Spoilers for last night's "Flight of the Conchords" coming up just as soon as I go to jazzercise class...Last week's episode was about as perfect as "Conchords" gets, with a very funny storyline balanced by two catchy songs with memorable music videos(*). "Unnatural Love" was going to be a tough act to follow under any circumstances, so I suppose I should be glad that last night's show was still relatively amusing and had some good videos. (The video for the title tune had a real Queen circa 1982 vibe to it.) But it was very inconsistent and the songs themselves have already completely vanished from my head.
(*) I may need an intervention to stop watching those two on YouTube. In particular, ever since a commenter last week pointed out that the cowboy from The Village People is leading the conga line in "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor," it's become this huge obsession of mine. It very well could lead to divorce, and the only thing saving me is that my wife keeps humming the tune from "Carol Brown." In fact, I just watched "Too Many Dicks" again after I went to get the proper link. Dammit.
I like Kristen Wiig a lot, even though I think "SNL" is now leaning on her so heavily that it's diluting a lot of what makes her funny. My problem with the episode is that the writing tried to have it both ways with Brahbrah(**), who at times was just as crazy as all the regulars in Conchords world, and who at other times was supposed to be the straight man who pointed out how bizarrely Bret and Jemaine were acting in their attempts to seduce her. The insanity -- like the various photos of Charlie the dog in disguise, and her unexpected explanations for each one (gourd party?)-- plays to Wiig's strengths, and I'd have preferred if they went entirely in that direction. Instead, it felt awkward whenever she was relatively sane and questioning why Jemaine suddenly had a beard.
(**) After she confirmed the pronunciation of her name, I went back to the beginning of the episode to check how she said it there, and it's impossible to tell. Probably why Barbara was a good name to goof on.
On the other hand, I thought it was a wonderful touch that Murray, for all his obliviousness -- he's a band manager who doesn't understand the concept of backing tracks -- was the one to cut through all the posturing and explain to Brahbrah what the guys were up to. It's those rare and unexpected moments of insight from the main characters that makes their eccentricities work. I know that seems contradictory to my complaint about Brahbrah, but the rules are different for ongoing characters versus one-offs.
Also, maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention, but I hadn't realized there were a lot of dogs (epileptic dogs, at that) in the audience for the benefit, and so the joke about the strobe light giving them all seizures took me too long to process for me to laugh at it. I'll blame that one on Oscar fatigue, though.
What did everybody else think?
No comments:
Post a Comment