The Ricky Gervais Show, Ep. 1 Review
Ricky Gervais’ new show is all about his comedy podcast that enjoyed an enormous following. Sitting down with his good friend and colleague Stephen Merchant and the absent-minded Karl Pilkington, they basically talk about nothing. The show has a unorganized format because Gervais and Merchant react to the idiotic ramblings of Pilkington. His ideas are random and absurd, but provide perfect opportunities for the quick witted Gervais and Merchant to make hilarious, if sometimes mean, comments.
In the first episode of HBO’s new show, Pilkington begins to talk about how humans should reproduce. He believes that when a woman turns 78 she should die, but that a small baby should be born from her body when she dies, so that it would be a “good-bad situation”. Immediately, Gervais cracks up at the idiotic premise. The worst part about it is that Pilkington believes that this system will be the next stage of evolution. Gervais and Merchant try to convince him of the ridiculousness of the idea, but it does little to persuade him.
The other funny segment was “Monkey News” in which the men discuss a story having to do with monkeys. Pilkington begins to speak about how angry he would be if he was a monkey because humans get all the credit–particularly for space travel. He eloquently points out that a monkey went into space before man. Although it is a somewhat legitimate point, it devolves into babble after he says that the monkeys were taught to fly the spaceships using buttons and a banana dispenser.
With such ridiculous segments, Gervais and Merchant, among comedies brightest talents, are in a great setting. The show itself is done in an animated style reminiscent of the Flintstones (which, oddly enough, they reference in the show) and show their animated persons sitting at a table discussing with occasional cutaways describing certain elements of the story.
The problem is that I can’t really figure out why this needs to be a television show. Yes, the segments become more ludicrous when you actually see what Pilkington is describing, but it isn’t a constant which warrants watching the screen the entire time. The animated style is not impressive and much of the time is just showing the animated men sitting in a studio. Thus, I kept getting the feeling that this show, although funny, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better than the podcast. It has the feeling of a simple video podcast, but one that you don’t need to be watching constantly in order to enjoy.
Nevertheless, both Gervais and Merchant are funny enough to make the show deserving of a large audience. Although it is very likely that you will find yourself doing other activities while watching it.
They were actually wrong about the monkey in space.
“The U.S. launched a chimpanzee named Ham on a suborbital flight on January 31, 1961. He flew in a Mercury spacecraft launched on a Redstone booster rocket. The launch site was Cape Canaveral, Florida.
He weighed 37 pounds and was four years old.
Ham experienced about seven minutes of weightlessness during his suborbital flight. A number of medical sensors were attached to Ham to monitor his vital signs.
During this flight, Ham performed some simple tasks such as pulling a right-hand lever when a white light came on and a left-hand lever when a blue light came on. The experiment was designed so that he would be rewarded with banana pellets for making the correct choice but would received an electric shock through his feet for an incorrect choice.
Furthermore, Ham’s rocket experienced a number of anomalies. As a result, he traveled 122 miles further down range than planned. Also, he experienced a re-entry deceleration of almost 15 G. His spacecraft splashed down in the ocean and took on water before the rescue helicopters arrived, but he was successfully recovered.
Afterwards, Ham was in good spirits and posed for pictures with the sailors on the recovery ship. “
very nice!