FFWD Weekly
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Television by Julie Pithers THE MAN SHOW Starts Thursday, August 31 The Comedy Network Stupid! Infantile! Oh, OK, I’ll watch the exploding poop – but only one more time. Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla are The Man Show. They’re reclaiming the airwaves from Barbara Walters and giving it to chimps who light their own farts. You pay for the cable... you decide. The Man Show is a program that thrills at the simple pleasures of man: ogling girls in bikinis, farts, fart lighting, fart inventions, porn, drinking, and exploding poo. It is also a show that revels in the great achievements of man: ogling girls in bikinis, farts.... "The truth is that guys will get it on two different levels," says Kimmel, one of the show’s creators and hosts. "Some guys will see our Juggy Dancers (exotic with scant clothes) and they’ll be jumping up and down screaming at the top of their lungs. Other guys will see the poking fun of ourselves as a sex." Adam Carolla, creator and other host, agrees. "It’s like The Simpsons. Jimmy watches it with his seven-year-old son. They both like it for different reasons." "Yeah," says Jimmy. "I like it for its parody of America and he likes it when Homer’s butt is showing." Anyone who hasn’t watched television since 1979 will find it strange that men would think they are left out of the TV schedule. In past decades, TV was filled with Man Shows – Charlie’s Angels, The Dukes of Hazzard, Hogan’s Heroes, Three Stooges.... Apparently TV is now a vast wasteland of Chick Shows where we share feelings and try to make "you a better you." Oddly, this phenomenon seems to have had no effect on loosening the grip of men on their remote controls. "There are a lot of TV shows for women," gripes Jimmy. "I mean they’re not called The Woman Show, but there’s The View and Oprah and every other show with a woman’s name in front of it." "Not to mention this whole new crop of so-called home improvement shows," adds Adam. "Those are women’s shows, too. All about building your own lamp-shade with crepe paper. "Besides sports we don’t really have much in the way (of TV programming)... so we thought we’d do a comedy show specifically for guys." The Man Show is done in front of an enthusiastic live audience, all plied with mugs of beer and encouraged to sing along with The Fox – an old guy who looks like he could be one of Jerry Lewis’s stuntmen in the Nutty Professors’ explosion scenes. He has the unusual talents of knowing every dirty song ever written and being able to down a mug of beer in less than a second. (This is no exaggeration.) The rest of the show is filled with bits like "Movies Men Don’t Want to See," "Man-o-vations" and "Oedipal Fun." There are also little segments like "Household Hints from Adult Film Stars" and "Great Moments in Stupidity." But the guys hit their stride when they take to the streets and bug the shit out of women – à la Rick Mercer in This Hour Has 22 Minutes when he talks to Americans, Adam and Jimmy take to the sidewalks of L.A. and mock stupid American women. "We did a bit where we decided to end women’s suffrage. People really seemed to enjoy that," says Adam. "But the smarter people enjoyed the twist on the word play and the less smart people just enjoyed the goofing on people and watching people get upset." Personally, I took some exception to the fact that they got a Vietnamese woman to help pass around their petition – she neither came from a democratic culture, nor spoke English as a first language. "If you think about it, she’s no dumber than any of the other women who spoke perfect English. Plus, what does it hurt?" counters Jimmy. "She seemed eager to help," adds Adam. "In fact, if anything, future employers will see the bit and decide that she’s a real go-getter," says Jimmy. As you can imagine, The Man Show mailbag is pretty jam-packed. Not everyone has the same appreciation for the subtleties of marrying a monkey or, after several episodes, when the token "Wife’s Point of View" gets cancelled and replaced with a musical interlude which features girls on trampolines. "Almost every complaint we get from women, just lambasting us, ends with, ‘and you have small penises,’" says Jimmy. "Now how did that get out?" "It’s funny because they call us sophomoric and immature and then they say we have small penises," says Adam. "How often does a man accuse a woman of having an under-sized vagina? You see how mature we are? Men rarely yell that." Being mature is hardly a pre-requisite for watching The Man Show, but if you do watch it and you get mad, don’t. It’s funny, you just might not get it.

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