"The Sarah Silverman Program": Kinda Jewy, kinda chewy, kinda bluey

Sarah Silverman is often called a “dangerous” comic, which means that whenever she performs on stage, while much of her audience is falling out of their seats in hysterics there's likely to be a few just sitting there, stone-faced and cross-armed, because they were told this was one of the funniest women in America and what is so funny about jokes where black people and “retards” and making “dooky” are the punchlines?

  Well, fans and haters, good news: “The Sarah Silverman Program,” debuting at 9:30 p.m. CT Thursday on Comedy Central, may intensify your feelings toward the 36-year-old comedian, but is not likely to change them.

In this sendup of the Great American Sitcom, Silverman plays Sarah Silverman, a cheerful layabout who only thinks of herself while extracting money and favors from her younger sister, Laura, and gay neighbors Brian and Steve, in the mythical burb actual town of Valley Village. (In real life, Sarah lives with her hard-working boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel, and this same Laura is her older sister. Brian Posehn and Steve Agee are her co-stars.)

  True to Silverman's standup act, the “Program” is a commentary on certain aspects of the American middle class -- with poop jokes. Here, Sarah embodies a kind of clueless optimism and indifference to social problems that we see every time we turn on the TV.

For instance, the first episode hinges on a Save the Children-like commercial that Sarah dearly wants to switch off, because while people have problems, they bum her out. Unfortunately, the batteries in her remote are dead. In her desperation to change the channel, she steals the double-A's from a convenience store. She is rescued only when she prays to God, who comes to her in the form of a handsome, older black man that would like to take her to bed.

As someone who's on the fence about Silverman -- I get what she's doing, but I'm not sure it's worthy of the adulation it receives -- I found myself chuckling more when I went through my notes on the first two shows than when I was watching them.

I think the “Program” is fine so long as you treat it as a satire on TV rather than on society. In one of the show's few laugh-out-loud moments, the store clerk (“Heroes” star Masi Oka, in a role obviously taken pre-stardom) describes Sarah to a cop as a “white girl, kinda Jewy.” Out of habit, the officer immediately radios in that the suspect is a black male. Maybe it's supposed to be a jab at the police, but it's funnier if you think about your late local news instead, where it seems every other suspect meets that description.

Comments

[ML]

Oy vey! Another great program that isn't (yet) available on Canadian television.

ML

[gms]

Factual ERROR:
Valley Village does in fact exist. It is a small community that is part of North Hollywood, CA near Burbank.

GOOGLE - jeez.

[Rhea]

I watched Sarah Silverman's show last night and thought it was was phenomenal. OK, there were a lot of ka-ka jokes. But the humor was fresh, new, twisted. The writing was really fabulous.