Tim, Eric great on DVD

Tim…Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Vol. 1 Warner Home Video Unrated

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Any avid watcher of Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim block of programming will attest to its characteristic absurdity and almost-surrealist sense of humor. “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” – the first live-action addition to the Adult Swim lineup – manifests as much absurdity as any past Adult Swim show but uses live-action to give its humor an entirely unique spin.

The aptly named creators of “Awesome Show,” Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, were already a known quantity on Adult Swim for their pseudo-live action show, “Tom Goes to the Mayor.” In essence, “Awesome Show” is an evolution of “Tom.”

Both shows revolve around the experiences of two characters in a near-depressing rural setting, which is the source of both shows’ humor. Everything in both shows is entirely run-down and low-quality, from Tom’s pathetic attempts at changing his town in “Tom” to any of the numerous setting sketches in “Awesome Show” (“Gravy Robbers” – a series of sketches about a restaurant where the food is so terrible it needs to be drowned in gravy, and yet workers try to steal this essential gravy as customers eat – immediately comes to mind).

This rural-pathos theme is only emphasized by the appearance of both shows. “Tom” was barely animated and always looked like raw, uncolored drawings, while “Awesome Show” looks as if it is shot on a hand camera and is highly reminiscent of late-night infomercials and local commercial spots (the special effects in some skits are particularly laughable). But this is all clearly intentional – there are moments in both shows where they break out of the rural-pathos and have legitimately impressive scenes.

However, all this purposeful manipulation of appearance and subject matter plays into Tim and Eric’s comedic strengths. The duo is at its best when they represent the people that populate the settings their sketches are based on. They have a fantastic understanding of why that crappy commercial advertising some terrible restaurant is funny – it’s because of what the existence of these implies about the people behind them.

Tom in “Tom” is especially good at this – he’s just a normal guy trying to improve his town but is constantly thwarted by a deranged mayor and the ridiculous citizenry of said town. “Awesome Show” has many characters like this, including Casey Tatum, a hideously sun-burnt singer on the late-night telethon musical act “Uncle Muscle’s Hour.” Casey is perhaps the only character who has a story arc, as he becomes increasingly ineffective in his performances and eventually runs away. Casey is so awkward and pathetic that it’s practically impossible not to laugh and feel terrible about it at the same time.

Where “Awesome Show” really distinguishes itself from “Tom” is in its format. Unlike “Tom,” which had more or less a regular episodic format, “Awesome Show” is a sketch show in the vein of “Saturday Night Live” or “Mad TV.”

The sketches fire off furiously, with little to no warning when one ends and another begins. Each episode is also based around a theme, usually involving Tim and Eric’s introduction to the show – for example, the episode titled “Cats” starts out with Tim inexplicably becoming a cat. As such, sketches will often recur over and over again in a single episode to build on its central idea, but few sketches actually recur over the course of multiple episodes.

The DVD itself falls in line with Cartoon Network’s regular formula for Adult Swim shows. “Awesome Show” has no presentation frills (assumedly to fit in with the whole low-production-value look of the show) but is replete with special features, commentary from Tim and Eric themselves and the standard ability to browse through episodes.

There is a play-all feature, which is nice, as the shows do have an interesting quality of blending into each other. The only feature that would have been welcome would have been the ability to browse the individual sketches and jump to them from the menu, but the episodes are short enough that finding a particular skit isn’t a problem.

Because of the show’s nature, it is difficult to truly criticize the humor. Sketch shows are inherently hit-or-miss affairs, and “Awesome Show” in particular has so many that it’s impossible to like all of them, but it’s also unlikely that a few won’t induce bursts of laughter.

The humor is unique and unlike everything else on television – even from the animated entries of Adult Swim – that it’s more than worthwhile to check out.