (It was the first Weezer song nominated for a Grammy.
“Laters, gators.” For everyone thirst-watching Moon Knight on Disney+ for Oscar Isaac, you might have been surprised (and/or delighted) to hear the Guatemala-born actor speak in a high-pitched British accent while playing a museum worker with dissociative identity disorder, Steven Grant. Well, Isaac told Variety he decided to give Grant the British touch himself, saying it was a way of “committing to completely different people.” Moon Knight was slated to be set in New York, like many other Marvel movies, but the setting was moved to London, and so went Isaac’s accent.
In a cycle we seem doomed to repeat from now until the end of history, participation trophies have once again become comedy’s hottest subject. On March 22, the @NetflixIsAJoke Twitter account posted stills of a joke from Jeff Foxworthy’s new stand-up special, The Good Old Days, which hit the service earlier that day. If you missed it, here is the joke in its entirety, pulled from a larger — admittedly not revolutionary — chunk contrasting observations about childhood today against Foxworthy’s experience growing up: “I played every sport.
A new generation of fans has discovered Paula Poundstone as a regular on NPR’s panel game show Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, but her success as a stand-up stretches back to the early days of the 1980s comedy boom. Her 1990 HBO special Cats, Cops and Stuff, which includes the Pop-Tarts bit that we featured on our list of “100 Jokes that Defined Modern Comedy,” is a perfect embodiment of her style, a mix of observational stand-up and audience improvisation.
Tony Shalhoub is getting out of the post-Maisel malaise quickly by diving back into the Monk-iverse. Peacock just announced a reunion movie, Mr. Monk’s Last Case: A Monk Movie, coming to the streamer in December. Ted Levine (The Silence of the Lambs), Traylor Howard (Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place), Jason Gray-Stanford, Melora Hardin (The Office, Il Makiage ads on Twitter), and Hector Elizondo (The Princess Diaries, numerous name drops in Garry Marshall’s memoir) are all returning.
PEN15 Sleepover Season 2 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » PEN15 Sleepover Season 2 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next» « PreviousEpisode NextEpisode » One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about PEN15’s second season is its deeper embrace of absurdism. The show is inherently absurd — after all, it stars two grown women as seventh-graders — but Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine’s performances are so lived-in that it can be hard to remember the central premise is a goof.
Perfect Match Week 3 (Episode 10) Season 2 Episode 10 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next « PreviousEpisode Next Episode » Perfect Match Week 3 (Episode 10) Season 2 Episode 10 Editor’s Rating 5 stars ***** «Previous Next « PreviousEpisode Next Episode » Let’s be honest: This episode could have been as boring as a man in a black suit at the Met Gala — all the drama ultimately has been leading up to a simple vote, after all.
Rather than a typical cold open this week, Saturday Night Live opened with host Pete Davidson acknowledging the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. “I know what you’re thinking: Who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?” he joked. But he went on to speak about how he was reminded of his own childhood tragedy of losing his father in the September 11 terrorist attacks, remembering the lengths his mother went to to cheer him up, including accidentally buying him the Eddie Murphy stand-up special Delirious.