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01-23-2010 Hello readers. I'd like to unleash a new format that I hope to utilize from every now and then to provide quick commentary on various events. I call it "Do you feel like we do?" In these columns, I want to touch on something that makes me happy, something that makes me sad, and something that makes me angry. For my first installment, I am going to do something different (if that's possible in a debut) and use the same topic for each category. My choice is a tribute to one of the greatest TV shows ever: Chappelle's Show. Happy: We live in a time where word travels fast. Texting. The internet and its social networking aspect. Not only do you have an ear to the whole world, you also have a voice to the whole world. Both this voice and ear come into play when something newsworthy happens. More specifically, in the entertainment industry, when anything new emerges. Now more than ever, being in the first wave aboard a bandwagon is noble and admirable. You have ownership of that song, style, group, TV show, movie, or what have you. After that initial wave though, you have to make a decision: do you suck it up and become a fan even though you weren't the first? Or do you do what has become increasing popular and become a hater? It's a hater's world on the internet. Hater Heyday. It's so much easier to say something sucks than to admit you like it. I think people fail to realize that commenting on something - positively or negatively - is way way way easier than being creative and coming up with something on your own. But anyway, now I get to toot my own horn and tell you all how I loved Chappelle's Show from the very beginning. I hadn't seen Half Baked, but I had seen some of his standup and liked it. Thought he was funny; thought he was real. I liked his style and wanted to see what this show would be about. I didn't go in with any expectations. That's the other way the internet can work against your enjoyment of something new. All of the sudden, with your ear open to the opinions of the world, your expectations get altered. This bit me in the ass with two movies recently. One was Extract. I was so excited to see another project by Mike Judge that others had said was Office Space-esque. How could you not be psyched by that evaluation? Well, guess what? It stunk. I'm left wondering if I would have considered it funny even without my expectations. Probably not, so let's move on. A better example would be The Hangover. Every place I looked, people were saying The Hangover was the best comedy in a long, long time and one of the best ever. No way. Funny in parts, definitely. One of the best comedies ever? Please. This isn't even a movie I would ever own. Maybe without the big expectations, I would have liked it a lot better, but it didn't compare to what I had built it up to be in my mind. So, back to Chappelle. From the first episode, I was blown away. I definitely wasn't expecting a black white supremacist and whatever other crazy sketches were on that debut. I knew I was onto something great and immediately took ownership. And how proud was I to tell all my friends to watch it? Even my black friends (OK, friend, singular.) Still, that seemed to make all the laughs that much sweeter, especially as it developed a monstrous following. It's like watching your child grow up to do great things. Chappelle's Show took us on a magical ride. I actually gathered with people to watch this show every week. No comedy before or since ever came close to doing this brand of humor this well. Honorable mentions to All in the Family, Family Guy, and SNL (in that order). And then the second season rolled around. We were all stricken with a deadly dose of high expectations. How could anything continue to be that funny? Would the success go to Dave's head? Did we just imagine how good the first season had been? And look at what happened. Click here to see the sketches came out in Season Two. Among them: Lil Jon, When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong, Wayne Brady, and of course, the Rick James and Prince True Hollywood Stories. Amazing. The bar had been maintained, and quite possibly pushed higher. Angry: Like a lot of people, I was upset with the delays of the third season. You knew something was up. I was upset when Dave pulled the plug on his show that had given me so many laughs. It was only a TV show, but still - that was comedy we all knew could never be replaced. That's why we were mad. Much like watching Barry Sanders, we were accustomed to seeing a certain brand of greatness displayed on a weekly basis. Something special. And we were shocked to see it these men walk away before their times should have rightfully been up. Barry could have broken more ankles; Dave could have broken more barriers. Sad: Sadness is the emotion that prompted me to write this column. I've had the happy-sad-angry column idea kicking around for a while. I decided to debut it with Chappelle's Show after turning on the TV a couple days ago and finding the Racial Draft staring back at me. This sketch was a part of the first show of the second season. It was one of the sketches that let me know the first season wasn't just a fluke, wasn't just a mirage. Dave hadn't lost his funny. (And neither had Neal Brennan, his co-writer. Sorry, I should give him credit at some point too.) I remember watching that when it first aired and being excited knowing we were in for another full season of balls to the wall comedy. But I didn't feel the same way watching it just a couple days ago. Maybe it isn't right or fair of me to think this way, but some of the magic is gone from the episodes knowing how it all ended. Same reason I can't fully enjoy episodes of The Wonder Years knowing that Winnie and Kevin ultimately didn't get together. It's like how a messy break-up prevents you from going through the good memories without that twinge of sadness. Not only that, but I get sad for Dave too. By all accounts, he must have loved making that show. He put a ton of time into it and had something bad enough happen to him to make him walk away from it. He had to fight to keep his private life private and also had to deal with the fallout from leaving a show that was so popular and still on the way up. True, it's generally accepted that a celebrity makes a trade-off to give up a good deal of their privacy to have tons of fans and tons of money. But I reserve the right to feel bad for this particular millionaire. We all have athletes and actors nearer to our hearts than others, and Dave happens to be one that I feel more of a bond with. Thank you, Dave, for all the laughs and the inspiration. -T |
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