Things are getting dire in the streaming era. Nearly everyone has their own streaming service. I do. Itâs called Brok and so far I only have the rights to rebroadcast a Slovakian public access documentary about tainted wells and every single episode of Joey. Iâve made eighteen dollars this month from ads assuring my viewers that discount tire companies are here for you during These Uncertain Times. There are too many baskets and not enough dicks, I guess is what Iâm saying here. Thereâs just not enough quality programming out there to fill all the services started by the shitty sons of sketchy Russian millionaires. Even Amazon Prime is having troubles, which I assume from watching their new series, Gary Busey: Pet Judge.
Gary Busey moderates funny pet-related disputes in a mock Reality TV parody of The Peopleâs Court, and if you recognize every part of that description as wildly outdated, well then Iâm sorry you didnât get that job as head of programming for Amazon Prime Video. If you made this show fifteen years ago people would have said âreally? A Peopleâs Court reference? That is so fifteen years ago. Now please get out of the way — I have to ride my pocket bike to a Franz Ferdinand concert and Iâm already late because of that flash mob pillow fight. Poker will never not be cooooool!â
Letâs watch it anyway. Thereâs a plague. The fuck else are you doing?
Gary Busey is, as always, a Greyhound station at 2AM:
And every case is an excuse for aging improv actors to demonstrate why they failed that MADtv audition.
Gary Busey: Pet Judge owes about half of its comedic stylings to Best In Show, and the other half to Tim and Eric — the two properties responsible for more damage to comedy than Borat. Donât get me wrong: Best in Show and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! were both great, but they taught a generation of aspiring comics that anyone can be funny without telling jokes, and then those comedians spent the next decade inventing new ways to prove that wasnât true. Now everyone thatâs not sure where to start with this whole âfunnyâ thing does this:
Dude looks like heâs attending a Halloween party as âMisremembered Napoleon Dynamite Reference.â He is here to be incredibly awkward in a way that you are very prepared for, and he doesnât even get real people to sweat on. He only interacts with other gasping improv comics whose every character is âmyself, but more unlikeable.â
Luckily there is a crazy beating heart in the chest of this desperate premise. Yes, itâs the King of Quirk himself, Gary Busey:
Haha, classic Busey! Always looking like a drunk mop and saying shit that sounds like itâs been translated to Chinese and back. Iâm sure theyâve written some baseline setups for his weirdness, but you cannot get Gary Busey to follow a script unless you tape it to the ghosts he thinks are attacking him. At the very least, you know all of the strange acronyms and endocrine references are pure unmitigated Busey:
Hey thanks! Thatâs really cool. Listen, I do not have a cigarette and Iâm starting to think I missed the last bus to Akron. Iâm just gonna go to the bathr-
Youâre going to follow me to the bathroom, arenât you?
Gary Busey has the mannerisms of a shell-shocked lizard and he talks like he came unstuck from time while having an argument with Bjork. But hey, real quick, do you know why Gary Busey is like that?
If youâre of a certain age, you probably remember that. It was a huge deal. But weâve been making fun of Gary Buseyâs brain damage for so long that a whole generation of young adults have no idea âthe weird dude from reality showsâ actually left every third thing he knew on a California sidewalk back in 1988. Gary Busey is only âquirkyâ because he was in the most ironic type of motorcycle accident:
And has been suffering from long-term degenerative brain damage ever since. In fact, thatâs where those acronyms come from. Heâs not joking about those — they mean the world to him, and they literally started the second he scrambled his brain.
If youâre under 30, Gary Buseyâs just a Hollywood Weirdo best known for being the wild card that derails the Build-A-Bear challenge and gets Team Leader Xzibit sent home. But start at the bottom of his IMDB page and scroll up to watch a man lose his mind in slow motion. If theyâd picked any other host, this series would have only been disappointing. But by anchoring the whole thing on Gary Busey and then staffing it with quirky extras doing Eric Andre impressions, they have effectively made a show where everyone is pretending to have mental problems except for the main character, who is genuinely trying to communicate with other humans through a broken interface.
Iâm not trying to take the moral high ground here. The savvy among you may have noticed I made several Gary Busey jokes, myself, and if you missed them, hereâs another one: Gary Busey is like if Nick Nolte fell into a vat at Ace Chemicals.
I donât even know what the moral high ground is in this situation, because the alternative to paying Gary Busey so you can laugh at his brain damage is not paying him at all. Iâm just saying half of this show is written to be âquirkyâ and âawkwardâ and the other half of this show is trying to cushion Gary Buseyâs forehead as he headbutts holes in the drywall looking for wall gold.
Please note that those improv comicsâ hilarious response to this one was âstunned silence,â followed by âchecking around the set to see if anyone was coming to help.â
Amazon have effectively made a show called âguess which one has genuine mental health problemsâ and it is fucking crazy that premise got greenlit! Itâs literally a comedy show designed around trying to âone-upâ a mental patient as his scattered brain draws faulty conclusions from neuronic connections whose other half is coloring a curb in Culver City.
This format does not function in any other permutation! You canât pair a bunch of young actors pretending to be goth with one thatâs genuinely suicidal and bill it as a comedy. You probably canât set it on a bus and call it Across the Street or Down the Road. You canât start a dating show by mixing a bunch of reality skanks in with one seeking help for a crippling sex addiction. Maybe her name is Penny, but even so, you certainly canât call it Penny For Your Thots. You canât⌠you canât pair a bunch of comedians doing cruel impressions with a guy who actually has Downâs Syndrome and then bring on contestants who have to guess which ones are faking. You canât call it Donât Bring Me Downâs. You canât do it! You should go to jail for thinking it! You canât hire a bunch of improv dropouts and put them in a room with a mental patient and tell them all âeverything he says is your next promptâ and call it Gary Busey: Pet Judge. Oh wait, shit, thatâs the real one!
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