Grid Effect

This might constitute going out on a limb here, but I think Jermaine Clement and Bret McKemzie are David Bowie fans. Either that or they feel his decorum in the 70’s and 80’s is rife with comedic potential, and they’re simply mocking the hell out of him, me thinks the former is probably the case. Mainly because David Bowie wrote/writes damn good music.

We had a dearth of musical performances, which is approved greatly by this website, with a few exceptions, we generally do not get much from the musical interludes. So it opened up more room for dialog, but instead we were beat over the head with a running joke about Bret getting advice from Jermaine dressed up as David Bowie in a dream (though he was first under the impression it was Bret, he convinced himself that it was Bowie). Don’t get me wrong, it was funny at first, mainly because Jermaine has great vocal range and that is necessary for good impersonations. But I don’t think they have ever been so repetitive before, at least not so obviously. There is always the roll call jokes, the off-handed remarks about them never having any gigs, but there are variations of them, and they’re not so atypical to the rest of the series, nor clumsy.

This episode, like every FoTC episode, had some laugh out loud moments, personally I probably set off a car alarm laughing at the biscuit conversation, but I imagine the crowd pleaser coincided with the John Hodgman cameo (Mac vs. PC commercials, Daily Show correspondent), and it was masterfully timed and executed. Even the conversation afterwards about Bret’s graphic design on his genitals sold the scene before it, because we weren’t privy to anything more than conversation.

Very little from side characters this week, we learned that Mel more or less cost her husband her job, with the admission that she was junior professor of psychology at an unnamed institution, and that her husband was a senior professor in the same department, but was fired. Poor guy. So now he not only has a wife who wishes to cheat on him, but no income or career as a result of her. Nothing like marriage in the 21st century, kids.

Mel did make an attempt to cheer up Bret, but did it at the expense of Jermaine, who’s “Looks are to deep to be classically beautiful” and a barrage of other perceived insults to boost Bret’s confidence. So we had two scenes from her. And Dave, whom I really wish was used more often, was only in the closing scene but didn’t add much.

Two songs this week, but only one musical type break from the plot that more or less ended the episode, it was an ode to David bowie of sorts, wasn’t really into it for whatever reason. The second didn’t cut out away from the scene or the plot and was just Jermaine trying to instill confidence in Bret with an incredibly creepy serenade of sorts, entitled, “Bret, you’ve got it goin’ on”. In which the versus get more and more disturbing, that eventually lead to Jermaine admitting that sometimes when Bret is sleeping, Jermaine puts a wig on him, pretends he’s a woman and lies next to him. Leading to everyone conceding that there is nothing homo-erotic about it if Jermaine is, indeed, pretending he’s a woman. I love the rationale on this show, it seemingly accounts for a great deal of their humor.

We are the halfway point now in the season (if the twelve episodes I heard they are doing is accurate) and there appears to be no signs of falling off. Next week it looks like we get “Albi, The Racist Dragon” as one of their musical numbers. It’s a personal favorite up there with “Jenny”, which they may not perform on the series because it’s close to seven minutes long, which they could conceivably do if it’s the only song in whichever episode they use it in.

Either way, its good to have a stellar new comedy on television, as they are few and far between nowadays. After six episodes in, all with more highs than lows, I think its safe to confirm that’s what we have on our hands.