Up Shit Week

Briggswatch! Still in the opening credits of The Weekly, not on the actual Weekly. Then again he did just collect a decent share of $30,000 for winning the Australian Music prize, so he may have better things to do with his time. As did Kitty Flanagan, which is weird because… you know… Tom Gleeson was still on board. Whoever’s making that Sophie’s Choice: YOU’RE GETTING IT WRONG.

But that just fits in with the general approach of The Weekly, which this week seemed even more than ever to be just that little bit behind the times – and not only because the (highly edited?) interview with South Park‘s Parker & Stone finally aired, just in time for it to be completely irrelevant. Maybe someone upstairs thought it was too much like a promo for The Book of Mormon?

Look, you can blame the internet, blame the 24-hour news cycle, even blame the general mediocrity of a comedy team that just doesn’t seem to be able to come up with a single new angle or surprising take on anything, but when you’re doing seven minutes on the days-old kerfuffle over the Coopers Beer cross-promotion with the Bible Society it’s difficult not to shrug so hard you put your shoulder out. As we’ve said before, if you can’t be topical, be funny; if you can’t be funny, welcome to The Weekly.

That said, that segment did feature Justin Hamilton and it’s always great to see him on television. Cue us getting depressed thinking about all the great comedy talent we have out there not getting on television while Tom Gleeson has been around for what, fifteen years now? We’re watching a show with Kitty Flanagan as a core cast member and even she’s not on every week. Fuck this shit.

Otherwise you know the drill: a bunch of segments that really are just Behind The News for the adderall generation, a handful of uninspired comedy bits – yeah, those promos for A Current Affair are pretty funny, but maybe you might want to come up with a funnier take than simply repeating everything the promo just said – and oh look, special correspondent Jonathan Pie doing the exact same ranting rant he does everywhere he goes. He didn’t even interact with Charlie Pickering: was this swipe at Tony Blair a fresh rant or one from 2007?

But the bit that really seemed to sum up The Weekly this week was the way they a): explained to us all the internet exploding over that video where News Dad is interrupted by his bouncy kids, then b): just re-enacted it at the end of the show with no twist or joke added. Wait, didn’t you just do a bit ten minutes earlier about how this clip was massively over-exposed and already played-out? Isn’t your addition to this massively over-exposed and already played-out bit just to straight-up re-stage it like that’s somehow enough to get laughs?

Not that we’re saying this idea of The Weekly simply re-creating popular viral videos and adding absolutely nothing to them is automatically a bad idea. Just maybe shift the focus slightly: maybe have Pickering falling off a bench, or Pickering being startled by a cucumber, or Pickering taking a big ol’ shit in a cup. It’d have to be an improvement over what they’re doing now.