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If we’ve learned anything from living through the age of Jackass (and that premise is certainly debatable), it’s that you can mine a surprising amount of potent comedy from getting a bunch of reasonably clever guys together and letting them act like idiots on camera. It does take a certain amount of charisma, and the failed attempts at imitation outnumber the successes. TruTV’s latest take on the genre, Impractical Jokers, coasts on the good nature and perverse wits of its cast to a pretty good time.
Impractical Jokers is the brainchild of the long-running Tenderloins comedy troupe, a Staten Island quartet consisting of Sal Vulcano, Joe Gatto, James Murray, and Brian Quinn. The setup for the show is pretty simple: one or two of the guys have to interact with the unsuspecting public while being coached out of sight, usually over an earpiece, by the rest. The demands of the coaches tend toward the rude, crude, and downright outlandish, and refusal to comply counts as a loss. At the end of the episode, the cast member with the most losses has to endure a solo punishment designed to be as embarrassing as possible.
Challenges range from impersonating servers at White Castle to giving improvised lectures with slides designed by the crew. The best humor comes from seeing how far the guys will push things, as well as how willing unwitting strangers will be to play along. There were several moments in the first season when I wondered if a sketch would end early with a felony assault. Maybe for that very reason, one of my favorite challenges involved one of the guys standing in Central Park holding a dummy remote control while one of the others steered a small toy R/C car around him. The kicker: no matter whom they drove the car into or how aggressively, the guy holding the dummy remote could not apologize.
This strain of comedy is supposed to challenge social norms, and Impractical Jokers manages to hit that sweet spot of being just inappropriate enough to be uncomfortable but not so far over the line as to be consistently off-putting. It helps that the guys’ shared history comes through so vividly, since the embarrassment they put each other through could come off as just plain mean without the obvious undercurrent of affection. In other words, sometimes it’s just kind of fun to watch friends giving each other a hard time.
Under the Tenderloins banner, the guys do a variety of live improv, podcasts, and web material. By comparison, Impractical Jokers can feel a bit limited. As such, it’s best taken in small doses—maybe one or two episodes at a time. It may not try to push the envelope the way that some of its forerunners did, but that’s just fine. With its low-key approach and easygoing cast, it won’t take long before you feel like one of the guys.
DVD Review:
Season one arrives with 17 episodes, including a handful of commentary tracks. For the most part, the commentaries are essentially skippable. The banter can be fun, but they don’t add much beyond what you’ll get from the episodes themselves. Special features are largely TruTV promotional materials, which include some deleted scenes and cast-specific montages. It would have been nice to get a little better look behind the scenes, but with a simple concept like this, it’s not that disappointing of an omission.
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