(upbeat music)
- (Michael) What's up Wisecrack, Michael here. In the early days of the twenty-first century, Travis Scott was just a kid in Houston
who loved Happy Meals , face masks were reserved mostly for hospitals and halloween, and Adult Swim
was just a late-night block of programming that showed cartoons aimed at, ugh, “mellow”
adults rather than Capri Sun fueled children. Then these guys came along. Mixing their love
of public access television and underground art with absurdism and cultural commentary
their comedy was equal parts awkwardness and horror. And while they started with obscure shows
that aired at four in the morning, they’ve now become legit celebrities, appearing in major films
and television and taking their talents into other fields like pop music and artisanal winemaking.
Along the way, they transformed the sensibility of Adult Swim, and along with it, modern comedy.
So how has an obscure comedy duo gone on to have such a massive impact across popular
culture? And how have they stayed true to their roots in the process?
Did Tim and Eric take on the soul-sucking entertainment industry
and... win? Let’s find out in this Wisecrack Edition on the Philosophy of Tim and Eric.
- (Michael) First, a quick rundown on the duo. After meeting in film school,
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim took advantage of the gear Eric was using for his Bar Mitzvah
videography business to film comedy sketches. Eventually, they sent a DVD to Bob Odenkirk
(also known as attorney Saul Goodman), who became an early champion of their work. This
led to their first Adult Swim show, Tom Goes to the Mayor. Lasting two seasons,
Adult Swim calls the animated series “one of the most polarizing” shows they’ve ever made.
- (Eric) We're going to need at least ten thousand of your finest
traps. Whatever it takes to keep those kids safe.
- (Michael) In its wild irreverence and unabashedly-dark humor, it paved the
way for their “mature” work, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
- (Voice) Great job!
- (Michael) And this is what really took them from obscure animation anarchists to legit cult heroes.
Building on many of the same themes and characters, Awesome Show created an entire
alternate reality of surreal lo-fi television. Taking the aesthetics of a public access show
and tossing in “actors” found on craigslist, it feels like an awkward Thanksgiving dinner with
your aunt and uncle who you suspect might actually already be dead. So
how did two comedians who don’t even tell jokes worm their way into the mainstream?
- (Tim) My mom makes me tape my nips. Cus my nips get bloody,
when the skin rips. Cus I wear a tight shirt, that chafes my nips. Nobody likes, bloody nips!
- (Michael) One way we can understand it is via the tradition of Outsider Art. This term is used
to describe art created by people outside of the mainstream tradition and often with
no formal training. Often these artists create work that feels like it’s from another world
- (Ryan) Woo woo woo! Alright!
- (Michael) There is also a tradition of outsider art created by both children and folks with mental
disabilities. Some famous examples in visual art are Henry Darger, a janitor whose work was
discovered by his landlord after he died, and Vivian Maier, a street photographer whose work
was also found after her death. And it’s not a stretch to include Tim and Eric in this tradition,
though luckily for us, we didn’t have to wait for their passing to discover their work. They began
creating comedy in Philadelphia, outside the traditional power centers of LA and New York,
and rather than working their way up the ranks from the inside, they simply reached
out to one of their comedy heroes and got a show made with no previous TV experience.
And since then, their work has largely been broadcast on Adult Swim,
which lies on the fringes of mainstream culture. While they did attend film school, it’s clear
that they learned more from low-quality public access TV than they did from classic cinema.
They’ve also relied on the power of Craigslist to find mostly older performers living on the margins
of the entertainment industry. One of their regulars, singer and puppeteer David Liebe Hart,
is a legitimate outsider artist in his own right, having spent years as a street performer before
becoming a staple on Awesome Show. They even tried to develop a television series with the dark
prince of outsider cinema himself, Tommy Wiseau. This outsider status is important to their work
because it allows them to satirize and explore media culture from a true critical distance,
with no responsibility or desire to faithfully emulate mainstream television.
And it’s clear that their artistic influences, which are more David Lynch and Wolfman Jack than
Adam Sandler and Chevy Chase, are outside the realm of traditional sketch comedy.
Most traditional comedic television has a largely pacifying effect on the viewer,
making us feel good without provoking any difficult questions or emotions. Whether it’s
a political sketch on SNL that makes most of its audience nod in semi-smug agreement or an episode
of The Good Place that makes us smile because we also believe in the eternal magic of friendship,
most comedic TV exists to make us feel comfortable and safe. And if these types of shows are a
weighted blanket making us feel safe and warm, then Tim and Eric Awesome Show is like a raccoon
that snorted crystal meth, broke into your bedroom and figured out how to play Slayer on iTunes.
- (Tim) Happy birthday Spray! I'm disappointed in you! In honey.
- (Michael) Take this sketch, in which a couple announces
their divorce to their heartbroken children. And then they reveal why:
mom is leaving for a younger and more handsome man who “burglarized their house last week”
- (Mom) Your mommy's in love with the burglar.
- (Michael) And Dad is going to live on the streets for a while. It’s super
uncomfortable. So how do Tim and Eric break the tension and infuse some comedy? Burping.
- (Kid) (burps) Where are we going to (burp) live?
- (Michael) Here, an unusually dark scenario is hilariously undercut by something simple
and childish. Or consider Fortin’ With Will, a sketch modeled after a fun
kid’s segment that slowly becomes a disturbing recollection of someone’s own childhood abuse.
- (Will Forte) Don't flush those toilets! I want you to leave
those logs in there for me to inspect!
- (Michael) Their work is often uncomfortable to watch, even for seasoned fans.
- (Will Forte) Excuse me. When I think about my father sometimes there is an
involuntary release of urine.
- (Michael) Personally, I still cover my eyes in season five as they get their eyes eaten
out by crows while an eyeless Dwight Schrute warns them about the Dark Man.
- (Rainn Wilson) The Dark man is coming!
- (Michael) At moments like this, they lean heavy into the horror genre to confuse our
brains’ comedy receptors. Unlike the pacifying and affirming nature of so much mainstream comedy, Tim
and Eric’s work can feel antagonistic, as if they are pushing the audience to see how much we can
take. They take existing cultural norms and either ignore them or subvert them beyond recognition.
- (Eric) We're having a going out of business, CLOWN sale!
- (Michael) Tim and Eric also take aim at consumer culture, finding bizarre new ways
to explore our dysfunctional relationship with, and desire for, material goods.
- (Tim) I got 1.99, I got 7.99, I got 16.99, cheap cheap cheap CHEAP!
- (Michael) Their work is less political than anthropological,
diving into the world of advertising and marketing so they can slowly pull it apart
from the inside out. As critic Frank Guan describes it, “What’s most striking about the
Awesome Show is not the comprehensiveness of its critique but its gentleness. The
illusions of commerce are not stabbed to death so much as silently stripped bare.”
Take their commercial for the I-Jammer, a children’s toy based on the Bop It
that has no discernible function other than destroying the minds of kids and
filling them with a seemingly insatiable desire for an utterly useless thing.
- (Narrator) Monitor your friend's progress. Look! They're E-bumping!
- (Michael) It’s strange and funny until you step back and reflect on
the way much of our media exists to sell us shit we don’t need. But nonetheless we
lust after it like an unneutered dog let loose at a thick leg convention.
As journalist Keith A. Spencer put it, “The brilliance...lies
in how Tim and Eric take the signs and signifiers of late-capitalist consumption
and stretch them until they are unidentifiable. It’s an outrageous satire of consumerist excess.”
And this critique of consumerism hits so hard because,
again, it’s created by outsiders who haven’t bought-in to this culture.
But just like what happened with everything from punk rock to video games to dipping your pizza in
ranch, things that start as counter-cultural and outside the mainstream are eventually
co-opted by those in power. Which is why your Pastor Richard’s favorite band is Green Day,
the quarterback of your high school football team has his own Twitch stream,
and high-end pizza shops offer house made artisanal ranch for an extra one-fifty.
And Awesome Show is no exception to the ranch covered rule. First, Tim and Eric attracted
some top-notch comedy talent, including cameos from Paul Rudd, Zach Galifinakis, Will Ferrell,
and Ted Fucking Danson. Then, clinically middle-brow shows like Saturday Night Live
started to adopt their awkward and uncomfortable sensibility. In fact, SNL both produced a sketch
that arguably ripped off a Tim and Eric sketch, and aired sketches like this, which clearly crib
the comedic aesthetics of Tim and Eric, down to the cadence of Kristen Wiig’s delivery.
- (Kristen Wiig) I'm taking myself, a hot air balloon ride.
- (Michael) Of course, the main difference is that, here, the antagonism of an
actual Awesome Show sketch is traded for a more commercially palatable awkwardness.
- (Eric) I touched a clown, now I'm going to jail!
- (Michael) We can see this same influence with antagonism traded for awkwardness in a show like
Portlandia, which is basically for people who love the absurdity of Awesome Show but also appreciate
the safety and comfort of a Subaru Outback.
For example, Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein have their ongoing, fanciful,
gender-bending romance story. In comparison, Tim and Eric have this recurring sketch about
the dysfunctional relationship between Carol and Mr. Henderson,
- (Tim) You are getting me, rock hard. - (Carol) I, thank you, I just got my hair cut.
- (Michael) Which eventually ends with Henderson being half-guillotined and dying
- (Tim) Hey I tell you what,
could you imagine getting your head cut off in one of these Gees? (screams)
- (Michael) While Carol is erotically negged by his nurse.
- (Nurse) Whoa, you are one big weird eggplant!
- (Michael) Normal romance stuff. Generally, take any comedy that veers more towards awkward
and absurd than it does traditionally funny, send some of its juices to a
genetics lab and it’s bound to come back at least 65% Tim and Eric in its ancestry.
They’ve also had a more direct influence on shaping modern comedy with their Abso Lutely
Productions, which is responsible for everything from the late-night absurdism of The Eric Andre
Show, to the Canadian business-school wisdom of Nathan for You and so on. Tim and Eric have used
their success as outsiders working on the inside of the entertainment industry to bring a whole
bunch of other weird, unlikely comedy stars along with them. It’s like they somehow got
seats in first class and slowly snuck all their dirtbag friends from coach up there with them.
- (Andy Daly) These pancakes couldn't kill me. Because I was already dead.
- (Michael) Now, influencing other television shows and comedians is one thing, but these
two Beef Boys might have had their biggest influence on a space not normally kind to
avant-garde and counter-cultural artists: corporate advertising.
- (Jeff Goldblum) Have your lighting servant get a GE link lightbulb for only 14.97. That's less than
what I tip the guy who tips people for me! (woman laughs)
- (Michael) Even if many folks will, tragically, never watch an episode of Awesome Show or Beef
House, anyone who’s regularly watched American television in the past decade
has seen a commercial either created by or heavily influenced by, Tim and Eric. For
example, if you, like me, have slathered a stick of Old Spice under your dank underarms
every morning for the past ten years after Terry Crews threatened you,
- (Man) How is this- - (Terry Crews screams)
- (Michael) You almost definitely were influenced by the advertising of Tim and
Eric. But Arctic Force smelling armpits aside -- isn’t it kind of weird that two
outsider artists who largely cut their teeth by skewering the sick emptiness of consumer
culture have gone on to make ads for the likes of Google, GoDaddy, Boost Mobile, GE,
and VRBO presumably all aimed at selling you shit you don’t need? Maybe -- but if we are
willing to suspend judgment, there might be something even deeper going on here.
Now at first, it might seem bizarre, if not genuinely disappointing,
that the guys behind the I-Jammer would become admen. In layman’s terms, this is usually called
“selling out.” Like Matthew McConaughey using his hypnotizing Texas drawl to sell you a Lincoln SUV,
or Travis Scott letting you know that if you buy his Mcdonald’s meal and accompanying
eighty-dollar chicken McNugget pillow that things will once and for all, truly be lit.
So how are Tim and Eric able to work in the world of advertising without embracing
the type of hollow consumerism they’ve always hated? In 2008 Heidecker said in an interview,
“We both despise advertising and marketing. You can’t avoid it, and it’s always so inane.
I find that we’re constantly being treated like children, even with other forms of media.” And
in the very same year, they won a Webby for their Absolut Vodka ad. Told in three parts,
the ad, featuring Zach Galifinakis, seems to retain a lot of Tim and Eric’s signature style:
weird wigs, mundane conversations turning violent, uncomfortable sexual energy,
all culminating in a full-scale emotional breakdown. The actual “endorsement” for
Absolut doesn’t come until the third installment of an almost fifteen-minute long commercial,
- (Zach) Do you guys like Absolute? (dramatic piano music)
- (Zach) Because I have some of that.
- (Michael) And it sounds about as genuine as Tom Selleck trying
to get your grandparents to reverse mortgage their condo.
- (Tom Selleck) It's just a loan!
- (Michael) This ad clearly isn’t as slimy as a lot of celebrity commercials, and it doesn’t
sacrifice Tim and Eric’s signature aesthetic. But is it doing anything subversive? Eric had this to
say in an interview with The Believer, “We wanted to work with the comedian Zach Galifianakis,
who we love. We were also allowed to do anything we wanted. Absolut had approached Zach,
and they were basically paying all of us to make an anti-ad. How could we have said no?” Of course,
you COULD argue that this ad is mostly about giving Absolut some underground
cultural cred and ensuring potential consumers that they’re down with Tim and Eric’s vibe.
But an example of the duo using a commercial deal to be slightly more subversive is their
“ad” for Totino’s Pizza Rolls. If their Absolut ad tries to avoid reminding you you’re watching a
commercial by barely mentioning the product, this one goes the opposite route. Using a
near-constant repetition of the word “Totino’s” in a sort of punk rock song about pizza rolls:
- (Singer) Totinos, Totinos, pizza rolls!
- (Michael) The commercial feels like a knowing wink to those who would accuse
them of losing their punk rock credibility. At one point Hard Rock Joe even tells us
- (Hard Rock Joe) You can keep all that corporate BS! I’m into punk pizza rolls with Totino’s!
- (Michael) So is this technically an advertisement for low-quality pizza nuggets?
Sure. But is it doing anything to earnestly sell a product?
- (Tennessee) Hi I'm Tennessee a pizza freak and I have a secret. I am, Pizza, Totino's Boy.
- (Michael) If anything, it grows increasingly disturbing and makes you wonder if the “Totino’s
Lifestyle” is code for some sort of processed-mozzarella fueled sex cult.
If it weren’t made explicit at the end of the ad, you could be forgiven for assuming
this wasn’t a commercial at all, but a sketch using a gross snack as fodder for absurdity.
- (Tim) I put some rolls in my mouth, I put some rolls in my mouth.
- (Michael)
So on a charitable reading, it seems that Tim and Eric are at
times able to use advertising to subvert the fundamental expectations of the influencer
economy. Whereas Lincoln is using the star of Failure to Launch to sell luxury SUV’s,
and McDonald’s is the Mozart of Auto-Tune to sell fries and barbecue sauce, Tim and
Eric are at least using companies like Absolut and Totinos to make weird comedy.
- (Tim and Eric) Totinos, Totinos, woo! Totinos, Totinos, Totinos, yeah yeah yeah!
- (Michael) And at our most generous, we could argue that in doing this,
they are performing the same type of satire they did with the I-Jammer sketch,
except they are simply subbing out a fictional useless product for real useless products.
But as anyone who has seen Andy Warhol’s soup cans knows, this wouldn’t be the first time that
an underground artist’s performative critique of consumerism was appropriated by the very culture
it set out to critique. Now, does this actively support the idea that Tim and Eric are still
outsider artists? Not really, as most outsider artists live in poverty or psychiatric facilities,
make almost no money, and rarely receive credit for their work in their lifetime.
So would it have technically made Tim and Eric more punk rock if someone discovered a box full
of comedy DVDs under their adult bunk beds after they died in obscurity? Maybe. But honestly,
we’re glad that they’ve gotten to receive some praise, and of course compensation, for
their work, while they’re still around to enjoy it. And in turn, we’re glad we’ve gotten this.
- (Tim and Eric) Shrimp? Shrimp? Tits? Shrimp, Tits?
- (Michael)
But what do you think, Wisecrack? Are Tim and Eric pushing the boundaries to comedy
as a critical art form? Or are they just two dudes trying to retire on a pie of free vodka,
pizza rolls, and deodorant? Let us know what you think in the comments.
Special thanks to our patrons for all your support, and don’t forget to smash that subscribe
button like it’s a secret feature on the I-Jammer. And as always, thanks for watching. Later.