I never miss an episode of The Sarah Silverman Program. I look forward to watching it every week. I make a point to tape it on my DVR. Very simply, it makes me laugh on a regular basis. Sure, there are plenty of puns and poop jokes, but there's so much more to The Program than puns and poop jokes. In fact, there is so much more to the puns and poop jokes than just puns and poop jokes. ("Puns and poop jokes," is an enjoyable phrase to write.)
Before I get too deeply into the comedy analysis, let me just return to the title of this entry. While "viciously innocent" sounds better than "innocently vicious" from a purely aural perspective, "innocently vicious" is a more accurate descriptor of Sarah Silverman's Program persona: the character of Sarah Silverman. She's helpless, dependent, self-absorbed, asexual, immature and sociopathic. She's basically an adolescent in the body of an adult . . . not that there's anything wrong with that within the scope of a TV character.
To call her "viciously innocent" would be to let her off the hook for behavior such as: upon finding her beloved action figure semi-digested within her dog's feces, Sarah fired her maid on the grounds that the maid stuffed the action figure up Sarah's dog's butt, when, in fact, the dog ate the action figure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a good joke, but Sarah can't be found innocent for her ignorance. She can, however, be found to be vicious in an innocent (meaning: adolescents don't know any better) manner. Oh fuck this, my brain hurts.
Anyway, my whole point is this: Enjoy The Sarah Silverman Program, then contribute to the answering of the following questions: What the hell is Sarah's deal? Furthermore, how does Sarah pull off being really attractive and hilarious, yet totally unappealing at the same time? And finally, how does such a dumb show manage to spark so many paradoxes that I'm convinced that it's one of the most brilliant shows on TV?
No comments:
Post a Comment