Network: WB; Genre: Sketch Comedy; Content Rating: TV-PG (for adult content, language and strong scatological humor); Also Available on: Comedy Central; Classification: Contemporary (Star Range: 1 - 4)
Season Reviewed: Season 1+
If there is anything more annoying than people who see the population through the prism of a bunch of stereotypes, its people who consciously live those stereotypes and love it. I'm sorry, but there it is. TV shows are always going out of their way, even circumventing real life, to avoid stereotyping but if we're all honest with ourselves we'd admit that stereotypes exist for a reason - because people really do act those ways. However, it seems no real life stereotypical group is as much in love with its media image as the "redneck".
"Blue Collar TV" does for rednecks and southerners what "The Man Show" did for men and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" did for gay men. Nothing. Under the creation of Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy, this sketch comedy series is something of a spin-off of their "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" stand-up movie. The skits consist of the same jokes these cats have been telling for years. The favorite boiling down to this: "Rednecks can't talk right, they have their own language (requiring dictionary translation) made up of mumbling and slurring words together. They are dumb, beer-swilling, deer-shooting, "Cops"-loving, inept-with-women pigs."
The great idea this show supposedly purports is that rednecks exist and people really do act like them. Well, we certainly don't hear that joke everywhere in mainstream entertainment. The show takes these ideas and crassly beats them into the ground. Watching it is like putting goggles on that allow you to see middle America through the eyes of a network executive or a New York Times or Village Voice columnist. The show is a big loving, bear hug throwing its arms around clichés and jokes that weren't funny to begin with, made by a group of people who mistakenly think the country is laughing with them instead of at them.
Foxworthy has masterfully crafted a career out of selling out his own kind and becoming the godfather of redneck humor. He is the only one of the 3 that isn't completely embarrassing himself. Larry the Cable Guy is the most grating. Whether playing a baby that sends a literal stream of p*** up toward the camera or translating Shakespeare for the high school dropout set, its hard not to shield your eyes out of embarrassment. The three leads are constantly cracking each other up, amused to no end with their own mugging. Particularly, camera hogging Larry - a human receptacle for the show's numerous fart jokes and whose idea of comic delivery is to scream as loud as he can at the audience. It is all so stupid, loud and repellently annoying that any possibility for "infectiously funny" laughs gets instantly popped.
Sketch comedy on TV is a dinosaur anyway. The last thing we at home want to see in the middle of a skit is a cut-away to a single member of the audience laughing. Which is what you will see on this show. On the first level the show isn't funny. On the next, shows like this only help affirm a belief, perpetuated by the rest of television, that certain social groups live at the margin. If there where some wit or insight here, that would be a different story. It is the white male version of the prehistoric minstrel show Fox gave us with the ghastly "Method & Red". It has got to be stopped. Or otherwise should be under a tent with a Carney out front yelling "See the world through the eyes of Ward Sutton".
½
Season Reviewed: Season 1+
If there is anything more annoying than people who see the population through the prism of a bunch of stereotypes, its people who consciously live those stereotypes and love it. I'm sorry, but there it is. TV shows are always going out of their way, even circumventing real life, to avoid stereotyping but if we're all honest with ourselves we'd admit that stereotypes exist for a reason - because people really do act those ways. However, it seems no real life stereotypical group is as much in love with its media image as the "redneck".
"Blue Collar TV" does for rednecks and southerners what "The Man Show" did for men and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" did for gay men. Nothing. Under the creation of Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy, this sketch comedy series is something of a spin-off of their "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" stand-up movie. The skits consist of the same jokes these cats have been telling for years. The favorite boiling down to this: "Rednecks can't talk right, they have their own language (requiring dictionary translation) made up of mumbling and slurring words together. They are dumb, beer-swilling, deer-shooting, "Cops"-loving, inept-with-women pigs."
The great idea this show supposedly purports is that rednecks exist and people really do act like them. Well, we certainly don't hear that joke everywhere in mainstream entertainment. The show takes these ideas and crassly beats them into the ground. Watching it is like putting goggles on that allow you to see middle America through the eyes of a network executive or a New York Times or Village Voice columnist. The show is a big loving, bear hug throwing its arms around clichés and jokes that weren't funny to begin with, made by a group of people who mistakenly think the country is laughing with them instead of at them.
Foxworthy has masterfully crafted a career out of selling out his own kind and becoming the godfather of redneck humor. He is the only one of the 3 that isn't completely embarrassing himself. Larry the Cable Guy is the most grating. Whether playing a baby that sends a literal stream of p*** up toward the camera or translating Shakespeare for the high school dropout set, its hard not to shield your eyes out of embarrassment. The three leads are constantly cracking each other up, amused to no end with their own mugging. Particularly, camera hogging Larry - a human receptacle for the show's numerous fart jokes and whose idea of comic delivery is to scream as loud as he can at the audience. It is all so stupid, loud and repellently annoying that any possibility for "infectiously funny" laughs gets instantly popped.
Sketch comedy on TV is a dinosaur anyway. The last thing we at home want to see in the middle of a skit is a cut-away to a single member of the audience laughing. Which is what you will see on this show. On the first level the show isn't funny. On the next, shows like this only help affirm a belief, perpetuated by the rest of television, that certain social groups live at the margin. If there where some wit or insight here, that would be a different story. It is the white male version of the prehistoric minstrel show Fox gave us with the ghastly "Method & Red". It has got to be stopped. Or otherwise should be under a tent with a Carney out front yelling "See the world through the eyes of Ward Sutton".
½