Food writer Jeff Love starts a journey with a tale that’s best to begin here, with its conclusion to come later on CliqueClack Food in his always awesome Redneck Cooking column.
I got an email the other day from Keith. He asked me to do him a favor. I asked what the favor was. He said, “I need you to drink a six-pack of beer.”
Now that is the kind of favor I like my friends to ask me for. I quickly agreed to do the favor. I asked, “what kind of beer do I have to drink?” He said a six-pack of the Land Shark Lager he reviewed recently in his brew review column. After reading the review, it didn’t sound too bad, so I still was willing to do Keith the favor. In the back of my mind I kept thinking, “Keith has never been this nice to me before, so what’s he got up his sleeve?” Has Keith finally became a saint?
After several emails back and forth I was feeling pretty good about this “favor” Keith wanted. In his last email, he showed that he was not a saint, but more a sadistic bastard. Keith did not want me to do a review of the beer; instead he wanted me to watch an episode of According to Jim after drinking a six-pack of beer to see if the show was funnier.
So I started looking around for an episode of According to Jim to use for this test. I decided on the show finale that just aired. Now, I have not watched this show for a long time. I gave up on it after the first couple of episodes because it was not funny then; I have no idea what it is like now. I decided that a control review needed to be done. I sat down on Saturday night and watched the show, and no, this Saturday night I didn’t have anything better to do. So with my bag of microwave popcorn and bottle of soda in hand, I sat down to review the show.
The series finale is titled “Heaven Opposed to Hell.” The basic plot is that Jim chokes on a shrimp puff and dies. When he gets to the gates of Heaven he is red flagged and has to go before God — played poorly by Lee Majors — to weigh the merits of his life to decide if he should get into Heaven or go to Hell. For the series finale, the best they could come up with was a bad rip-off of the Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life? To defend Jim, they brought in the person that loved him the most in his life: predictably Andy, not Sheryl. It was also predictable that Dana was the one who despised Jim the most and was brought in to represent the Devil, played poorly by Eric Estrada.
The highlight of the show was the appearance by Dan Aykroyd. He was not particularly funny, but I always like to see him on TV.
All of the jokes were predictable and were of a third- or fourth-grade level. As most people grow older they mature and do grow wiser. Jim and Andy have been going backwards. I thought when I quit watching this show in the first season that I would like it if I were still a high school boy, but it was a bit below my level of comedy as a grown man. After watching this final episode I realized how far the show had degenerated. I was really expecting fart jokes, as I always liked those, too, when I was in elementary school.
When Dana, Ryan, and Andy arrived at the house to visit and announce their good news, Jim’s outburst to show how excited he was only showed what a jackass he was, and if I were to act that way in front of my wife, I would not even be allowed to sleep in the dog house; I would be banned to the wood plot out in back to sleep with the other animals.
The producers did try to go out with a bang by bringing in Aykroyd, Estrada, and Majors, but even these guest appearances could not drag this show out of the gutter. I do not know how this show has stayed on the air for as long as it has, but thankfully it is now over and will fade into the realm of syndication.
So there is my sober review of the show. Next weekend I will review the show again after drinking the six-pack of Land Shark Lager and see if it improves the show any.
Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jun 15, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT
Hehe… this post is genius Keith. Can’t wait for the conclusion Jeff :-)