What’s the name of the show? The Jack & Triumph Show.
When does it premiere? Friday 20 February at 11.30pm ET on Adult Swim.
What is this show? Have you seen the brilliant Conan sketch where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog and 30 Rock star Jack McBrayer go to Weiner’s Circle in Chicago and yell at all the workers and patrons? This show is like a cross between that and Too Many Cooks, the bizarre Cartoon Network fake sitcom theme song that went viral late last year.
What’s the show’s pedigree? Robert Smigel, who created Triumph for Conan O’Brien’s first late night show back in 1997 and provides his voice, made this show with Adult Swim veterans Michael Koman and David Feldman.
What happens in the premiere? We learn that Jack (McBrayer) and Triumph (Smigel) were costars on a Lassie-like show called Triumph’s Boy. When the show ended, Jack and Triumph fell in with a bad crowd (including former N Sync star Joey Fatone) and ended up poor and on the street. With nowhere else to go, they turned to June (June Squibb), who played their mother on the show. She took Jack in but dropped Triumph in a ditch in Montana because he was a bad influence. Fifteen years later, Triumph returns and blackmails June into letting him stay. Oh, and there’s a plot that sees them traveling to a fan convention to buy back all of June’s furniture after it’s stolen by Michael Winslow, the guy makes all the funny noises from the Police Academy movies.
Is this show any good? Weird is a more accurate adjective, though that seems to be the exact quality coveted by Adult Swim’s stoner audience. The Jack & Triumph Show is a traditional three-camera sitcom filmed in front of a live studio audience, but it subverts those conventions with absurdity and meta-commentary. There is an Asian woman who lives with Jack and June whose presence is never explained. June is hypnotized by Winslow (who plays himself), and when he steals every stick of furniture from her living room, she inexplicably continues to nap on the floor. It takes the wholesome expectations we have of sitcoms and upends them in dark and funny ways.
The show barely disguises the fact that Triumph is a puppet, at one point even letting one of his stick arms drop to the floor. Smigel makes up insults on the fly, which sometimes catch other actors unaware, leading them to crack up. At the end of the episode, Winslow is carted off by the set security guard past the live audience. All the inner workings of the show are on full display.
The best section, naturally, is when Jack and Triumph go to the actual New York Comic Con and set up a booth, interact with real people, and insult the C-list celebrities in attendance. It’s like an old Triumph sketch tucked into this strange and intentionally fake-looking sitcom. Does all of this add up to brilliance? I’m not sure, but there are some good laughs. And if you’re sporting a buzz late on a Friday night, I’m sure it will be even more amusing.
Which characters will you love? Triumph has always been a great character (“for me to poop on”, he would add at this point). But it’s watching June Squibb, the thinking man’s Betty White, cuss him out that is the real treat here.
Which characters will you hate? I don’t hate Jack, but seeing McBrayer play yet another sunshiney simpleton doesn’t let him explore his real comic potential or his range.
What’s the best thing about it? There’s a spirit of chaos around The Jack & Triumph show that is almost as intoxicating as anything its target audience might have sitting in their Volcano vaporizer. You feel that anything could happen – and it does. While it’s packaged in the familiarity of a tired genre, there is a sense of danger that you certainly never get from much safer network programming.
What’s the worst thing about it? How long is this joke really going to be funny? Right now, it’s pretty inventive, but after a bunch of episodes, will it have worn off?
Should you watch this show? Sure, but not if you’re sober or if you really like The Big Bang Theory. The Jack & Triumph Show was built for people who love absurdity and irony, so if you don’t have Olympic pool levels of that love coursing through your veins, it’s best to sit this one out.
