Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule

As you may know, there are no shortage of pretensions here at Lollipops and Crisps. As Jeff Van Gundy would say, the best offense is a good defense and as such, most popular things are met with scorn and ridicule and a healthy dose of eye-rolling round these parts. See for example, my verbal disemboweling of the ventriloquist hack Jeff Dunham during my Summer Concert Preview entry last week. But sometimes, oh some glorious times, things that have merit become popular and for a brief moment, all is right in the world. Usually these take the form of an internet viral video. If we ever want to make friendly contact with alien life, our best bet is to beam AFV music montages into space. There's no way they would dare annihilate a planet where children are adorably swinging baseball bats into their parents genitals and cats losings their minds over a laser pointer. But I digress.

One such internet clip is the Adult Swim show Check It Out! With Dr. Steve Brule. I find most of the stuff on Adult Swim a little bizarre for my taste, but Dr. Steve Brule is another matter entirely. Filmed like a late 80's public access show, the 11 minute series features John C. Reilly as Dr. Steve Brule, a strange, curious man. Apparently the entire thing is a spin-off from another Adult Swim show, but like I said, I don't usually indulge. With that being said, the first episode of Check It Out! sets a new high water mark for AFV style comedy.

Seeing respected actor John C. Reilly tease out his hair, slur and stagger around the stage and blink through coke-bottle glasses would probably be pretty funny in any context, but run through this VHS low-budget, error prone filter, it takes on a whole new form. Perhaps Reilly is this goofy in real life, but where he unearths these mannerisms and attitude is beyond me. The whole thing might seem sad if he weren't equal parts affable and asshole. There's a Martha Steward like segment where he tries to learn about Shushi Sandwiches (sushi) and is hilariously inept, followed by another scene where he engages in a stare-down with a nutritionist who has the gall to question his credentials. The whole thing has a Borat-like quality, but make no mistake about it, there is no bold social commentary on display here, just Reilly hamming it up. Expecting the show to maintain this momentum is unreasonable, but if they are half as funny as the pilot, I'll be happy.

Part 1


Part 2


And finally, this video my sister showed me over the weekend of a girl coming out of Wisdom Teeth anesthesia. It is so funny we spent the next hour Youtube-ing "Wisdom Teeth" to more like this. We eventually gave up and just watched this ten more times.