I learned about this show a few days ago. Having read some of the amusing comments regarding this show on IMDb, I just had to go down to the Museum of Television & Radio in Beverly Hills to see what the fuss was about.
Oh wow. The trivia section here said that ABC canceled the show just minutes after the first episode began airing. Now that I saw that fateful first episode, they were doing 60s television a favor. Manic, disturbing, unnerving and psychotic are just some of the lighter adjectives that describe this show. By itself, the "rapid fire humor" was too rapid (the show cuts into too many skits into too little time) and not humorous enough (obvious double jokes, for one).
And yet the show was funny... for all the wrong reasons! While the jokes were hardly laughable (except perhaps the candy dispenser refusing to pop out The Pill; that was a real guff!), their execution certainly was. Mr. Conway tries, but he really doesn't belong here; "eye-candy" that isn't; a curious dog-cat-Muppet hybrid silently popping up with a bewildering stare after seeing a, um, "sex act"; oh, and let's not forget the "Body Politic". All of this is sardine-canned into thirty minutes to yield some of the most bizarre entertainment ever produced for television. Perhaps it should come with every sale of the Ludovico Machine. Indeed, the white background, extremely minimalist set designs and mind-frying Moog synthesizer music would make you think that Laugh-In was doing a little "in-out in-out" with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange!
Oh wow. The trivia section here said that ABC canceled the show just minutes after the first episode began airing. Now that I saw that fateful first episode, they were doing 60s television a favor. Manic, disturbing, unnerving and psychotic are just some of the lighter adjectives that describe this show. By itself, the "rapid fire humor" was too rapid (the show cuts into too many skits into too little time) and not humorous enough (obvious double jokes, for one).
And yet the show was funny... for all the wrong reasons! While the jokes were hardly laughable (except perhaps the candy dispenser refusing to pop out The Pill; that was a real guff!), their execution certainly was. Mr. Conway tries, but he really doesn't belong here; "eye-candy" that isn't; a curious dog-cat-Muppet hybrid silently popping up with a bewildering stare after seeing a, um, "sex act"; oh, and let's not forget the "Body Politic". All of this is sardine-canned into thirty minutes to yield some of the most bizarre entertainment ever produced for television. Perhaps it should come with every sale of the Ludovico Machine. Indeed, the white background, extremely minimalist set designs and mind-frying Moog synthesizer music would make you think that Laugh-In was doing a little "in-out in-out" with Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange!