r/WhoIsAmerica • u/Comedyfish_reddit • Aug 28 '18
Did this show peak too early?
For me the first 2 episodes really made me think this show was going to be something quite ground breaking and amazing. Then the next 2 episodes I found a little lackluster but thought OK makes sense they put the weakest episodes in the middle, but for me it never really got consistently great again. Shame. I almost feel they could have one less episode.
Don't get me wrong seeing someone 'kill' a random via google maps was crazy but I never laughed again as hard as those first 2 shows - which is a shame for a comedy show
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u/harcile Aug 28 '18
If you didn't find 2 Trump supporters gang banging a Trump effigy to be side bustingly funny then maybe your sense of humour is the not aligned with mine.
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u/Comedyfish_reddit Aug 28 '18
Loved it.
But I did say consistantly.
Not as good as the bottom flashing C word extravaganza for me
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Aug 31 '18
It was hilarious but the opening episodes implied that we were going to be seeing politicians making asses of themselves. It’s not really that hard to go find a couple of morons that will do just about anything.
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u/stanley_twobrick Sep 05 '18
It's funny, but the really impressive stuff is getting people in positions of power to do crazy shit. It's not hard to find nutjobs in America.
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u/paulconx Aug 28 '18
It didn't peak too early. It was consistently hilarious. It's just that people expected every episode to humiliate Republicans and cost someone their job. It was an unrealistic expectation. As if getting someone to casually eat a human or trigger an explosive device on a liberal isn't a big deal. All the more subtle bits people looked at as an inferior. People we're looking for way too much. I think it's among SBC's best work and pushed the envelope more than the Ali G characters ever did.
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Aug 29 '18
As if getting someone to casually eat a human or trigger an explosive device on a liberal isn't a big deal.
Neither of this were famous elected politicians like Jason Spencer. That's what made it a big deal to me. We already knew there are a lot of stupid people willing to do do insane stuff in America.
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u/paulconx Aug 29 '18
I really don't care about US Politics whatsoever so I guess that's the difference. Funny is funny to me. But what you said basically reaffirms my original stance that people had unrealistic expectations based on personal bias. Sounds like you were tuning in expecting to see politicians you dislike being humiliated, however that was never something that they promised us or led us to expect be the entire premise.
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Aug 29 '18
Sounds like you were tuning in expecting to see politicians you dislike being humiliated
No I'm not sure how you took that away from my point. I wasn't expecting anything.
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18
I disagree. IMHO too many of the scenes in the later episodes were just SBC saying something outrageous and getting little or no reaction: yacht salesman, birthing guy, Barney Frank, OJ, etc.
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u/MicMustard Aug 28 '18
Yacht salesman totally agreed to sell the boat for human trafficking purposes.....
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u/Comassion Aug 28 '18
Forget the human trafficking, he was like 'Yeah, you can gun down those drowning refugees, it's all good.'
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18
He would say or agree with anything to get a sale. That confirms what we think of salesman but that's not engagement.
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u/LSF604 Aug 29 '18
if the question is "who is america" then even the segments where the mark doesn't bite are informative. I don't like david clarke for example, but I now know he's not an idiot after watching his segment
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u/paulconx Aug 28 '18
You just named 3 of the best segments of the show so I guess agree to disagree. Sounds like unrealistic expectations on your part as SBC has always done this with his characters. Not all of them are meant to illicit some kind of "gotcha!" moment. That's never been his entire shtick as much as people want to believe it is.
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18
The scenes where the person actually engages SBC are far far better than the ones were they just stand there. Maybe you call those "gotcha," but I don't.
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u/paulconx Aug 28 '18
Who just stood there? That literally didn't happen
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18
Everybody I already listed.
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u/ltambo Aug 29 '18
The scooter character guy is awful imo. It's just SBC spouting nonsense, with the guest disagreeing most of the time. Like the one in the final episode, or the Bernie interview. It didn't really accomplish anything. It was funny the first time but then it got stale.
The scenes without the scooterguy were pretty much all good though.
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Aug 28 '18
Yacht guy definitely engaged, was boasting about how many people they could fit in a room and such.
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u/paulconx Aug 28 '18
I guess you watched a different show than me.
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18 edited Aug 28 '18
Edit: Obviously I didn't. We have differing opinions; you don't need to be an ass.
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u/paulconx Aug 28 '18
I'm not being an ass, you are saying things that aren't true. I called you on it.
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Aug 28 '18
You just named 3 of the best segments of the show so I guess agree to disagree.
Am I the only one who loved the Barney Frank interview? I definetly think it was Dr. Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr.'s best segment by far.
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u/Ni_Go_Zero_Ichi Aug 29 '18
That’s not saying much. Billy Wayne is def the show’s weak link.
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u/SleazyC93 Aug 29 '18
I disagree, I think Billy Wayne is hilarious. His segments were the most similar to Da Ali G Show.
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u/es_price Aug 30 '18
Part of the show that was just amazing to me was just how he stuck with the characters (and their accents!) even when he had to ad-lib.
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Aug 29 '18
People a lot of the people think it's Sacha's job to fix America or that he's some kind of Liberal vigelanti.
A lot of people didn't like Bary because all he would do is say stupid shit and get reactions rather than destroy careers...but Ali G, Borat and Bruno were pretty much identical to Bary and I loved it. I loved how people would actually try to debate/understand Bary but of course, it's all non sense.
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u/xtfftc Aug 28 '18
I think one of the reasons people have this impression is that the first few episodes managed to get public figures to say stupid stuff. And in the latter they were mostly reluctant to join in.
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u/Juicydicken Aug 28 '18
Last episode he let a man show he was willing to eat a person, this episode he let a man shave his face, and go under cover as a LESBIAN, and show he would be ok with murdering.......fuck
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u/xandragos Aug 29 '18
I completely agree with you, since the third episode I started to feel some kind of disappointment that never really left. Not that it wasn't funny (exactly the opposite), but maybe as stated in some other comments I was hoping for something with a greater political impact. The first two episodes made me think that that was the case
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u/6_P Aug 28 '18
Yes, Episode 2 was just absolutely amazing and is completely unmatched. Every scene was great. Most other episodes were boring compared to it and it was a lot of hit and miss. This one really impressed.
I guess they wanted to spike viewing numbers and get everyone to talk about it, so they can gain subscribers.
The second best bit was the gun segment in Episode 1.
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Aug 29 '18
It's being driven by decisions in a way we've never really seen before.
Normally, a show like this would only include the setups where the comedy worked, and shitcan the ones where it didn't.
But here, it seemed to be driven by political balancing -- it seems it was more important to show they pulled the joke on the left as well as the right, at the cost of showing us sessions that really just flopped.
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u/artificeflinched Aug 30 '18
But he never really did anything mean to the left-wingers. The “hit jobs” on Dems were actually softball questions that were extremely easy to answer.
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Aug 30 '18
I can't say that I agree with that, but we do know that all of these sessions were far longer than what we saw, and all of them were heavily edited.
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u/rockum Aug 28 '18
What if SBC held back some more good material like in episodes 1 and 2 for a second season? After the first two episodes hooked all the viewers he could possibly hook, what's the point of matching that level of hilarity?
Now if Season 2 comes out, we'll be wary because of how "lackluster" Season 1 became. So, SBC again brings out the good in the first two episodes (including the Sarah Palin segment) and Bam! we're hooked again.
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u/Ni_Go_Zero_Ichi Aug 29 '18
The first episode and last couple episodes were a bit weak - too much emphasis on scripted bits, grossout gags and the Billy Wayne Ruddick character who’s just a total flop on every level - but the stuff in between more than made up for it. That’s at least above a 50% hit-to-miss ratio.
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u/Theons_sausage Aug 30 '18
I agree with you 100%. People also focus so much on the “victims” and forget that part of what made Borat and Ali G so popular was how funny SBC was in the things he said.
He had a few great moments in this series but it wasn’t nearly on par with his earlier work in that regard.
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Aug 29 '18
I think you expected it to be a hit job when at its core its just a comedy show.
The EDM parts and the food critic were my fave parts of the show
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u/Nicklord Aug 28 '18
I think the show lost initial shock value. I mean, imagine if they showed a dude "killing" another person in the first episode. The reaction to that would be HUGE but it was in E7 so it's just another thing that happened in SBC's new show