puntodog

I love stand up comedy, huge fan of stand up comedy. I will watch any decent series that deals with, analyzes, dissects stand up comedy and stand up comedians. I understand his series is different and deals with the "dark side of comedy". However, a little balance would be greatly appreciated. Many of the subjects are great comedians who had a "dark" side in one way or another. But, how about a little more credit to their incredible achievements, perhaps in part a result of their "dark" side? I admit I am only three episodes in and thus my review is premature. But, thus far I am not impressed. For one thing, Dave Foley's narration: Dave Foley is hilarious, much admired, huge success. However, his narration comes across as monotone, too much of a bummer. We can highlight the positive and still get at the "dark" issues with which each comedian dealt. Even more so, I really hate the recreations. These are in every episode so far. They add nothing, they are artificial. I don't understand the rationale for using these recreations. I don't need some still photo of someone vaguely representing the comedian or the situation being described in the narration.

Obviously, this episode has been down graded due to the infamous oscar's slap. I totally understand the desire to cancel Will Smith and I wanted to hate this episode for that very reason. However, when viewed objectively this interview was actually the best of the season and one of the better interviews of the entire series. Will Smith gave an insightful and intelligent interview. He was smarty, witty, and even self deprecating ... which make the unforgivable slap all the more puzzling as it seems so totally out of character.

Strange, this is the second episode with Sebastian Maniscalco. The first episode was excellent, both Jerry and Sebastian seemed to immediately hit it off, their personalities and senses of humour played well off each other. Sebastian was in good form, really funny. However, this second episode with Sebastian is one of my least favourites out of all the episodes in all the various seasons. Sebastian seemed very constrained, not forthcoming. There was no chemistry between the two, not a lot of conversation and it just wasn't very funny. I am not sure what went wrong with this episode.