Comedian Eric Andre hosted a live New Year's special on Adult Swim earlier this week, dubbed The Eric Andre New Year's Eve Spooktacular. Adult Swim just posted the whole thing online, and you can watch the 45-minute special (27 without commercials) in its entirety via this link. Andre was joined by co-host Hannibal Buress and guests like Demi Lovato, Omarosa, and Kevin Sorbo. It's every bit as insane as you'd expect an Eric Andre Show special to be, and it's worth watching whether you want to have your own private second New Year's while you watch or not.
Jimmy Fallon's SNL war buddy Tracy Morgan slapped on a turtleneck and scarve and joined him to tell a good ol' Christmas story last night. Tracy Morgan, of course, takes "Twas the Night Before Christmas" off the rails in a typical Tracy Morgan fashion, albeit without taking his shirt off. This is just another video to add onto the stack of evidence as to why NBC should give Jimmy Fallon an annual Christmas variety special already, a movement that is gaining some traction on Tumblr this week.
Every TV show leans on tropes to fill out their season. For the standard dramatic hour, it’s brilliant doctors/lawyers/cops with a complicating flaw. For animated sitcoms, it’s copying The Simpsons or copying the copies of The Simpsons. And for critically acclaimed premium cable, it’s so many naked breasts.
That’s why network shows pioneered the holiday episode. If you’ve got 23 episodes of funny! to do from fall to spring, it makes life a lot easier when Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and even Groundhog Day give you jumping-off points.
Now most shows do their holiday episodes with plenty of standard cheer. It’s like, why [...]
And here we are at the end of my Christmas death march. I’ve watched — and rewatched — a lot of Christmas episodes this month. A lot. I’ve made some bad decisions, seen some things I’d rather forget, and spent too much time on YouTube watching local commercials that aired from 1989 to 1997.
It’s been an emotional time, but one that has taught me an important lesson. The true meaning of Christmas specials isn’t in celebrity guest stars or lessons learned or songs sung. It’s not Jesus or Garfield or Mary Tyler Moore (it’s a little bit Mary Tyler Moore). The meaning of Christmas is trying to find [...]
Like Newhart's comedy, this special takes a little time to ramp up to greatness. The first few scenes are your regular Christmas special cliches: gifts awkwardly exchanged, one member of a couple being more giving than the other, etc.
But once Bob gets into his routine about Christmas parties, the special becomes really funny. Newhart sells well-trodden the tropes of awkward parties and guilt as new and fresh.
