I can still remember the complete wave of confusion that washed over me a year or two ago when a friend of mine asked me if I’d seen Jeff Dunham’s DVDs, “Arguing with Myself” and “Spark of Insanity.” Not because *I* didn’t know who the guy was, but because I couldn’t quite work out how the friend who was asking me knew about him. As far as I knew, he was just this comedian with a purple puppet named Peanut, a guy who’d been working the stand-up circuit for years. To this day, I have no idea exactly what changed and when he suddenly became so huge that my daughter’s sitter was enough of a fan to have his DVDs, but, hey, more power to him.
After the success of his most recent special, “A Very Special Christmas,” which earned more than 6.6 million viewers and was Comedy Central’s most watched telecast ever, it’s no surprise that the network decided to transition Dunham into a weekly series, and since he’s become a household name, why not go with the most obvious title?
Welcome, then, to “The Jeff Dunham Show.”
Give the guy credit: he knows the path he’s taken to get here, he’s thrilled that he’s made it, and he’s not afraid to mock how long it took.
“As I drove here today,” Dunham began, “I realized I was going past the comedy club here in Pasadena called The Ice House, and it was there at The Ice House in 1990 that I did my ninth audition for ‘The Tonight Show’ and was booked to do ‘The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson’ for the first of four times. And if I had known standing there in that parking lot in 1990 that I would be here at this time doing this for Comedy Central, I would have thought, ‘You know what? That just took too fucking long.'”
Of course, Dunham immediately broke out one of his little friends, and who better to present to a bunch of grumpy TV critics than Walter? I try desperately not to offer up actual transcripts of the panels, but given the necessary back-and-forth with a ventriloquist’s act, I’m guessing I’ll be allowed some leeway here…
Walter: Who the hell is the group?
Jeff Dunham: We talked about that earlier today, you know who it is.
Walter: No, I kind of forgot.
Jeff Dunham: Okay, I wrote it down for you.
Walter: Oh, good. Okay. Let’s see, the TV Critics Association Cable Press Tour. That’s it?
Jeff Dunham: That’s it.
Walter: I think our career has peaked. You know, I was thinking to myself just the other day, we’ve had specials on Comedy Central, we’ve opened for the President, but we’ve never done a show for the TV freakin critics. Are you being paid for this gig cash? It is none of that barter crap, is it? We’re not going to get like a year’s subscription to TV Guide for God sake, are we? This is just sad. Let me get this straight: so their job is to get up in the morning, turn on the TV, stuff their pie holes, and then trash the new shows.
Jeff Dunham: I guess.
Walter: This is genius. I want this job. “What’s your dad’s job?” “He tells the world that your dad’s show sucks.” Fantastic.
Well, as it happens, I haven’t seen the show yet, so I won’t tell you that “The Jeff Dunham Show” sucks. Based on the panel, it’s far more likely that it’ll be pretty darned funny, actually. But just in case I turn out to be wrong, Walter made sure to offer us some possible lines to use in our reviews.
Walter: If you’re going to rip our show apart, here are some lame headlines you will probably use. You can use these. “‘Jeff Dunham Show’ cast is kind of wooden.” “Dunham is for dummies.” They love puns in the print business. You know what I mean? “Dunham makes dolls talk, but can’t make audience laugh.” That’s a good one.
Jeff Dunham: Right. What about that one? I wrote that one.
Walter: Oh, yeah: “Jeff Dunham Show” funny as a block of fucking wood. You can use little asterisk signs and stuff on the ‘fucking.’ Okay. Here is another one. “Not funny. Read my lips.” See, because it’s hard to leave my lips.
Lauren Corrao (Comedy Central’s President of Original Programming and Development): I got it.
Walter: If there was somebody here who couldn’t hear, it would sound like, ‘Mom, mom, mom, mom.’
Lauren Corrao: I got it.
Walter: Thanks, Lauren. Okay. Good. You should sit on Jeff’s other knee.
Lauren Corrao: All right.
Walter: Let him stick his hand up your…back.
Dunham closed his panel by reminding us of just how humble he is by clarifying the importance of his network to where he is today.
“Comedy Central has brought so much to my career because my audience, you know, they were growing with me,” he explained. “The skew there was getting up there in their 40s, and now with the really hip and fun stuff that we’ve done at Comedy Central and with the YouTube clips going international…we did a tour over in Europe a couple months ago, and to sell out 8,000 seats in Copenhagen and Helsinki, it was just nuts. But it’s because of those characters, and it’s because of Achmed that I’ve tried to put a really, really modern, current, hip edge on a tired art, and it seems to be working. You never know how long your 15 minutes will be. I take none of this for granted. All thanks to the fans and…”
“And Comedy Central,” snapped Walter. “Suck up! Suck up!”
“And Comedy Central,” Dunham acknowledged. “So there you have it. You guys were great. Thank you very much for the time, I hope you will watch the show, and we’ll try and make you laugh.”
“The Jeff Dunham Show” premieres on Oct. 22nd on Comedy Central.