Last week, I touched on the inherent challenges in reviewing a weekly clip-and-response show like Tosh.0. However, I also addressed how advanced its "outside" (thank you, to whichever commenter last week shared that insider lingo-nugget) segments were—"Web Redemption" and host/comedian Daniel Tosh's parodies of selected viral vids, in particular—compared to between-highlights randomness on competitors like The Soup. And if I'm being honest, I found it difficult to throw much weight behind my analysis of just how funny the episode's YouTube selections themselves were, in addition to Tosh's insult-to-injury narration.
So tonight, in the interest of (extreme) thoroughness and (occasional) comprehensibility, I will be tackling Tosh.0 bit by literal bit; humiliating 30-second home-movie by shame-spiraling, half-minute candid moment; and blurred-out glimpse of Tosh's penis by pixilated censoring of his ass. It is both the height of my career and a general, noble privilege. (There will be no "Stray Observations" for this entry, as the ensuing synopses are more or less a bundle of stray observations with flash moments of prose here and there.) And without further Gerard Dep-adieu, here's my own personal breakdown of Tosh.0, Season 3, Episode 2 (Attack of the Phantom Menace II Society):
KID SLEDS UNDERNEATH CAR, COMES UP LAUGHING
Tonight's opening video threatened to pick up where the questionable taste of last week's "guy falls down elevator shaft and dies" cringe-fest left off. A young boy sleds down the front of his house at top speed, only to get lodged underneath the family car's front-end like he was an Olympic luge mechanic. Fortunately, children aren't only impervious to calories and job-market fluctuations but also acute physical trauma, and the buoyant kid emerged hysterically laughing moments later. Tosh doesn't reward our trust with a happy ending often enough, so there was something hilarious in the catharsis, and it may just have been an amends for making us laugh at a dead guy in the season opener.
INSANE WOMAN SLEDS OFF THE ROOF
Of a very high building. Equipped with a rope swing. And nothing else. Tosh's subsequent "Are you fucking kidding me?!" reminded me of the classic Curb Your Enthusiasm coup de gras when Larry, stranded on a broken ski lift with an anxious Orthodox Jewish woman ready to jump, looked at her, summoned all his wit and simply, perfectly chastised, "What are you, fuckin' nuts?" Dubbing said suicide-swing enthusiast Svetlana simply because she was Russian seemed no-brainer overkill. But then again, the actress who played Larry's adversary on Curb, Iris Bahr, currently portrays the titular brothel-owner on HDTV's oddball comedy Svetlana. Whoa.
FIT WOMAN IN THONG BUSTS MELON WITH INNER THIGHS
That might be the closest A.V. Club has come in a while to replicating a potential Onion headline. But alas, in the age of user-uploaded media, our world is one, big, self-parodying soundbite. This was actually the episode's most exceptional isolated clip in some ways and marked one of several instances in the half hour when Tosh and the producers got away with surprisingly explicit content. And for the second consecutive Tuesday, our cardigan-loving host scored an aces oral-sex zinger, warning viewers to "not go down on her when she's angry." Never one to leave a naked ass hanging, Tosh then introduced his first "outside" bit, which found the amateur exhibitionist squeezing fruit with his tuchus at a smoothie stand. Which was very funny, although you have to wonder if he only picked out the lead-in vid as an excuse to do something punishing to his self-image. Methinks the guy's a masochist.
PRISONER DIVES HEADFIRST OFF BUNKED BED INTO TOILET
Tosh's commentary about bloopers being included in prison-focused reality shows didn't add much to the clip's what-the-fuck-factor, although it did make me wonder how incredible behind-the-scenes outtakes from Beyond Scared Straight must be. Phil?
20-SECOND JOKE-CLOCK: BABY-LASSOING WOMAN
In a second slice of inter-episode congruity, intentional or not, another crazy hippie lady made the cut, this time as the subject of Tosh's 20-second, one-liner lightning round, which he hilariously prefaced by daring to "see how many funny comments we can post before her baby breaks." The quips were hit or miss, but damned if I didn't laugh out loud when he cautioned with faux-sincere worry, "She'll break her baby's back ribs." There's something in Tosh's expressiveness that softens a lot of the show's acidic commentary and lets him get away with a lot more than he should be able to.
SYNCHRONIZED WALKING
Maybe it's because the accompanying clip actually highlighted an impressive, foible-free accomplishment (hard to fittingly articulate it, see below) or because Godzilla gags and A-Bomb digs are either exhausted or ultra-sensitive subjects, but Tosh is consistently at his pandering worst when it comes to mocking Asians. Well, except for that one ninja-shit skit last week. That was pretty damn funny. And was more about shit.