Two Lipstick-Smeared, Wig-Toting Heads are Better Than One

Courtesy of Tim & Eric

Imagine two faces. One is male, with feathered brown hair and a thin goatee drawn in Sharpie. The other, whose gender is uncertain, sports a fierce bowl cut, red lipstick, and a demented smile. Both are slathered with make-up.

This was the image—several stories high, covering an entire side of an East Village building—that greeted me every day last summer when I walked up the stairs of the Bleecker 6-train stop. Who were these people? And why were they haunting my dreams?

After one too many nightmares, and a little internet searching, I discovered they were Jan and Wayne Skylar, Channel 5’s Married News Team, two of the many uncanny characters created by comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.

Their current Adult Swim show, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, is television about television, a manic lampoon of infomercials, local TV personalities, and the public access channel circa 1994. It’s funny because it’s ridiculous, but not much more ridiculous than what your nine-year-old self might have found channel surfing at 2 a.m., up way past your bedtime.

The quintessential sketch from the show’s first season—both hilarious and very unsettling, rich in hideous clip art and low-budget green screening—might be “Steve Mahanahan’s Child Clown Outlet.” Mahanahan (played by Eric), wearing a thick beard and a dead-eyed expression, extols the virtues of his child clown rental service in the creepy, aggressive monotone so common among small business owners who decide to appear in their own commercials. “Why not use our child clowns for your next party or special event?!” he implores, over the picture of a confused looking pre-teen in a rainbow wig and polka dot suspenders. “Our child clowns never take br-r-r-r-r-r-r-eaks!” he brags, the tape skipping ominously. “Did you make a mess of your clown? Bring it back dirty! We’ll hose ‘em off!” We see a toddler in a bowler slumped over a chair being garden-hosed by a man in a radioactive suit. “USE MY CLOWNS!” Mahanahan screams, his voice stuttering as his body begins to multiply. Now there are a dozen Mahanahan heads, all stuttering in unison, becoming a wall of noise. End sketch.

You laugh, and yet part of you knows you’ve been given a glimpse into the depths of hell. Tim and Eric have a whole stable of these gems—Casey, a public access music video star with a bad case of eczema and a worse case of stage fright; Pierre, a James Brown-like dance instructor who harasses his students about their dads; and Dr. Steve Brule, a dimwitted news correspondent who does a segment about healthy food but doesn’t know what an orange is.

Tim and Eric is about a pre-TiVo, pre-thousand-channel satellite dish world. One fake infomercial proudly advertises, “Entire set now available on VHS!” But should you buy the show on DVD? The first season of 10 12-minute episodes, is short but potent, and it costs just $13 on Amazon.com. The best way to experience Tim and Eric would probably be stumbling across it at 1 a.m. on Cartoon Network during a late-night channel surf and wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into. But at the price of a Manhattan movie ticket, I’d say pass on Smart People, and put this in your cart instead.