What would modern TV comedy look like without Lorne
Michaels? Proving yet again that NBC stalwart “Saturday Night Live” is more of
a farm system for all other TV comedy than anything else, around a dozen
veterans of the show from the ‘90s and ‘00s pop up in two specials that
premiere in the next week, IFC’s “The Spoils Before Dying,” which starts July 8th
and runs three consecutive nights, and HBO’s “7 Days in Hell,” which pops up
for one night on Saturday, July 11th. Both are imperfect overall but
they each contain enough inventive humor to warrant a look. They’re each odd,
memorable creations with ridiculously talented comedy ensembles. And they both
fall into the category of “if you don’t like one joke, wait ten seconds for the
next.”
The more ambitious of the two is Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s
creation, “The Spoils Before Dying,” a quasi-sequel to “The Spoils of Babylon,”
the Emmy-nominated spoof of the kind of sprawling mini-series melodrama that
they don’t really make any more. Another adaptation of the fictional author
Eric Jonrosh (played in hilarious, Orson Welles-esque intros by Ferrell), “The
Spoils Before Dying” is a spoof of late-era noir, the kind of movies that
wallowed in the tropes of the genre with femme fatales with names like Fresno
Foxglove and an emphasis on “smoky lighting.” For three nights, over roughly
three hours, Ferrell and the Funny or Die team push their unique, smart brand
of humor, one that winks at the audience in its sheer ridiculousness. The cast
here is ridiculously great, especially as the plot sags and producers throw
more and more cameos at the audience to keep them engaged, including Tim
Meadows, Molly Shannon, Michael Sheen, Kate McKinnon, Emily Ratajkowski and
even Lou Gossett Jr.
Michael K. Williams (“Boardwalk Empire”) is the perfectly
cast straight man at the center of this defiantly wacky comedy as Rock Banyon,
a jazz pianist working the seedy clubs of Los Angeles. Williams’s deadpan,
serious performance brilliantly allows the more, shall we say, extreme cast
members to do their thing, such as Kristen Wiig as big band singer Delores
DeWinter and Haley Joel Osment as British caricature Alistair St. Barnaby,
Banyon’s manager. When Rock’s lover (Maya Rudolph) ends up murdered, the
pianist is the main suspect in the brutal crime, unable to remember what he did
the night in question.
As Jonrosh explains in his intro, “The Spoils Before Dying”
is his attempt at “Post-Post-Modern-French-Neo-Fakism.”
Some elements are familiar to noir fans but others are Ferrell’s strange
creations. What’s admirable about “Dying,” “Babylon” and even “Casa de mi
Padre,” is Ferrell and company’s unapologetic commitment to the joke. A THIRD
of the first episode consists of the show’s credits over a ridiculous title
song sung by Rudolph. Multiple jokes feel like they go on just to the point of
breaking before pulling back (although a couple could have pulled up that
throttle earlier). And the dialogue is expectedly Noir Ridiculous with lines
like “Nobody’s going to love her again,
not with those bullet holes all over her face,” and “No sense is the only sense worth making in a world predicated on
nonsense.” “The Spoils Before Dying” fluctuates wildly from very clever to
somewhat exhausting, but it gets better as it goes along, or perhaps I just got
accustomed to its unique sense of humor. As Jonrosh says at the end of episode
two, “Perfect should never get in the way
of good.” “The Spoils Before Dying” is far from perfect but it’s still
pretty good.
Also far from perfect but pretty good is HBO’s “7 Days in Hell,” a true
oddity that knows to end just when it’s about to get annoying. This 41-minute
sports doc spoof plays like Andy Samberg’s take on ESPN’s excellent “30 For 30”
series. It’s almost like a script for an “SNL” sketch that just got out of
control in terms of length. Samberg gathered a number of his talented friends
and the result is completely in line with his Lonely Island persona of an
awkward dude-bro who may rely a bit too often on gross-out jokes but also has a
tendency to make his dumb brand of humor work through the sheer force of his
comic timing.
Samberg plays Aaron Williams, once the biggest tennis star
in the world after being adopted by the Williams family in a “Reverse Blind
Side”—instead of a white family adopting a black kid and making him play
football, Venus and Serena’s family adopts a white kid and makes him play
tennis. Williams’s star burns out in typical celebrity excess like drugs and
ridiculous spending, and his career really collapses when he kills a judge with
his serve and doesn’t forfeit the game. From there, he spirals out of control
into retirement in Europe, when an offhand comment by new British prodigy Charles
Poole (Kit Harrington of “Game of Thrones”) sparks a comeback. Williams and
Poole end up playing a record-setting, 7-day match at Wimbledon, interrupted by
weather, controversy, and even streakers, with whom Aaron has sex on the court,
with the Brits too polite to interrupt so the game can continue.
The mockumentary structure of “7 Days in Hell” allows for a
diverse mix of performers—including real athletes like John McEnroe and Chris
Evert—most of whom, again, are “SNL” alum like Will Forte, Fred Armisen and
Chris Parnell. (And, again, Michael Sheen appears, being an unexpected direct
cast connection between the two). Samberg’s comedy style can be a little overly
frenetic, and a few of the jokes here just don’t land, but there are some parts
of “7 Days in Hell,” especially “The greatest point in tennis history,” that
really should be seen, especially if you’re one of those who miss the “SNL”
years of the ‘90s and ‘00s. Although how could you miss them when their alumni
are everywhere?
