May 12, 2000
A Look at... Tom Green - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER -- I’m never one to hop on the bandwagon of the latest fads or a consumer of the latest pop culture hit, but one of the shows that I’ve had a look at and I find particularly funny is The Tom Green Show. Green is a comedian from Ottawa who began a half-hour comedy show on the local cable access channel. Then America got a noticing and he was summoned to the airwaves of MTV. He’s a mild hit there and it’s only then that we Canadians get to notice.
Isn’t it sad? Only when stars become recognised in the US, do we clamour to get our piece of the pie saying they’re our home-grown talents.
Anyways, The Tom Green Show is not for the light of stomach or the mildest of humour senses. He reminds me a bit of the irreverent humour or comedy of Andy Kaufman or even Lenny Bruce. Thinking of Kaufman or Bruce, they’re probably a hell of a lot more tamer.
Tom Green does skits on his program that are downright silly, rude and probably sickening. He made Mike Bullard throw up by bringing a dead racoon to the late night talker’s show. He does silly skits like driving his entire studio audience home on a bus, then proceeding to disturb each audience member’s family sleeping at home. He invites himself into the house raising hell and awakening the parents who are usually in bed or something like that. He also does humorous bits that involve meeting equally irreverent folk through his many travels.
One of the interesting parts of his show is that everywhere he goes, need it be in the US or in Canada, he attracts fans and the media. A recent swim of a lake in Washington state brought out the local press. A recent trip to Ottawa, with Monica Lewinsky proved a ratings grabber for MTV, as well as this country’s Comedy Network which airs the show.
With every successful gimmick on TV comes its copycats. The Comedy Network recently picked up another Ontario-local cable access show, Buzz. A show for a hipper, younger crowd, it looks awfully like Tom Green’s low-schlock humour.
One could very easily ask where television has gone, but as long as we’re not the butt of the jokes, Tom Green is pretty funny and an innovator of television’s future.
The Tom Green Show airs on MTV, and locally on The Comedy Network, Friday nights at 11:00.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .