Awesome Show has more 1 star ratings than just about any other show I could find. But this is okay. Necessary even. Because the humor of Tim and Eric only works if the show itself has positively no redeeming value.
So you hate Tim and Eric? Does your blood boil at the mere mention of the show? Do you seriously question the moral integrity of anyone who enjoys it? Good, now imagine that ALL entertainment is like that. Every TV Show, every song, every movie, every commercial, every video game. Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? That's what Awesome Show is, less a show and more of a window into an alternate universe where *everything* is awful. How horrible that must be! Not just that you can't enjoy anything, but that the flaws are just so danged *obvious*! Cinco products are so obviously useless! Steve Brule's advice is so obviously bad! Why can't anyone else see this? Why am I the only one who realizes how terrible this is! Why does Cinco keep selling products, why do people keep tuning in to Back to Squall? This is a dang nightmare! Wake me up, hoagie man!
But it was all just a dream! Sure, there's awful entertainment out there, but great things too. Looking back, its almost funny how anyone could like something so terrible. That anyone could be so stupid as to not realize all the obvious flaws. You laugh, not at the jokes themselves, but at the unspoken implication that the creators sincerely wanted to impress their viewers, and that their viewers sincerely were impressed.
Then you realize that the specific things that make a typical Awesome Show terrible are not too different from the flaws of actual entertainment. How many commercials for gadgets have you seen that serve a purpose so oddly specific that you couldn't imagine anyone needing one? How many "experts" do you hear people rave about, only to find their advice is common sense at best and dangerous at worst? How awful is it to watch a person you admire be interviewed by someone who lacks even the slightest bit of knowledge or interest in what they do?
I'll give one specific example, the "Universe" sketches. I enjoy my pop- science, and today there's more shows about outer space than I know what to do with. Yet so many of them are so severely lacking in any substance. They take a few basic facts that could be taught in minutes and inflate them into an entire show with computer generated images, infograms, and dozens of five second sound-bytes from the same troupe of "well known science persons" that appear on every other science show. After rewatching the Tim and Eric "Universe" sketch, I realized that this is *exactly* the way I see most other shows about space. They take the concept of having nothing to say, but plenty of CGI to say it, and run with it.
Tim and Eric "get" bad entertainment. Awesome Show is everything that is wrong with media taken to its logical conclusion.
So you hate Tim and Eric? Does your blood boil at the mere mention of the show? Do you seriously question the moral integrity of anyone who enjoys it? Good, now imagine that ALL entertainment is like that. Every TV Show, every song, every movie, every commercial, every video game. Sounds like a nightmare, doesn't it? That's what Awesome Show is, less a show and more of a window into an alternate universe where *everything* is awful. How horrible that must be! Not just that you can't enjoy anything, but that the flaws are just so danged *obvious*! Cinco products are so obviously useless! Steve Brule's advice is so obviously bad! Why can't anyone else see this? Why am I the only one who realizes how terrible this is! Why does Cinco keep selling products, why do people keep tuning in to Back to Squall? This is a dang nightmare! Wake me up, hoagie man!
But it was all just a dream! Sure, there's awful entertainment out there, but great things too. Looking back, its almost funny how anyone could like something so terrible. That anyone could be so stupid as to not realize all the obvious flaws. You laugh, not at the jokes themselves, but at the unspoken implication that the creators sincerely wanted to impress their viewers, and that their viewers sincerely were impressed.
Then you realize that the specific things that make a typical Awesome Show terrible are not too different from the flaws of actual entertainment. How many commercials for gadgets have you seen that serve a purpose so oddly specific that you couldn't imagine anyone needing one? How many "experts" do you hear people rave about, only to find their advice is common sense at best and dangerous at worst? How awful is it to watch a person you admire be interviewed by someone who lacks even the slightest bit of knowledge or interest in what they do?
I'll give one specific example, the "Universe" sketches. I enjoy my pop- science, and today there's more shows about outer space than I know what to do with. Yet so many of them are so severely lacking in any substance. They take a few basic facts that could be taught in minutes and inflate them into an entire show with computer generated images, infograms, and dozens of five second sound-bytes from the same troupe of "well known science persons" that appear on every other science show. After rewatching the Tim and Eric "Universe" sketch, I realized that this is *exactly* the way I see most other shows about space. They take the concept of having nothing to say, but plenty of CGI to say it, and run with it.
Tim and Eric "get" bad entertainment. Awesome Show is everything that is wrong with media taken to its logical conclusion.