With the popularity of the non-traditional distribution model that has undoubetdly earned FoD fistfulls of cash, I don’t understand why they would join up with HBO and produce a half hour program “Funny or Die Presents.” The small viewer base of the pay network, combined with the even smaller part of that userbase that’s sitting at home watching the show in its Friday night timeslot, FoD doesn’t have much to gain.
The show is set up as a mock 1960s television network, from which airs these skits as their programming. The format is not new – SCTV and The Kentucky Fried Movie did this long ago, and it’s a good way to wrap up a series of unrelated material into a cohesive package. With FoDP, the wrapper isn’t really used to any extent – the skits are introduced using the theme, and there are quick little 10-second interstitials with the logo, but it’s difference for the sake of being different, a recurring theme.The first half of the show usually features a longer skit or a series of skits from a single comedy team, and miscellaneous material to finish the show. The success of FoD the website is due to the rating system, which allows the unfunny material to quickly fall into oblivion. With FoD Presents, however, we’re stuck with whatever they decided to air that week. Most of the time, however, the skits aren’t particularly clever nor even funny – it many times consists of ordinary people doing weird things for no reason other than being weird. It’s a formula that Ferrell himself has used in many of his films, but it’s not something that can or should be the main idea for a 5-minute skit.
For example: a recent episode featured two guys sitting on the couch, chatting, one guy then mentions that today was Tuesday, and the two start off on a three-minute orgy of chaos, ripping off their clothes, drinking drain cleaner, stealing and driving a car over the side of a cliff, killing a man and eating his corpse, before ending their outrageous series of events at midnight, because it was no longer Tuesday. Absurd comedy can be funny when it’s unexpected, short-lived, and not the entire focus of the act (Tim and Eric are examples of comedians who do this well, and also contributed a solid amount of material to the show), but as the main focus it tires quickly, if it even connects at all.
And because FoD doesn’t want to canabalize themselves by airing the FoDP skits on the FoD website, there’s no overlap in material between the site and the show: you’re seeing all new material when you tune in (unless someone uploads it to Youtube). It makes the skits on the show feel like the rejects that weren’t good enough to be part of the site.
The show does have some highlights:
- Tim and Eric try their hand at a short film that lasts literally the entire duration of the show. They also tread more familiar territory with a mock sitcom “Just 3 Boyz,” featuring Zack Galifinakis and Reginald VelJohnson, best known as Carl Winslow from “Family Matters”
- A couple of episodic skits are told through “The Holdup” and “Designated Driver” Not coincidentally, these skits also provide the largest number of recognizable faces in the series.
- The first episode featured a new episode of the popular and funny “Drunk History,” featuring Will Ferrel, Don Cheadle, and Zooey Deschanel
Before beginning each night’s skits, the show’s host, Ed Halligan – an older man dressed to look from the 1960’s – makes jokes about his drinking and stepping out on his wife before introducing the night’s material as crap that the FoD Network just kinda cobbled together. The joke is that no network would actually admit to the viewers that the show is crappy, but after watching eleven episodes of Funny or Die Presents, Ed’s introductions are more to the truth than the show would like you to believe.
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