Human Giant

I guess this was on MTV2. I don't know what that is or where it may be because they have done a great job of making it impossible to find. And that's a real shame. If it has shows like this, it should somewhere that people can find it. Anyway, this show is really funny. Don't believe the reviews that say it's a "once in a generation" show though. It's nowhere close to The State or Mr. Show or UCB or even Kids In The Hall. It is well worth your time though.

Wow. This program is amazingly funny, ridiculously twisted, intelligent, yet primal. Brilliant. Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, and the man behind the curtain Jason Woliner, are all remarkably talented individuals with a knack for making truly edgy, hilarious, bombastic humor. The comedy is so markedly different from anything else that is on television at the moment that it may be startling at first, but Human Giant is worth your time. That is not to say that every sketch will leave you in stitches, at it's worst it is merely promising and quirky, at it's best it's revelatory comical genius. It is however, a consistently funny sketch show, which is a commodity today. Some of the highlights of the show thus far have been "Shutterbugs", a team of ruthless child talent agents, "Illusionators" a couple of illusionists that employ the power of the devil in their underwhelming acts, "The Deer" where the boys hit an evil deer and jump start it's heart...I could go on and on about how wonderful these sketches are but you really have to watch it understand how well done this show is. This is a sketch show with the world at it's feet, just like SNL during the Belushi years, The State before it's premature cancellation, Mr. Show With Bob and David. It's a show at the pinnacle of comedy right now, and you really need to check it out. Thursdays 10:30pm.

I watched this show on a recommendation from a friend, saying it was one of the greatest sketch comedy shows ever. It's not one of the greatest ever (Monty Python still holds that title), but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would, although by the last two episodes, it starts to become very repetitive. Most sketch comedy today is quite lame, and some of it is abysmally bad (like IFC's Whitest Kids U Know, which is the worst sketch show EVER), but this stuff is relatively watchable. Not every sketch works. The Illusionators sketch gets tired after a while, and one motif that the Human Giant boys do is they always put in the sappy music almost at the end of every sketch that ends with a death or something sad. After 8 episodes of this motif, it becomes staid and stale. The "Kneel to Verg" sketch is a parody of Superman II (!), nearly 30 years after it was made, and it's actually kind of boring. Their Exorcist parody is also tired. SNL parodied this brilliantly with Richard Pryor as the priest and Laraine Newman as Regan (she mouthed the famous line "your momma eats kitty litter", which is funnier than what the kid in Human Giant's version says). The hand-held camera, fast cuts, and overly slick feel to it (this is MTV, you know) is very distracting. There are some good sketches, like Swindle Tips: Coffee (which has great dialogue by Aziz), Catching a Predator (which has a great twist at the end of it), and Sensitivity Training (my favorite).

There are cameos by many in the comedy world such as Patton Oswalt, Jon Benjamin, Brian Posehn, and Mary Lynn Rasjkub (who gave me a dirty look in a comedy club once while I was talking to Janeane Garofalo. They were both headlining a comedy show in December of 2007. That wasn't very nice of Mary Lynn). Out of the three actors, Aziz comes across the best. He has a goofy, funny, almost magnetic presence to him. So, this is OK sketch comedy, not classic sketch comedy.

Kick back, load up the bong and laugh until it hurts. There is very little dead air on this show. The timing is impeccable, and even the minor jokes in between the bigger jokes are memorable and well-executed. I am a longtime fan of shows like this, such as "Kids in the Hall" and "The State." "Human Giant" is MUCH funnier than other modern sketch comedy like "The Whitest Kids You Know" and has awesome celebrity guest stars. Fans of Adult Swim shows like "Tim and Eric: Awesome Show Great Job" will love it for its similarly off-kilter humor. This show could have gotten huge if given the right opportunity. Hopefully it will be resurrected at some point, because there will probably not be anything for quite some time that matches its brilliance.