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Good news villagers, rejoice, for The Larry Sanders Show is now syndicated on our local NBC here in Detroit and on Bravo from 10-11 with the replay at 12-1 every night, huzzah. Wait, what is the Larry Sanders show you ask? Well, I shall tell you.
The Larry Sanders Show is a show about the production of the most generic late night talk show possible, if you're wondering why a lot of people are saying the show is brilliant but the "show within a show" portions suck, that's what they're intended to do. The show exposes how pre-fab and bad talk shows really are, and makes us feel bad for ever tuning into one. It's a form of satire that made me appreciate That's My Bush and it's knocks on sitcoms.
The characters are what make this special, even though a lot of the supporting players changed over the years. Larry is neurotic and unstable and is, as one episode put it, "out of the loop", he always seems to get everything last. Hank is Larry's TV sidekick who greatly overestimates his own worth and constantly makes a fool out of himself, it's hard to decide whether to feel sorry for him or to laugh at what a fool he is, Tambor plays his role absolutely perfectly and it's always funny to hear one of the celebrities screw up his name or to hear his laments about his position on the show. Artie, the producer, is a two faced jerk who you can't help but love, he spews profanities and insults out of one side of his mouth and sucks up incessantly out of the other.
Real celebrities appear on this show and the "show within a show" portions are shot on film, as to provide for more realism. Oh, and if you ever wondered what the celebrities and the host talk about when they cut away for commercial break but still appear to be babbling away, this show lets you in on a bit of that with some rather hilarious conversation.
The show is not only excellent satire, it's well acted and incredibly funny. My favorite episode is Hank's Contract which is the funniest episode centered on Hank and what respect the rest of the cast and crew hold him in.
The profanities are edited out of the Bravo version with audio deletion in lieu of bleeps, which i was very very very disappointed about. I don't live and die around cuss words, but it totally destroys a character like Artie's diction, this show, however, would still be better than 99.9% of what's currently on TV if it had half it's dialogue deleted.
score /10
Ronald Quincy Dobbs 17 December 2002
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0302069/ |
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25-10-2020 12:43:05
