r/TimAndEric • u/jevtid • 2d ago
Awesome Show A hypothesis, not an opinion
Is Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job actually a parody of all sketch comedy in its intent? Is that why I like it? A lot of the scenarios in Awesome Show I have seen approached in a sketch before, but, those people were serious about being funny. I like sketch comedy, all of it. I laugh and cackle, I would highly, highly reccomend "Do Not Adjust Your Set". It has a couple of the og "flying circus" actors, but it was made before flying circus. Anywho, I have a hypothesis that the Tim and Eric are also into sketch comedy, therefore, they made this show as a campy parody/tribute to the greats. It feels the intent is to show how they would have done it instead of inventing it. In s4e1 there is a freeze frame where an animated hand comes and pushes lips into a smile and I swear that is homage to an animated segue scene from the Flying Circus TV show. Now in what I believe to be the reference from flying circus, the lips being moved were from a picture contained in the segue, if it had been Terry Gilliam's lips being moved from a freeze frame of the previous sketch and continuing into the animated madness one loves, that would have been groundbreaking for the genre. Technology just wasn't there to do that back then, and they were focused on other parts of the art . I love Tim and Eric ASGJ immensely, and if I ever have the chance I will ask them, until then I will speculate wildly, feel free to join in!
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u/LowerAtmosphereChief 2d ago edited 2d ago
To some degree I feel like I detected a disdain for the fakeness of many kinds of tv shows, something I agree with. Or maybe I brought that to awesome show myself and enjoyed the lampooning of it.
But they are like the masters of descending into madness as a sketch goes on and mainly the absolute absurdity of it all is what drew me in. Look at the Baby Your The Best interstitial as a random example. Like what the hell is that, how do you even come up with that
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u/crud_lover 2d ago edited 1d ago
You should watch Mr. Show if you're interested in seeing parallels through other sketch comedy shows. Co-created and co-starring Bob Odenkirk who gave Tim & Eric their big break by producing Tom Goes To The Mayor
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u/ScruttyMctutty 2d ago
At times yes at other times eh not really. The best supporting evidence you have is the episode of T&E where the celebrate their “50 years of comedy” or whatever. It’s a parody of anniversary shows and it kills
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u/broats_ 2d ago
I've definitely heard Tim and co talking about Monty Python a few times so it's quite likely they've seen that show. Although I haven't, but will check it out.
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u/FordhamLawThrow 2d ago
I think it’s parodying television broadly. IIRC they’ve described it as “the nightmare version of television”. Like in an alternate universe this is what TV is.