Thank God You're Still Watching

There's a new improv show on TV: Thank God You're Here.

The premise is fairly straightforward - you take a celeb, put them in a weird costume, and push them through a door and into a scene. The other actors on stage know exactly what the scenario is all about but the celebrity has to react and improvise with no preparation and no script.

I was excited about the idea, but I'm finding the actual execution lacking.

For one thing, the format turns out to be one continuous attempt to pimp the celeb for witty comebacks:

"Say the launch code!"
"You know the three rules around here: trust, respect, and...?"
"I hear you discovered an unusual tribe during your expedition, what are they called again?"

The obvious problem with this is that few celebrities have the comic chops to provide a funny comeback once, much less do it repeatedly for seven minutes. (And I know from experience, it AIN'T easy.)

But the other problem is that there is little or no driving action to the scene. The vignettes just don't evolve. It's "witty banter" and joke-based improv, which makes it rather one-dimensional. You don't see a lot of commitment to the characters or the relationships in the scene. Generally, it's a bunch of people in silly costumes standing around asking one guy questions. And that puts a lot of burden on the celeb.

If you're a "take charge" kind of improvisor, you can do wonderful things -- Joel McHale and Harlan Williams were great. But if you're a little tentative, or play the "I don't know" card too many times, the whole premise falls flat.

I wish the set-up involved people doing things instead of just talking about things they did.

The show also committed a cardinal improv sin when Mo'nique was on. They pimped her to introduce some game show contestants. "That's Deborah from Ames, Iowa" she said. "No," the host immediately corrected her, "that's Sandy from Rochester." They continued to pimp her for info and then immediately negate her responses for the rest of the segment. It really undercut her.

And, as much as I'm a fan of Dave Foley, the whole judging thing does not work for me.

1. Dave goes out of his way to say the prize doesn't matter. The six most dangerous words in improv are "That doesn't matter" and "I don't care." If there are no stakes, why bother?
2. His commentary makes Paula Abdul look edgy. "What can I say? That was hilarious."
3. I object to the idea that all improv has to be judged, that the only way to maintain the audience's interest is to create some sort of phony competition. I like ComedySportz -- not all improv has to be ComedySportz.

And that's where TGYH really falls flat -- in the pacing.

We don't need to listen to the inane banter between Dave Foley and David Alan Grier about how lame the prize is. (It also doesn't play when David Alan Grier talks about what an evil monster Foley is as a judge when the truth is far from it.) We don't need to spend 10 minutes explaining the premise to the audience. And we definitely don't need to interview each contestant before they go through the signature blue door.

"Are you nervous??" asks David Alan Grier before they go on. Well if they say yes, we're not surprised and if they say no it undercuts the tension of the moment.

Ironically, the parts of the show that work the best are the edited "behind-the-scenes" bits recorded during practice sessions. Clever cuts and pacing really make those segments work. If anything, I'd like to see more of them instead of the judging portions.

I'm glad there's improv on TV again. I want to like this show more, I really do. There are some fantastically talented people involved.

But right now it really just feels like a mean trick somebody pulled at The Groundlings.

-Tom, showing his improv snobbery.