I loved Almost Live! Periodically I will call someone an Ineffectual Middle Management Suckup and I either get a blank stare or a laugh because they think I came up with the “title.” I tend to forget, at this distance, which skits were* Almost Live* and which were Kids in the Hall. Bring me smelts and a Coke!
Rose-colored glasses, I guess. My memories of early Comedy Central was replayed HBO comedy specials from five years before and four showings of Amazon Women on the Moon every day.
MST3K and Dr. Katz was fun but it was definitely not pure gold from wall to wall.
No channel is “pure gold from wall to wall.” Whoever made that claim?
Sorry, hyperbole.
“I don’t remember it being nearly as good as some of the claims in this thread.”
Despite the fact that Make Me Laugh never did, I too miss some of the shows that are long since gone.
Am I the only person who misses the robot fights?
I don’t miss the robot fights, but I don’t consider that “early days” either.
My feelings exactly - in fact, his version of Whose Line got me to hate him even more than the last couple of seasons of his sitcom. ugh.
I do wish there was a greater variety of standup - I feel like I keep seeing the same ones over and over and over. Much as I love Gabriel Iglesias, when I can recite his jokes with him, I’ve seen it too many times.
I enjoyed Win Ben Stein’s Money - smart and funny.
But the “roasts” can just go away. Crude, unfunny, totally stupid, IMHO.
Clash!?
Ooh, reverse interrobang.
Perhaps you’re thinking of “Clash!;” the show I popped in to mention. I’ve looked off and on for clips on the net since, well, there was a net.
Worst Girlfriend in the World
Well, the sex was good…
Clash? It was always two teams of three squaring off, each team a group who were in some way the complete opposite of the other. People Who Think the World Is About to End vs People Who Just Bought Real Estate, that sort of thing.
I still remember a lot of one-liners from Stand Up, Stand Up. Sometimes when discussions of what is or isn’t sexually appealing come up, I’ll refer to Allan Havey’s notion of why he doesn’t like Hustler:
(Pretending to look at a magazine, puzzled) “What is that, a sunset?”
Not the early days really, but I miss Win Ben Stein’s money and Beat the Geeks.
Memories have gotten hazy, but it seems like, in those very first weeks (months) of The Comedy Channel, the programming consisted entirely of clips from comedy movies.
It was almost entirely clips, but it included clips from standup acts, television shows, and movies.
Didn’t Rosie O’Donnell host a show featuring stand-up comedians? I seem to recall she had very big hair.
It was on VH1. Stand-up Spotlight.
It’s actually where I knew her from.
Have you noticed most comedy channels go like this while some comedy channels go like this?
It was occasionally amusing, but the biggest problem I had with it where those interminable and lame category titles:
Jimmy Kimmel: …and finally She was only a farmer’s daughter, but she never forgot how to hoe.
Contestant: I’ll take She was only a farmer’s daughter, but she never forgot how to hoe.
It wasn’t funny once, why does the contestant have to repeat it in full?! In the time it took Kimmel to recite the category and for the contestant to repeat it, a Jeopardy! contestant could have run through all of Potent Potables. Jesus Fucking Christ! AAGH!
*Clash *is what I was thinking of!
Loved the British Whose Line. To this day some of the songs the Red Headed woman (name escapes me) and Mike McShane came up with still get stuck in my head.
Josie? She has black hair, but she and Mike always did the best music.
I like the American show just fine, mostly because Ryan, Colin, and Wayne were a rock-solid core group. The British show was wildly uneven due to the random make-up of performers, although that meant it could be funnier as well.