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"If this is so crazy, then why is Sally Kirkland so interested?"
Today's NYTimes article on Joel Hodgson (if you are accruing student loan debt for a class on "riffing," you deserve to have your future swallowed) reminded me of his failed formal experiment for HBO, "The TV Wheel."
On one level, it's a marvelous expression of self-defeat. The concept of the show is a mechanical one: A circular set rotates around a fixed camera for 29 1/2 minutes, allowing for a continuous string of live-performed sketches without jarring break. Hodgson thought cutting out the middle man -- in theory there's no post-production, just a single shot to a single tape deck, later broadcast whole to your set -- would preserve a giddy sense of presence. And it's true that the best thing going for the project is its momentum. It helps that Hodgson likes to air out his inner Ernie Kovacs from time to time, using deep-focus sight gags and a flagrant disregard for the fourth wall. It also helps that the thing has a homemade feel, a bunch of friends putting on a show.
Your friends would start to hate you, though. There are live animals, a live band, practical effects, a sizable cast put through costume changes. A live audience. There are running gags, there's cross-sketch participation. By simplifying the post-production process, Hodgson essentially calls attention to the complexities of production and then emphasizes them by compounding them. It's a show so concerned with its formal aspects that it's tough to care what's happening in front of the camera so long as there is something happening in front of the camera. So on one level, it's okay that little of the material is strong enough to hold your attention, because you're mostly waiting for the wheel to turn.
But little of the material is strong enough to hold your attention. Everyone involved is game, and there are some great people involved. Hodgson's writing staff here included Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, and Nick Bakay; the latter two also appear, as do now-familiar faces like David Cross, Doug Benson, Andy Kindler, and Fred Stoller. That the thing came together at all means the stage staff is medal-worthy. The nature of the project lets How trounce What at every turn, so -- despite some good lines and an antic rhythm -- the overriding tone of the humor has to be wink/nudge stuff that is more clever than funny. "Vic Lawson's House of 1000 Mysteries" is probably one of the more memorable rotations, mostly because of Hodgson's Pumpernickel... who jumps in front of his sketch and starts riffing on it.
There is a Laugh-In nod. A marionette gives Gerry Anderson a shout-out.
You're less likely to enjoy even the most daring content (they call God "the father of lies"(!)) than appreciate it. There are live white mice running around in the visible between-set insulation. Cool.
A couple times they cut out of the wheel to an overhead camera, a maddening betrayal of concept. It feels like some executive decided there was a need to re-explain the concept halfway through -- an understandable impulse, because the concept is an excuse for the quality. And when the only episode of "The TV Wheel" did finally air, on Comedy Central, it was stretched to an hour (to pay for the commercial-free 30-minute original segment) and supplemented by segments (1, 2) of sometimes excrutiating exposition.
