Finally, Will appeared on The Daily Show. He and Jon Stewart have been cracking each other up for years now, and tonight was no exception. The best bit came when they started making fun of Rob Riggle, the former Daily Show correspondent who also appears in The Other Guys. Riggle is a former Navy SEAL and a giant of a man, and we had Jon calling him “a big puss” and Will’s line that “He won’t shut up about how he used to be in the National Guard”. So of course, Rob Riggle showed up. We loved how later, Jon talked about how they were doing a bit and he was just seeing what it would take to get Rob up to the desk, while Will said “I didn’t know he was there. I was just saying what I really feel.” It’s all in the delivery, and everybody involved nailed it.
Shaq Vs. – OK, this show does not measure up to the much-missed Shaq’s Big Challenge, where Shaq teamed up with fat kids to fight childhood obesity. That show was so insane, it was almost like watching the behind-the-scenes about the making of a failed reality show. We would love to see another season of that as soon as possible. Still, this weird-ass show is still pretty great.
The whole premise is that Shaq competes against top athletes at their own sports. You know, swimming against Michael Phelps, or a home run derby with Albert Pujols. All of the challenges give Shaq some sort of advantage, like a head start or changing the definition of “home run”, and he still lost every single time. Hell, he even lost a game of “HORSE” to Ben Roethlisberger.
Having exhausted most of the traditional sports in Season One, this new season has to go outside the box? So Shaq faced Dale Earnhardt Jr. on the NASCAR track. The thing you have to understand is that Shaq is a weird guy. Not weird because he’s famous, but just kind of odd. In the first episode of Shaq’s Big Challenge, there’s an amazing bit where he explains to the camera that Black people don’t know the lyrics to songs. He then says “This is how we sing the theme to Cheers”. And he scats his way through the Cheers theme song. This is awesome on so many levels – the stereotype that nobody has ever heard of and that Shaq offers unprompted, the actual performance, and the idea that the theme to Cheers is the first song that came to mind. It’s glorious.
This episode brought us more of Shaq’s weird interactions, and the hilarious sight of a 7’2”, 325 pound man climbing into a tiny little NASCAR. And there was even a second segment, where Shaq competed in the Scripps-Howard Spelling Bee. This time, he had three lifelines, which meant he could ask children for help three times. Shaq went out on his fourth word. Say what you want, the man’s a good sport and he makes some inadvertently hilarious reality shows. In future episodes he’ll be facing off against Penn and Teller, Charles Barkley, Rachel Ray, and Justin Bieber. Something tells us that Bieber’s fans won’t appreciate the wonders of Shaq’s last attempt at a public musical performance, “Hey Kobe, Tell Me How My Ass Taste”.
Venture Bros. – Yeah, Season 4.2 doesn’t start until September 12, but Adult Swim released the new trailer, and it has us absolutely salivating. Prepare to freak out with joy:
