Michael and Michael have Issues, The Show to have watched this Summer

Now I know summer didn’t offer much in the “creativity” aspect of TV viewing.   It had its fair share of reality throwaways and of course the networks ungodly attempts at original summer series, did anyone watch The Listener? So in those times of need there was really only one place to turn and that was our beloved cable networks.   And for me, with as little TV viewing as I actually did this summer because I actually felt like getting out and about, there was nothing better to watch than Michael and Michael Have Issues.

The basic concept was you have Michael Ian Black playing “Michael Ian Black” and Michael Showalter playing “Michael Showalter”.   Of course they actually weren’t playing themselves but very crude and self-absorbed versions of themselves.   What this pretty much did was hit comedic gold.   These two play so well of each other and brought such great egotism to every last bit they performed.   The show follows “themselves” who have a sketch comedy show and not only do we get to see what goes on behind the camera of this mock sketch show but we also get to see some of the sketches, which are so-so.   I personally think they make the sketches kind of weird and over the top and not altogether too funny on purpose, but that can be debated.   It’s just every other part where they are doing the behind the scenes stuff is so funny you would think they could come up with better sketches.   But the one about the TV report about how people are disgusted by people that are same age couples was pretty hilarious.

Most of the episodes revolve around them getting each other into bad situations, which usually has Michael Ian Black taking the brunt of those situations, or the two of them making the staff of their show miserable, as when they reveal a pretty dirty sexual fantasy that one of their coworkers has.   That I thought was the best episode of the season, and was just made priceless by how they reacted to hearing what the fantasy was and how the one staffer that was asked to perform this fantasy refused to do it.   They just kind of nod along and slowly creep out the door as the person bears their soul and starts to cry, priceless.

Now I don’t know if this show will get a second season because it had a pretty short run and if you are familiar with the Michaels previous show on Comedy Central, Stella, you know that it only got one season and not a very long one at that.   I would like to see it return but it does need a little modification.   The shtick between them where they are always trying to one up the other is good but is used a little too often.   They really need to round out the cast of the staffers better and have them do more on the show and get a few jokes themselves because right now it really is Michael and Michael getting all the choice lines.   It would also be great to see a few more appearances by people from The State that they’ve worked with for years.   That was one of the things I liked so well about Stella and how they had great cameos by Janeane Garofalo and Ken Marino among others.