Here's the first episode of a new web series from The Office, tied to the show's series finale next month. Directed by John Krasinski, each episode features guest stars and regular actors from the show looking back at The Office and its legacy. Hopefully, everyone refuses to stop eating lunch the whole time like Will Ferrell did.
Scott Aukerman's live L.A. standup show Comedy Bang Bang ended its 10-year run last week with a big holiday show. Today, Aukerman has released a special one-off podcast via his network Earwolf, featuring backstage interviews with a bunch of comedians at the last show, including David Cross, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Richter, Patton Oswalt, Jon Hamm, Todd Glass, Jake Fogelnest, Garfunkel and Oates, Chris Hardwick, Kristen Schaal, Anthony Jeselnik, Doug Benson, Chelsea Peretti, Nick Kroll, and Thomas Lennon, amongst others. All the comedians are supposed to just talk about how much the show and Scott mean to them but mostly just do bits.
Time Out NY has a pretty great list of the year's best comedy moments, like Eric Drysdale's Viewmaster reels and Diddy's appearance at Chris Gethard's UCB show. It seems like a lot of the most fun shows/performances/creations of the year, at least in New York, were the tiny, offbeat, scrappy ones. Long live the small and quirky!
In honor of Mary Tyler Moore's SAG Lifetime Achievement Award, I took a look back at the show she's best known for, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and MTM's charmingly well-rounded portrayal of Mary Richards.
It's been widely noted that The MTM Show show is the spiritual predecessor of 30 Rock, Mary being the original girl who "can turn the world on with her smile." Like Liz Lemon, Mary Richards is in her 30s, single and works in TV. And on both shows, the actual work the protagonists do is a secondary topic to their workplace relationships, particularly with their mentors (Lou Grant and Jack Donaghy, respectively).
I was [...]
While visiting Letterman to promote the aptly named Roseanne's Nuts, the comedic mother of us all described how her sister overheard two people in the audience of the Roseanne pilot complaining, "Who's gonna watch this? This show's a piece of crap. Who's going to watch this show about fat people?" The fact that those people were Roseanne's agent and the show's producer should be a surprise to absolutely no one, provided they've listened to anything the woman has had to say in last few decades. Another roll of butcher paper for the fired list!
Neil Flynn, star of sitcoms Scrubs and The Middle, sat down with The AV Club for an interview today, in which he talked about his early days as an improviser at the ImprovOlympic theater. At iO, he studied under improv guru Del Close and performed alongside Ian Roberts, Matt Besser, and Adam McKay in the legendary group The Family. Here's Flynn reminiscing about his Chicago days:
"Del and I were both in a production of Hamlet in the mid-’80s with Chicago native Aidan Quinn starring as Hamlet. Del was Polonius, and that was pretty much his crowning glory, although he still had more than a decade left to live. In [...]
This is my last week as head writer of the Onion News Network. The business side at The Onion, you may have heard, has decided to relocate the writers from New York to Chicago where the corporate offices are. Some of the writers are moving; a lot of them are leaving to do other things. (As for me, I'm going to go to work on Andy Daly's new Comedy Central show. I'm a big fan of his so I'm psyched. And check out the video series me and two other former ONN writers are making, called The Cool Kids' Table.)
Anyway, I've been with Onion video since we [...]
'Tis the season to look back at all the other seasons that happened earlier this year. Tonight at 10, TBS will air The Conan One Hour Earlier Best Of Spectacular!, a look back at Conan's best moments from 2011. Sounds like a spectacular Spectacular, Spectacular! (Sorry, I was just talking to my friend Spectacular.)
Comedy felt frivolous, and in some cases downright insensitive in the weeks after September 11, 2001. This was not lost on television’s funny men, who gave solemn monologues with knotted throats and fists, asking for forgiveness for their chosen profession. In an effort to explain the serious sincerity of his own reflections and those of other hosts, Jon Stewart suggested, “It’s something that unfortunately we do for ourselves so that we can drain whatever abscess is in our hearts. So that we can move on.” David Letterman similarly asked for the “patience and indulgence” of his audience and explained, “If we are going to continue to do [...]
Today's the one-year anniversary of comedian Todd Glass coming out of the closet on Marc Maron's podcast WTF, an extremely moving episode of the show that's one of the best Maron has ever done. Jesse David Fox over at Vulture has an in-depth interview with Glass, reflecting on what the past year of his life has been like since coming out and the overwhelming support he received from the comedy community, his fans, and strangers alike. It's a nice read that serves as a fitting epilogue to Glass's Maron appearance.
Catherine Tate's returning to The Office tonight as Nellie Bertram, who'll have a "far from professional" relationship with Robert California. Tate herself isn't exactly forthcoming about her favorite sketches from The Catherine Tate Show, her 2004-2007 sketch comedy show, but here are a few clips to get you familiar.
To honor the UCB's 15 years in NYC and the opening of UCBeast, New York Mag checked in with about 50 alumni of the many-headed comedy hydra, who discuss everything from the troupe's guerilla improv days in Chicago (Horatio Sanz: "My idea was, 'How awesome would it be to be arrested in front of this audience, and have them thinking, Did they plan this? How did they get that cop car? What’s going on?'”) to the process of bringing long-form to NYC (Rob Corddry: "In 90 minutes, they changed how I felt and thought about comedy. It was punk rock — super dirty and loose.") Says Amy Poehler, [...]
The Larry Sanders Show is a really enjoyable viewing experience, but is “The Larry Sanders Show” any good? Confused? Well, I’m talking about two things here. The first is HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show starring Garry Shandling. In said show, Shandling plays the titular Larry Sanders, a neurotic talk show host joined by the likes of Jeffrey Tambor’s “Hey Now!” Hank Kingsley and Rip Torn as the show’s best character, the producer Artie. The show chronicles the making of Sanders’ program, which also happens to be called “The Larry Sanders Show.” That’s the show that I’m pondering here. I know that The Larry Sanders Show is good, but is [...]
