Hey everybody! Iiiiiit's Bob and David!

As I work my way through the show's fourth season, I'm falling in love again with Mr. Show with Bob and David. Cross and Odenkirk and their team of writers have an intuitive grasp of the sketch comedy format, shifting between gags with an almost disorienting effortlessness. On top of that, a number of their bits are just perfect.



Perhaps because they were originally broadcast on cable, they get away with more–one of the show's great strengths is its uncompromising sense of humor. Sometimes this carries the show too far into scatological humor, but unlike something like Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, which revels in absurd displays of bodily fluid, Mr. Show knows how to deliver a good poop joke or two, without high concept. But they're no strangers to high-concept, either, and about sixty percent of what they do is deft media parody.



I've had a surprisingly hard time convincing other people of the show's merits, and after a long hiatus following my viewings of the first three seasons, I had started to wonder if I had overrated them. But no, they're damn good. They remind me why sketch comedy is such a potent format, a way to meld disparate ideas into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. (In that way, sketch shows are a big influence on The Simpsons.) I feel compelled to revisit Flying Circus and Tim and Eric, as well as spend some time on The State and Kids in the Hall. Life would be way better if SNL was this good. But then maybe it would just get canceled.

Warning: contains a bit of violence