FULL SCREEN ACTION
HBO’s New Boom Kings
Three episodes deep into "Flight of the Conchords," and we still have no fat mob bosses pancaking hookers in moments of sweaty, grunting, gratuitously full-frontal ecstasy? Or breezy café banter deconstructing the latest urban rimjob trends? Obviously, this is not your father's HBO.
Oh, the network that wins Emmys for the most literate use of "motherf****r" and never met a sex worker it couldn't build a documentary around still flashes "Adult Content" and "Adult Language" disclaimers at the beginning of each episode of "Conchords." And at least once per show, a token "bulls**t" darts its way into the series' sweet, goofy universe, as if to remind viewers that they're still getting some obscenity for their $11.95 a month.
Ultimately, however, the show, which focuses on the comic misadventures of two dim bulbs from New Zealand who are trying to make it as musicians in New York, is so clean it could run on Noggin with only minor editorial swipes. And in a testament to its wide-ranging appeal, it would probably play just as well with the toddlers who watch that channel as the Generation McSweeney's hipsters it's aimed at.
If the McSweeney's reference seems a little 1999, well, so is "Flight of the Conchords." Bret (the dumb one) and Jemaine (the dumber one) don't just wear vintage t-shirts; most of their ideas are second-hand too. But like so many of their breed, they have excellent taste. The show's staccato, deadpan, repetitive dialogue echoes the British version of "The Office," Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, and Ali G in his heaviest stoner fog mode. The absurd lyrics and hyper-emotive vocals the duo employ when they interrupt the show's storylines and get their Greek chorus on evoke Beck in his "Midnite Vultures" phase and Tenacious D in their Tenacious D phase.
But if the Conchords' influences (or at least their predecessors) are readily apparent, so is their talent. Jemaine, who both looks and sounds like Mick Jagger pretending to be Austin Powers on the muggiest day of the year, can get laughs with the subtlest eyebrow shrug. Bret is a kind of idiot Edison. In one episode, he's crafting a bicycle helmet with hair on it, so it doesn't look like he's wearing a helmet. In another, a cameraphone he made for Jemaine by gluing a camera to a cellphone plays a pivotal role.
The tunes the duo toss off are so consistently top-notch their facility almost undermines them: How hard can it be to write songs this funny, this catchy, one starts to wonder, if they can do it three times a show? Have Adam Sandler and Al Yankovic made musical parody look a lot harder than it really is? Or are the Conchords just that good?
Now if only someone could convince them to throw in a few profanity-laced soliloquies about the Mafia's sad decline, or some candid footage of street whores plying their trade in the grimy alleys of Newark, N.J. This is HBO, after all, and there are standards to maintain.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com, and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected]