Hy on Human Giant

With a format reminiscent of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and the chaotic energy of the classic The Monkees TV series, Human Giant is fresh, smart, nimble, and hilarious.

The series is written and performed by Aziz Ansari, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer, three stellar comedic performers who honed their craft at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre.

Ansari is one of the most brilliantly skilled stand-up comics I've ever seen, simultaneously down-to-earth, kinetic, and razor-sharp, with a delivery style part Ellen DeGeneres, part Lenny Bruce, but overall uniquely his own (for a sample, click here). Scheer is a genius at improv comedy, and his lightning-fast mind has been entertaining TV audiences for years on VH1's Best Week Ever; but more recently he's also developed into an impressive movie actor, and can be seen in such features as School for Scoundrels with Billy Bob Thornton, Trainwreck with Seann William Scott and Gretchen Mol, and Watching the Detectives with Cillian Murphy and Lucy Liu. Huebel has performed on shows ranging from Best Week Ever to Late Night with Conan O'Brien to Curb Your Enthusiasm; produced segments for such comedy series as Michael Moore's wonderful The Awful Truth and Jon Stewart's Emmy-winning The Daily Show; and has a TV star look that belies a mischievous and anarchic personality. Each of these guys is extraordinarily strong on his own; but what makes Human Giant so special is that the trio have amazing chemistry together...and, in addition to their stage skills, are all superb in front of a camera.

Rounding out the team is the behind-the-scenes fourth member, Jason Woliner, who directs the short films that make up the show with a terrific eye for timing and comedic detail.

Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, and Aziz Ansari

The first episode of Human Giant aired April 5th. It includes the wonderful shorts Camping Weekend, Illusionators, and Shutterbugs; and a sketch about a mom & son moving company that's a comedy masterpiece. There's nothing much to say about these short films other than they're as good as comedy gets, and instant classics.

Camping Weekend

Aziz Ansari and Paul Scheer are the Illusionators

Aziz Ansari and Rob Huebel are the Shutterbugs

Mother & Son Moving Company: One of the funniest live-action shorts, ever.

The second episode, broadcast on 4/12, opens with the Arc of the Covenant melting a guy's face; follows with back-to-back sketches about sexual predators, and a sequence about a woman dumping her boyfriend to hump a whale; offers a cautionary tale on the dangers of leaving home and your Xbox to play outside; and concludes with the brilliant Let's Go!, which is about as close as comedy gets to cinematic poetry.

If your friend tells you to not open his Arc of the Covenant, listen to him

The Let's Go! gang

Episode #3 is dominated by an insanely funny premise: The show's recurring characters the Shutterbugs, who are the sleaziest of talent agents and exclusively represent children, come up with what they proclaim "the best movie idea we've ever had"—a feature film titled Lil' 9/11: Based on a true story that recreates the tragic events of September 2001 via tots. For example, when the kid playing President Bush is reading to a classroom about pet goats and is about to be informed of the vicious attacks, his director instructs him, "I want you to react as if he just told you all the ice cream had been stolen from the Earth." Later on a rival talent agency that cast the child who plays the villain gets into an argument with the Shutterbugs about which actor is most important to the project...leading Matt Walsh (the marvelously deadpan co-founder of the Upright Citizens Brigade) to point out with snippy superiority "I don't think 9/11 would've happened without Osama bin Laden." Meanwhile, the director approaches the Shutterbugs to note, "The one thing I'm not sure about is the entire concept of this movie." Folks, it doesn't get better than this.

The Superplums (Paul Scheer & Matt Walsh) vs. The Shutterbugs (Rob Huebel & Aziz Ansari)

The other highlights of the episode revolve around food: a two-part bit on commercial jingles for snacks that ranges from painfully uncomfortable to deliciously surreal; a blood oath about trying out a new BBQ joint for lunch; and naming fast food restaurants after aspects of an adulterous affair.

Paul Scheer tries to join in on singing a jingle—one of HG's best sketches

Aziz Ansari, Paul Scheer, and Rob Huebel taking a blood oath

Naming restaurant chains to vent about a lost love

Only one sequence ends up falling totally flat: spacemen rumbling on the moon. While the basic idea is clever, it stops being fun when the life of the character played by Aziz Ansari is brutally ended. The same holds true for a sketch in the first episode that has Ansari leaping out a window; and an upcoming sketch about a killer mosh pit. Rule of thumb: If all three members of Human Giant die—as in Camping Weekend or Let's Go!—it's funny. If Aziz alone is slain, the humor instantly drains from the sketch. (Since rules are made to be broken, though, I'll look forward to a future bit that proves this wrong...)

But what's most important about Episode #3 is that Lil' 9/11 establishes Human Giant as knowing how to push the envelope of good taste and create utterly hilarious comedy. That puts it into South Park territory—a very good place to be.

Episode #4 starts off leveraging Paul Scheer's natural likeability by surrounding him with adorable animals...and then having him demonstrate how to barbecue them! The next sketch then very smartly restores the karmic balance by making Scheer a time traveler who ignores the warnings of his roommate (Ansari)...and ends up slowly eaten and raped by dinosaurs. The closer is priceless, with Huebel as a TV reporter describing the spot where Scheer met his end: "The most compelling artifact is this stone tablet which bears a cryptic message: 'Aziz, I should have listened to you' written in what appears to be a mixture of blood and dinosaur semen." A lovely added touch is that Huebel mispronounces the name as Ah-zizz.

Unfortunately, the rest of the show kinda sags. There are a number of fun concepts—most notably, a deadly roving mosh pit—but none of them quite come together. That said, visual pleasures of this episode include Huebel as a psycho killer sporting super-nerd glasses; Scheer showing off his white briefs; Huebel as a very odd-looking woman; and a park carriage ride during which baby-faced Scheer is given a blowjob (by, of course, Huebel).

It's also worth noting that on the same night (4/26), the group made its first major TV network appearance—on NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly. It was a bit surreal, since the first half consisted of Daly performing painfully bad material...badly. I quite like Daly, and respect him for giving up-and-coming and alternative artists mainstream exposure; but he's simply not built for funny. So when Human Giant appeared after the break, it sorta felt like Einstein promoting his theory of relativity on Sesame Street... Still, it was interesting to hear the guys explain how they started out by noticing, "The only thing on YouTube was cats. Cats sleeping, cats cuddling, cats drinking their own urine. And this was getting a million hits. So we figured if we did videos that had people in them, they'd probably take off." A lesson for us all.

Human Giant #5 proves the previous lukewarm episode to have been a mere bump in the series. The show kicks off with Paul Scheer hilarious as a frat boy demonstrating his prowess at masturbation.

This is followed by a short play about urination...featuring Aziz Ansari wearing a costume that looks like a reject from 1991's Swamp Thing.

Ansari then proceeds to dominate the show, playing two vibrant new characters: Clell Tickle, Indie Marketing Guru (to view the entire bit, click here); and Jimmy Norville, a fella who goes to insanely cartoonish lengths to get something for free.

Jimmy Norville on the prowl for free coffee

Also fine is a sketch about an evil deer who enjoys throwing baby carriages in front of cars and running a child pornography ring.

The only downer is a second disappointing installment of Illusionators. With the exception of "Shutterbugs," these are the best characters Human Giant has created to date, and the initial sketches were brilliant (particularly a dead grandfather momentarily popping back to life in his coffin to ask "Is this your card?"). But the go-nowhere clone trick in Episode #4, and the "crossing the street" sketch in this episode—resembling a shaggy dog story—are wastes of a great concept. The key to these characters is they effectively have the power of God but use it to perform hokey parlor tricks. Here's hoping for more focused Illusionators tales and a return to their previous greatness.

Episode #6 introduces us to the founder and owner of Shutterbugs: 10-year-old Bobb'e J. Thompson. TV nerds (like me, and Aziz Ansari) fondly remember Thompson from the 2003 NBC show America's Most Talented Kid as a judge who made shockingly funny comments about contestants. So when it was time to cast a child to play Bill's and Samir's boss, Ansari insisted it be Thompson—and his judgment was on the money. Not only did Thompson prove to be amazing at both verbal and physical comedy, he improvised a lot of his lines...for example, he made up the movie about farting monkeys that grossed $325 million. Ansari says there were problems with some shots because director Jason Woliner was shaking with laughter at what Thompson was doing and had to struggle to keep the camera steady. In an interview with the A.V. Club, Ansari recalls "We thought he was just like a funny little kid, but he came there, and he was like...I've never seen a mind work like that, the stuff he was improvising...He was making fun of me and Huebel, 'cause we kept breaking [character]. I was watching some behind-the-scenes we have from that day, and he kept making Huebel and me laugh when he did this one thing, and he was like, 'Come on, guys. Get it together!'"

A talent to watch: Bobb'e J. Thompson (firing Bill and Samir)

The other highlight of the episode is the debut of three characters who clearly just escaped from Superman II and the Phantom Zone: the Space Lords (see pic below).

Upon arriving on our planet, the Lords encounter a "Weenie King" fast food restaurant. They promptly kill the manager and crown themselves the new kings...and then alternate between serving customers and slaying them (for example, by shrinking a complaining woman and then tossing her in with the fries to be immersed in boiling oil). But then, one of the Lords falls in love...

I can't even imagine the brainstorming that led to the Huebel character sounding like a Wookie, and blasting power from his mouth instead of his eyes; but they were inspired choices.

Space Lords feels a tad familiar; see, for example, the series of videos about "Chad Vader" by clicking here. But who cares? They're the best characters to grace the series since the Let's Go! gang—and, with any luck, will be around a lot longer.

It's impossible to know who created what for any HG sketch; but I'd be surprised if Paul Scheer, with his endearing love for pop culture, didn't have a great deal to do with this one. Huge kudos also go to Jason Woliner for the imaginative visuals and wonderful attention to detail.

Other notable sketches in the episode include maiming Ansari so he can buy a wheelchair-only ticket to a Ghostface Killah concert; and a brief, eerie bit about Huebel breaking up with women via a corn labyrinth (yep, that's right—a maize maze...).

Aziz Ansari is elated to have busted his legs so he can attend a Ghostface Killah concert

Episode #7 revolves around an unlikely pair of subjects: sports and magic.

The sports side includes a mildly amusing sketch about basketball being played by beards vs. mustaches; and a grim series titled Profiles in Extreme Sports in which not much happens other than surreal death (presumably a parody of MTV shows such as Call to Greatness and Scarred—but ultimately not as funny...).

However, the magic sketches shined, mixing comedy and poignancy in ways never before seen in the series. The first bit involves a guy seeking wishes discovering a once-powerful genie—only it turns out the djinn is now hooked on drugs and runs a meth lab from his lamp. The subsequent devastation that arises from being with someone who lives half in and half out of reality is both hilarious and heartbreaking, and one of the most memorable sketches in the series.

Another bit covered more subtle forms of reality-bending: the magic of belief and celebrity. For Scheer's birthday, his friends hire him a visit from a Bruce Willis impersonator. The latter doesn't actually look or sound anything like Willis; but Scheer is so dazzled by his love for the star that he instantly falls for it and proceeds to do whatever the slimy pseudo-Willis says...including giving him shelter, money, and aid in disposing of a murder victim (played by Matt Walsh). Scheer is about to give up his own kidney when the cops finally arrive and blast the impersonator to pieces. The sketch raises questions about how far we'll go to be in contact with the famous; and about preferring belief at any cost to living a mundane life.

The show concludes with a double-length tale that brings sports and magic together. The first half replicates the iconic scene of a sick child asking a baseball player to hit one out of the park for him; only the boy isn't suffering from a disease, but demonic possession! When the baseball player succeeds, the demon is driven from the body; but he misses his host. In the second half, the demon takes on the role of ex-husband, begging the mom for permission to spend some time with the kid again. When she relents, he gleefully rushes to the boy—who's playing baseball with a friend—reenters the child's body, and bats the ball out of the atmosphere.

It's an appropriate capper for an episode devoted to characters embracing danger and dysfunction to live beyond the norm.

Given the vagaries of television, even a show as wonderful as Human Giant is vulnerable to cancellation; and no one is more aware of this than HG's creators. Therefore, Episode #8 comes across as not only the season finale, but what the guys genuinely believed might be the series finale. The themes are pain, humiliation, and betrayal; death & resurrection; and apocalypse & endurance.

The show's tone is set up front with a driver arrogantly trying to intimidate someone in another car...and getting his face smashed into his windshield for it. Returning to his own car, he tells his watching son to simply turn on the wipers so they can continue their journey without the blood blocking their vision—a metaphor that'll resonate for any struggling artist.

After a brief amuse-bouche based around the observation "The hardest part of rollerblading is telling your parents you're gay," the show dives into a main course: The fourth installment of Illusionators. These magical characters were ill-served for a couple of episodes, but are returned to their full glory here when they decide to launch missiles at each other and catch the explosive projectiles in their mouths. Scott Devil (Scheer) succeeds, with arguably gay overtones; but John Satan (Ansari) is blown to smithereens. Scott holds up John's smoking legs, which are all that remain of him, and laments, "Why did you try to catch the missile with your body?!" Much bereavement follows; but in the end, John Satan pulls a Jesus for the ultimate mind explosion.

Another amuse-bouche follows, about folks protesting the tearing down of their mall to make way for Indian burial grounds. The bit can be seen as satirizing those who'd prefer a shallow MTV show such as Next over HG's substance and bite. It also provides Scheer with one of his best roles, as a Jewish California mayor with Indian corpses in his closet.

We're then treated to the second installment of Space Lords, which is continuously imaginative, surprising, and breathtakingly funny. It's cool enough to show us super-powerful beings who kill billions in a heartbeat to make a necklace of stars, or force-feed a depressed fat dude with franks until he explodes; but what's truly amazing is that the sketch always manages to make us love these tyrannical goofballs. If there's ever a Human Giant spin-off series, my pick would be Space Lords; and I eagerly await their further adventures in Season 2.

The Space Lords

Secret ancestors of the Space Lords?

(turned up on Human Giant Google Image search...)

Finally, to cap off the devastation, we're presented with a near-future in which humankind has been virtually wiped out by nuclear war. The only survivors are the four members of a "Rowdy Wakeup" morning radio show: Barry, Stinky Jay, Breast Man, and Sheila (played by brilliant comedic performer/writer Jackie Clarke). The banter of this Too Blue Morning Crew is obviously a satire of radio jocks who deal with everything in a superficial way. But beneath that veneer, this is a poignant tribute to the power of laughter; and to Human Giant's belief that even if their show was cancelled, their comedy would endure.

Return to top

To read about Human Giant 24: Live From Times Square and More Human Giant Info (i.e., Hy on Human Giant, page 2 of 2), please click here.

Other Review Sections on This Site:

Home Page

Comedy in the Moment: Del Close Improv Marathon

SketchFest NYC 2007

Hy on Theatre

Hy on Theatre Discounts

FringeNYC 2007 Coverage

FringeNYC 2006 coverage

FringeNYC 2005 coverage

Hy's Other Sites:

BookProposal.net

HyOnYourScript.com

HyBender.com

Email: hy@hyreviews.com