Aidan Sweeney

Capstone

Dr. Bednar

11 March 2021

Analysis Paper

Introduction

The Show has been on for five seasons now, the newest season having been released this past year. Each season the show gets a little bit better production value, a better band, better guests, and better ideas, that is to say humor (or anti-humor in this case). It is important to look at how the show has progressed up until now and I will now analyze four different episodes of , including scenes from the show that are reoccurring throughout the season. The episodes included in the analysis, the ones that will get the idea across the best, are what I see as the episode that exemplifies my claim the most from every season up until season five. These are (named by the guests who are on each episode): the Pilot

(of course), and Jennette McCurdy, and Reese Witherspoon, and Tyler the Creator and . Each episode will exemplify a certain aspect of the show that goes into making the lore of the anti- (anti-comedy parody) that we know as the Eric

Andre Show. That is: pranks, random skits, interviews with guests, and musical acts. Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s the Eric Andre Show!!

To get an idea of what the Eric Andre Show is all about and why it would be put in the realm of anti-comedy, it would be best to go into some of the things that are reoccurring on the show. Namely, the introduction. The show opens up every episode with a wide view of the stage where the desk and armchair are in visual followed by a male voice who triumphantly announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Eric Andre show!” Then, Eric Andre runs from off screen screaming as he jumps off the armchair and flings himself into the décor behind the desk and into the curtains as the band on the set begins to play upbeat, chaotic, and nearly off- tempo jazz music. Eric then runs over to the band and tackles the drummer and tosses his kick drum into the middle of the set, then runs off to the middle of the screen and jumps through the shelves that are stage left to his desk. Next, he continues the chaos by using weapons to destroy musical instruments, stages himself or others fighting while he cheers them on or puts on displays of self-harm such as cutting off a prop tongue from his mouth with garden shears or putting raw chickens on his hands that he uses to hit himself in the head with. Once the set is promptly destroyed, he ends up by the one thing that is not: his chair. He tosses an object from his hands and plops straight in his chair as the music stops, out of breath with a disturbed look on his face. The set is then replaced by a new, identical set that is intact as he continues to sit there disturbed and exhausted, though the floor of the set is still a complete mess. Then the co- host, , walks out on set from the curtains in the back followed by sparse applause as he sits down in the armchair stage right of Eric’s desk. Once sat down, Eric looks at

Hannibal and says: “That’s all I had planned for the show. What should I do now?” (which he says every season premiere). Hannibal’s response is, without fail “Do a monologue”. Eric then goes to the front of the set and proceeds to stumble through said monologue, saying outrageous things, bad jokes and inaccurate but funny information about celebrities to which

Hannibal criticizes him about without fail. This will build up into an absurd comedic moment which that will cut off halfway through on a snapshot of someone’s face with the words next to it “we’ll be right back” to que a commercial break, but also to poke at a feeling of being unresolved.

The Pilot: Pranks, Parody and Surreal Humor

The pilot episode first opens up to a low-budget set in which Eric Andre destroys the set as he normally does. Hannibal arrives on set to sparse applause and Andre says: “That’s all I had planned for the show. What should I do next?” To which Hannibal says: “Do a monologue.” He goes up stage to the microphone and begins to nervously stumble through a monologue, starting off by saying: “So Michael Jackson, he hasn’t been in the news too much lately. It’s like where ya hidin’ Jacko?.” Hannibal corrects him by saying: “He’s dead, man.” Andre responds:

“are you serious?” Hannibal advises him to work the crowd to recover (as if there is even a crowd), and Andre goes on to say: “So Beyonce is trying to trim that baby fat, I saw her without her shirt on and I was like ‘woah, who’s that chick with six tits like a dog?” and continues to mock Beyonce. Hannibal says: “You for real think that those words you just said should be on television?” The camera makes its way back to Andre as ominous music plays as he solemnly whispers: “I’m dying.” Hannibal responds with: “we all are” and the scene cuts to a shot that says “We’ll be right back”. The first guest on the show is “”, however it is not really George

Clooney, but a George Clooney look alike who they continue to claim is George Clooney. They tell him to do some of his “Award winning stand-up comedy” before he sits down. He goes up to the microphone and starts muttering nonsense about doing karate with his bros, having no clear punchline or even attempt at humor, but they clap anyways and the Clooney sits down for the interview.

The first prank of the episode, we see a person walking down the streets of New York and they throw something in the garbage can. Andre then pops up out of the garbage can about a third of the way through the episode and it opens up on a Civil War reenactment festival. In the distance we see Buress and Andre wearing shackles and being chased by a large white man as the scream “Hide us!” and things of that nature. A redneck voice yells: “Don’t forget about them slaves!” as Eric Andre and Hannibal Burress run through the Civil War reenactment being chased and whipped by this large man as people look at them shocked and borderline offended.

When the scene arrives back on set, Andre starts off by introducing the next guest of the show when he is cut off and a male voice announces: “It’s time to play this or that!” Two podiums are placed at the front of the set, Andre and Buress walk to the podiums and the voice says “contestants, are you ready?” Both confused, they answer no. The voice begins to give them questions, the first one being a photo of a man doing Tai Chi. The voice asks, “First question” Yoga or Tai Chi?” Andre answers “Tai chi?”. A buzzer rings denoting a wrong answer and the voice says: “I’m sorry we could not hear you, hot coffee to the face!” and someone splashes hot coffee in Andre’s face to which he writhes in pain. They are then shown a picture of lettuce and ask “molested, or genius?” Hannibal answers, “lettuce” and a bell rings to denote a correct answer. When Andre says that he could not hear the question, they splash more coffee in his face and he screams and says “How does this game even work?!” They then ask

“Co-klea or co-chela” (cochlea), and Eric responds with the correct pronunciation of the word, but they still consider it wrong and splash more coffee in his face. Subsequent to that, Hannibal sneezes, and the wrong-answer buzzer goes off again and they splash more coffee in Andre’s face. Next, a cart rolls out with two jugs of milk on it, and the voice says, “Eric, drink this milk and tell us: is it fresh or spoiled?” Someone forcefully puts the jug to his mouth and pours it down his throat, and Eric violently pulls away and yells: “Definitely spoiled!” To which the right answer bell rings, though they still throw coffee in his face and the break the coffee pot over his head. The game concludes and they slap the scores on the scoreboard: Hannibal $3000, Eric $0.

Hannibal looks at Eric, points to the scoreboard and says, “you owe me 3000 bucks, son.”

Andre, who is leaning on his podium as if he has just been administered a beating, slowly starts to look up when a large man walks up to him with a hatchet and cuts his fingers off. In shock and pain, the camera zooms in on his face, freezes, and the “We’ll be right back” theme segues the show into an ad break.

The first episode sets the pace for the surrealistic humor lore that the show relies on.

The brash cuts from each scene as they capture an image placed by the words “We’ll be right back”, really brings emphasis to the convention of humor, for it is meant for emphasis on a representation of the scene. This really puts the idea of parody into perspective because the viewer gets to see that the show operates like a late-night talk show: the guests and interviews, the musical act, the random bits that are staged like games and such, and a little bit of fun and jokes between the host and co-host. However, there is such a surreal way in which these things happen, such as the “this or that” game where Eric gets his fingers chopped off (well, prop fingers), and the fake George Clooney spouting nonsensible stand-up comedy. This things don’t logically affirm the concept of a joke or dry humor (Willman, 1940), but are funny because it is so out there with lack of causal reasoning that it adds shock value for, well, its surrealness.

Jack Black and Jennette McCurdy: Pranking guests

One integral part of how the parody of the talk show functions through anti-comedy is how Andre and Buress mess with all of the guests that come on the show by Eric’s unorthodox and chaotic interviewing tactics and Hannibal’s awkwardly placed and stated comments, as they subject the guests to crazy things and target their personality. One of the best one’s he pulls of is the episode where he interviews Jack Black and Jennette McCurdy: one who plays along and one who is not as keen on playing along. The first interview is with musician, actor and comedian Jack Black, the one who plays along. As many are aware, Jack Black is a pretty goofy guy himself being in acts such as Tenacious D and movies like Nacho Libre. Be it as it may, he is no match for the surreal randomness of Eric Andre. It starts off seeming like Jack Black is going to play along. He arrives on the set joyfully, doing a little dance and laughs at Andre’s first joke. They even do a whippet together on screen and go crazy for about 30 seconds.

Immediately after, gunshots go off and startle Jack Black and then Andre points out the fact that there are birds up in the rafters (which there really were), which further startles Black after one knocks over some bird seed onto his chair. Andre goes on to do some anti-joke about Brad

Pitt in the movie 12 Monkeys, then, all of a sudden, the coffee mug on Andre’s desk starts spewing out coffee like a fountain all over the place, which again, startles Jack Black to the point where he jumps out of his chair. Andre comments: “That thing is broken. Yea, can we fix this!? Can someone get me another coffee please?” Next he makes a comment to Jack Black about his favorite band, Led Zeppelin, saying: “they should rename themselves ‘the Four Losers’ am I right?” And he signals for high five, however Jack Black declines the offer not wanting to dish disrespect to his favorite band. Not long after that, Jack Black mentions how he doesn’t have any brain cells left for the interview after the whippet he took and zones out. Then one of the birds defecates on him from the rafters and once again startles Mr. Black as the scene cuts.

After a short prank break, we come back to the interview with Jack Black and they decide to give him a lie detector test. Up to this point, Black has played along with their act pretty well.

They set up the lie detector test and start their line of questions. However, every question time he answers, whether its true or false, the test shocks him. They ask him his home address and a bunch of ridiculous questions, and he is shocked regardless of the answer. Jack Black at this point is laughing at the fact that they are borderline torturing him and asks who is shocking him, and it turns out it’s the camera man off screen whom the camera man zooms into.

When Jennette McCurdy comes on the show, she is greeted, and the interview starts off as any interview on a late-night sketch comedy talk show might: with questions about the guest. Eric initially looks smitten by her attractiveness, as he gets loses track of the fact that he is supposed to interview her and Hannibal has to get him back on track. The first question was conventional, asking her about the fact that she was on Nickelodeon, and then Andre starts to get into the anti-comedy. He asks her: “So you dated a basketball player?” She says “I did”.

Andre quickly responds with, “Magic Johnson.” She says no for that is not true. He continues by saying: “Says here you also dated Eazy E and Freddie Mercury right after that”, which infers that he is trying to say she has AIDS. After that, the set shakes and the sound of a train rolling by plays to give the effect that they are under a train station. He then asks about the fact that she had nudes leaked, to which she responds: “In all fairness they weren’t nudes”. He then follows that up by saying: “We actually have a picture of one of your nudes right here” as he holds up a picture of a naked man holding his crotch with Barack Obama’s head photoshopped to it. “And I think it’s tasteless, I can’t believe you did that” he says. Next, out of the blue, Hannibal says:

“Hannibal’s goin’ to Japan! I got my own spinoff show”. A clip from said spinoff show, which is kind of a play on a martial arts anime show, proceeds to play for about 10 seconds, and when we get back to the set, Andre is in the process of completely destroying his desk as he struggles and stumbles everywhere around him, gripping the microphone and tripping on the wire. As he finally recovers, he crawls over to McCurdy, gets within a foot of her face and begins to have an existential crisis and vents to her. “You know, I’m really having a tough time interviewing people here. You gotta make me look good or else I’ll fall flat on my face and I can’t face the music” He says to start his spiel. As Andre continues to mess with her, you can watch her start to get agitated and uncomfortable with the fact that this is happening. He goes on with a distraught look on his face and worrisome tone in his voice saying “You gotta help me out here” and telling her that he loves her. He notices that she is getting uncomfortable by saying such things to which he says: “I feel like you’re pulling back but I need you to push forward.” The camera cuts to Hannibal, who has completely checked out at this point, and he starts reading a nudie magazine titled “Jugs” and the shot freezes on him to transition, and the screen reads

“We’ll be right back” to denote a commercial break. The interviews that Andre conducts with his guest represent parody more than anything else, as well as the whole surrealistic lore that surrounds the show. As Mambrol define parody

“a parody imitates the manner, style or characteristics of a particular literary work/ genre/ author, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or inappropriate subject” (Mambrol,

2021), He is taking all of it and rather than satirically restructuring his techniques, he just uses anti- humor and says random stuff Led Zeppelin thing with Jack Black, or surreal humor, like when he destroys his desk for no apparent reason then has an existential crisis that he vents about to

Jennette McCurdy about within about a foot of her face. It is also interesting to look at the two types of people that are a part of these interviews: the ones that know what their getting into, and the ones that have no clue. A lot of the celebrity guests on the show seem to have some sort of idea of the Eric Andre Show, but many of them do not expect the show to go down in the way they think it does or don’t know what to expect at all.

Conclusions

It is hard to see what purpose Andre strives for in the creation of this show. Do his pranks of political implications or does he do them purely to entertain people? Is there any inferred commentary on this parody of a talk show or does it seek to just make fun of talk shows in a surreal fashion?

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I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.

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