Walking up Fairfax at the tail end of last year — just past a Santa-ready Grove and right before the security gate of CBS Television City, ancestral home of Archie Bunker, Gabe Kotter and Beat Shazam — I saw a poster for Obliterated.
(Sidebar: Los Angeles by foot is thoroughly insane, like LARPing the Lost Highway diner scene. I love it so much.)
The mushroom clouds and margaritas Photoshopped across this one-sheet did feel very Add To My List. But I hadn’t heard of the show. And I still haven’t!
No trailers, no “chatter,” nada.
But I watched and… it kind of rules?
Our entertainment arteries are clogged with what I can only describe as “prestige mid.” Self-serious, snoozy, forgettable. And the universally acclaimed Actual Good Shows are often pitched at a stress frequency I’m not rushing to engage with at 10pm on a Wednesday.
There’s something about a well-engineered brain massage that can’t be beat.
Obliterated goes deep tissue with it.
It’s the same Jersey goofs behind Harold & Kumar and Cobra Kai on a bender. Workplace hijinks? VHS ultraviolence? Romantic comedy? Mash ‘em all, let god sort ‘em out. Every streamer seems to have a fistful of megabudget, personality-challenged “action comedies” that fail miserably; this one hits the target more often than not.
(No shots to streamers. Or hopes! I too enjoy money and would like you to pour some over my body.)
Obliterated reminded me of how fun it was to fire up another episode of the silly, sadly un-renewed Teenage Bounty Hunters, featuring a skip tracer played by Method Man (if he’s not Bishop in the X-Men reboot, we riot) and Kadeem Hardison, endearingly gruff as the titular teens’ mentor.
There’s solid #TBT casting in Obliterated, too; Virginia Madsen pops up for a bittersweet mom moment, and the bully from Hocus Pocus gets creepy crawly as an arms dealer’s personal sadist.
But it’s C. Thomas Howell — Soul Man himself! — making it a Blockbuster Night.
He lights up what could have been a “quirky Army guy” a la Bruce Dern in The Burbs with actual, earned pathos. CTH spent the last four decades mastering his instrument, while his audience watched Ponyboy morph from gold to grey in real time. It makes for a surprisingly potent combo; the Wolverine puts heart into every coked-out absurdity the show throws at him.
He’s also buck-ass naked at points, as are several other castmates.
This fact alone should have warranted at least a listicle or two!
(I just started Masters Of The Air after a billion preview articles and no one is showing hog. There sure are some exhibitionist accents, though! Barry Keoghan goes full-frontal with a Max Perlich mumble, and Elvis… well, Elvis is packing.)
Is it a sign Obliterated was cancelled the same day I posted this?
I’d be doing a disservice to the Substack community to not shout out Jacqueline Novak’s excellent Get On Your Knees amid all this streaming stick talk.
Go to the Times for a TLDR (“a stand-up comedy set that inclines toward theater, offering a personal and intellectual history of oral sex”) but let me emphasize: as highbrow as that might sound, Novak’s not here to record her podcast.
She’s telling jokes.
What a concept!
We caught it IRL at the Cherry Lane Theatre, alongside other great solo shows from the Mike & Carlee mailing list. Neil Brennan’s Blocks and Alex Edelman’s Just For Us were highlights, but my wife and I primarily get our standup from YouTube.
The steady stream of chuckles is an instant quality of life upgrade.
Comedy Central has two channels to subscribe to, Just For Laughs regularly posts festival highlights, and 800 Lb Gorilla has some solid specials (we dug Iliza’s Locals, Niles Abston, and Greg Warren’s hilariously clean The Salesman). But Don’t Tell Comedy is theee home for tight 10s; recent highlights include Jay Jurden, Sophie Buddle, TJ and Shapel Lacy, whose Oasis fandom is both impressive and relatable.