Comedy Central’s “Sarah Silverman Program” will go down as the comedian’s bid to gain the nationwide acceptance enjoyed by her employer’s stable of post–“Hee Haw” faux hillbillies. With this weekly series, Silverman steadily built on her stand-up act’s naively misanthropic cutie-pie persona. She drops hints that she’s playing the “fictional character of Sarah Silverman” and not expressing the views of “Sarah Silverman.” The fictional Silverman is an unemployed fuck-up living with her pushover sister. She guzzles cough syrup and takes her sister’s car for a joyride, unaware of the hazardous daytime effects of nighttime cold medicine. Got it? Silverman’s not a socially irresponsible, ignorant bitch. She just plays one on TV.
Each episode unfolds like a formal checklist of Silverman’s favorite stand-up subject matter: Homeless jokes? Check. Black jokes? Check. Jew jokes? Check. Fart jokes? Check. AIDS awareness send-ups? Yep. Don’t forget handicapped jokes and jabs at the elderly. But does all this deceptively sophomoric material make for a consistently watchable series? Sure. In fact, Sarah’s two “gigantic, orange and gay” neighbors, Brian Posehn and Steve Agee, practically steal her spotlight.
Silverman does get away with plenty of easy “shock” tropes: In the final episode her character suggests that a TV remote-control with dead batteries is a tragedy on par with a friend’s dying father—simply a lame, lazily insensitive comparison. But the throwaway jokes can function as perfect set-ups for the choice zingers: Handing a homeless guy some dishtowels, she remarks “I hope you don’t mind, these are clean.” But is Silverman’s comedic shtick, as her sycophants insist, some postmodernist meta-commentary on prejudice? Nah. Or, rather, does her character’s playfully cruel humor massage our basest collective instincts? One wonders whether enough untapped public pieties remain for Silverman’s highly systematic un-PC humor to have a future. Let’s hope so: otherwise, her TV career may end up a mere pimple on the Naked Trucker’s ass.
Each episode unfolds like a formal checklist of Silverman’s favorite stand-up subject matter: Homeless jokes? Check. Black jokes? Check. Jew jokes? Check. Fart jokes? Check. AIDS awareness send-ups? Yep. Don’t forget handicapped jokes and jabs at the elderly. But does all this deceptively sophomoric material make for a consistently watchable series? Sure. In fact, Sarah’s two “gigantic, orange and gay” neighbors, Brian Posehn and Steve Agee, practically steal her spotlight.
Silverman does get away with plenty of easy “shock” tropes: In the final episode her character suggests that a TV remote-control with dead batteries is a tragedy on par with a friend’s dying father—simply a lame, lazily insensitive comparison. But the throwaway jokes can function as perfect set-ups for the choice zingers: Handing a homeless guy some dishtowels, she remarks “I hope you don’t mind, these are clean.” But is Silverman’s comedic shtick, as her sycophants insist, some postmodernist meta-commentary on prejudice? Nah. Or, rather, does her character’s playfully cruel humor massage our basest collective instincts? One wonders whether enough untapped public pieties remain for Silverman’s highly systematic un-PC humor to have a future. Let’s hope so: otherwise, her TV career may end up a mere pimple on the Naked Trucker’s ass.
