“The host of Adult Swim’s talk show pastiche The Eric André Show, André is a comic force unlike anyone else on television, a slow-burning cannonball who cuts across lines of decorum and propriety you previously didn’t even realize existed.” — Eric Bricker
There are (at least) two Eric Andrés: There’s the one my parents love, the affable stoner who deadpans his way through guest arcs on 2 Broke Girls or the now-defunct Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23. This André is a talented, likable performer, to be sure. Easygoing and charming with a great sense of comic timing, he’s the kind of safe, sanitized network star you’re more than happy to let into your living room once or twice a week.
But then there’s the other Eric André, my André, the one who lurks in hazy college dorm rooms and who you don’t trust around anything breakable. This André is public access, not prime time. He is an impish force of mayhem, not a safe sitcom love interest. He is a bottleful of molly water, not an after-dinner decaf.
The host of Adult Swim’s talk show pastiche The Eric André Show, André is a comic force unlike anyone else on television, a slow-burning cannonball who cuts across lines of decorum and propriety you previously didn’t even realize existed: Every episode of his show, which recently wrapped its second season, begins with André violently, hideously destroying his set, only to have a new one wheeled in seconds later. It’s random, abrasive and a reflection on the helplessness of routine — and that’s just the opening credits. From there, The Eric André Show descends into acid-head madness full of ambling non sequiturs, garish dutch angles and nonsensical, uncomfortable interludes with co-host Hannibal Buress, whose preternatural calm is the perfect balance to André’s manic depressive shtick.
Television — even the public access format from which André lovingly borrows — requires order by its very nature. It is a regimented medium with its own internal logic and rigid set of expectations about form and narrative, the kind of unspoken rules André himself lives by over on CBS or ABC. But after dark, André breaks from those expectations entirely. His is not the kind of talk show that genially lulls you to sleep. Instead, it is an experiment in controlled chaos, a late-night burst of anarchy that leaves you red-eyed and reeking of skunk.
Part of that chaos stems from André’s willingness to go beyond the borders of the television set: He takes anarchy and discomfort into the real world and gleefully captures their unpredictable effects.
Last season, for instance, his show featured a pointed bit about black scientologists that found André and a host of other comedians (including Buress and Wyatt Cenac) shouting racially charged bullshit (“Not a lot of people know this, but L. Ron Hubbard was a black man! His real name was L. Ron Hoyabembe!”) at passersby. When a real sign-carrying pedestrian unironically confronts the group, claiming to be the second coming of Jesus, André pulls him into the bit (“Prove it! Take a poop in front of us!”), effortlessly out-crazying crazy.
Then there’s the sublimely silly: In another man-on-the-street bit, André enters a crowded subway car, dressed as a centaur. Also, he’s carrying two cakes. Why? It’s funny. What’s the point? F— it.
But perhaps the greatest André moment actually came on a show that was not his own: On Comedy Central’s (now-canceled) Jeselnik Offensive, André gleefully subverted the show’s rules at every opportunity, flashing his penis on air and lighting firecrackers without any warning whatsoever. It was a daring, anarchic bit, the kind one doesn’t see on the formula-driven programming of Comedy Central, let alone on basic cable. It was dangerous and stupid, a brief reminder that true comedy comes from the balls, not the head.
There is a time for jokes and well-written sketches. But, as the anarchic, unsung comic heroism of Eric André reminds us, there’s also a time when real comedy comes from throwing up your hands and sighing, “f— it.”
[ READ MORE: The weird, wonderful world of absurdist comedy ]
