Upright Citizens Brigade

No matter what people say, this show is truely a great one. It was seldom understood by the "real world". Only those in the right frame of mind could get this show. The Little Donny Episode was a benchmark in entertainment! The show should have went on for many more years.

Opinions of this show seem to be split right down the middle. I for one loved it. Finally we had OUR Kids in the Hall, and without those annoying Canadian dialects and cross-dressers! But, like anything with any true integrity on Comedy Central, the UCB just didn't get recognized as the flaming orb of comic brilliance that it was. This was probably the best original show Comedy Central has ever produced. But on a station full of ridiculous, second-rate, low-brow programs like Strip Mall and Strangers With Candy, a show like this has no audience. A show with this much genius should have started a dynamite run on HBO, where it would still be going strong today, as a nice way to kick back and have some laughs after the serious and hard-hitting prison drama of Oz. And if you ask me, Comedy Central should temporarily hault their endless imagination and ability to crank out mind-numbing dreck, and take a moment to figure out just what Comedy Central means. Shouldn't the phrase "Comedy Central" denote that this is the place for ALL comedic tastes, and not just little independent ventures and Britcoms? Why don't they expand their range and give those of us who don't proudly sport homemade mullets something to watch? Oh well, I can dream, can't I?

I love sketch comedy. SNL and The Daily Show are two of my favourite shows ever, and I also like Monty Python and Kids in the Wall a lot. So I was willing to try out Upright Citizens Brigade. The commercials were right, this is some seriously ****ed up sketch comedy, but it's also pretty funny. The way they tie stuff together at the beginning is great, and hardly ever done in sketch comedy. The timing is great, the jokes are funny and the show is original. What more could you want. I also really like Amy Poehler, the cute, funny and talented comedienne who steals every scene she's in.

First, I want to say that this review is opinion only. In fact, EVERYTHING you read on this site (at least, the fan comments portion) is opinion only. Try to remember that a show that may be "da bomb" to one person may just "bomb" to another. I'm not going to demand that you watch the show, or that you don't watch the show. Why? Because I understand that all you're looking for is an opinion, and that you are (like myself) probably laughing your asses off at the posters that are yelling, "YOU GOTTA WATCH THIS!" or "THIS BLOWS CHUNKS! WATCH IT AND DIE!" That being said: Upright Citizens Brigrade was a short-lived (3-season) show on Comedy Central, based on the improv sketch comedy of a team of comedians who started in Chicago, but now operate their own improv theater in New York. The sketches themselves are probably best-described as "bizarre to the extreme" - or, in more laymen's terms, "seriously f***** up". It's been compared as an American "Monty Python's Flying Circus" or "The Kids in the Hall".

I found the show to be incredibly funny. The humor, again, is off-color and off-kilter at times, and I can admit that it would not be palatable to all people - not even to all sketch-comedy fans. The gimmicks are quirky and can delve into sometimes-touchy subjects in an unusual manner, but I find this refreshing. As has been previously stated, each episode is made up of a series of seemingly-unrelated sketches that culminate in a final sketch that wraps up all the stories (usually in an appropriately strange manner; you know a show is weird when a town hall/church blasts off on rocket boosters, taking the alien dolphin threat with it).

I have seen most of season 1 and quite a bit of seasons 2 and 3, and wish that Comedy Central would bring the show back regularly. If your humor tastes run toward the highly bizarre, give it a shot; if you don't like it, then say so. But do us all a favor and don't play television God, and demand that everyone sees it immediately/doesn't see it at all - or at least know that I'll be laughing at your stupidity.

UCB was sketch comedy at a new level, especially when compared to the banality of the modern bit show. The writers and cast presented skits that other productions would have disregarded as too "sophisticated", or just too unorthodox. In doing so, I feel they explored the limits of sketch comedy and brought us closer to the edge of the surreal, better than any comedy production today.

The "Brigade" is bent on causing chaos everywhere they venture to, and they do not disappoint. From Santa forcing a man to take sample of his "Santa Liquor", to an authoritarian school bus driver, crushing a children's revolution with her backside.

Now, the dialog was very suggestive and risqué at times, but the writing is non the less very creative. I feel that it is necessary to ignore the sometimes superfluous vulgarity's in order to "get" this show, particularly if you have dismissed it for being too odious. The UCB, in their creativeness and witty verbiage, have heavily diluted the crudeness to which a story is presented. I guess this is comparative to another comedy central production, "South Park", where you just have to ignore or look beyond what offends you, to appreciate what really is being presented to us. Most important the UCB was there to entertain, and cause us laughter, and this they did with alacrity.

It ended it's run in 2000, and is still missed 6 years later.