Just the other day I was talking about how annoying I find it when mildly funny viral videos spawn dozens of copycats who try and piggyback on the success of that video without having to do any original work of their own. Well, the immensely popular "Drunk History" series found an extremely easy way to work around that problem - they just had all their videos feature insanely famous actors. It is one thing when a viral video featuring a bunch of people you've never heard of gets a lot of views because any copycat video can do that. They just need to round up a few friends with good equipment and no one can tell the difference. But when your video features Will Ferrell, Don Cheadle and Zooey Deschanel that is going to immediately knock a lot of people out of being able to put up a similar video in hopes of getting some accidental views. You certainly couldn't claim to be part of the series when your video is starring nothing but people from your chemistry class. This nearly bulletproof idea means the only way "Drunk History" could screw up this good deal they have created is if they mess it up for themselves and I am slightly worried they are about to do that very thing.
I was watching Comedy Central the other night and discovered that starting in early July "Drunk History" is getting its very own TV show. At first I was very excited for this because I enjoyed every single one of the videos and even though I didn't see all the ones on HBO (because I don't have HBO), the couple I did see were very good. However, if we have learned anything from movie such as "Night at the Roxbury" and programs as "(Bleep) My Dad Says", it is that not every great skit can be stretched out to make a movie or TV show. The danger with sketch comedy is that when it is bad you know it right away and unlike stand-up, where you feel compelled to stick around for a few jokes because there is often no link between them, when a sketch is stupid you can leave and come back several minutes later. In today's world of 900 channels and the internet constantly vying for your attention the last think you want is people flipping away, because they rarely remember to come back. I am fairly confident that the producers of this show know what they are doing and hopefully they didn't order too many episodes because while the premise is extremely funny, it is just the one premise over and over again. At least if it does go bad we will always have the really funny originals to fall back on.
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