Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 stars"Is this funny still? Yet? I honestly can't tell..."
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2005
Seasons One, Two, Three: "Go Man, Go!"
Season Four: the one to forego.
Speaking as a fan who was first stupefied (amazed; astonished) by Bob and David back when they were the Kings of Megaphone Crooning ("People didn't want to hear songs about things that hadn't even been invented yet! They wanted to hear songs about NEW things."), that is, speaking as the rare fanatic, the rare "Mister Mr. Show" raising his voice on Amazon who laughs just as hard at the good G rated sketches as he does at the good NC-17 rated sketches, I find "Season Four" the most generous sampling of limp and lifeless MS sketches available in one package.
Funnyguy Bob Odenkirk, reputedly a rather gruff fellow in real life, says that Four was the season when "well-crafted" sketches were "in", "absurdity for absurdity's sake" was "out". No longer, he claims, was Mr. Show a comedy show best appreciated by other comedy writers.
Translation: they dumbed it down for the audience (and/or: horsing around in the writers' room suddenly earned you an hour in a pointy hat, facing the corner). Enticing as the term is, "well-crafted" here seems to mean "warmed over SNL type stuff", as in: spicing up the world's 1000th Jerry Springer takeoff by setting it on a lifeboat (momentarily forgetting that incongruity usually works best when it is "funny" incongruity) and ladling on the same gay panic, the same class anxiety that makes the real Springer show such a howl. Overall, MS4's concepts become less novel, less thinky, less left-field-funny, with a stronger than ever reliance on the tried and true. What I mean is: a stronger than ever reliance on stoopid-guy raunch humor. But at least SGRH is a species of comedy. I haven't nailed down a label for what fills the cracks and crannies, and accounts for at least 75% of of the ones and zeroes on these here digital donuts. Excelsior? (ex-cel-si-or (n.) Slender, curved wood shavings used especially for packing (originally a trademark)).
This set did make me grin a few times -- over the course of five and a half hours. One, and only one, sketch makes me laugh out loud: the phenomenon of "Monster Parties" (as documented in novelty songs such as "Halloween Shindig", "Dracula's Pajama Party" and the like) examined with pitch-perfect tabloid TV grammar. Original, bent premise anchored by yet another simultaneously vicious and sympathetic David Cross performance.
For the most part, the gang seems tired, like they're having an exhausting time at this point telling funny from not-funny. Surely, anyone who makes a living intuiting what will make people laugh must at one time or another come to such a pass.