Comedy Central – Memphis Flyer

Amy Schumer will raunch up Bluesville at Horseshoe Casino this Friday, September 26th. Schumer got her big break on the 2007 season of Last Comic Standing. Since then, she’s had a slew of guest roles on series like Girls, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 30 Rock, Louie, and Delocated. Cultivating a large cult following with her own brand of gross-out and sex-based humor, her comedy falls into the same territory mined by Chelsea Handler — only not pretentious.

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Schumer’s breakout performance on the Roast of Charlie Sheen helped launch her into the pop-culture stratosphere. Her five minute, profanity lace diatribe skewered everyone from William Shatner to Mike Tyson to Sheen himself. The highlight of her insults was the comparison of Tyson’s facial tattoo to a tramp stamp. From 2010-2012, Schumer co-hosted Hoppus on Music, with musician Mark Hoppus. The talk show aired on Fuse.

Amy Schumer at Horseshoe Tunica Friday

Since 2013, she has starred on Inside Amy Schumer on Comedy Central. The show blends sketches with Schumer’s stand up and off beat interviews. Her 2011 comedy album, Cutting, broke Billboard’’s top five and was on multiple best of lists that year. A sample of the tracks on the album let you know where you’re headed: “Masturbating,” “Cockblock,” and “Asshole” are just a few of the gems.

The comedian’s next project should launch her into super stardom. Trainwreck is due out in July 2015 and stars Schumer along with an ensemble cast that includes Bill Hader and Tilda Swinton. The film was co-written by Schumer and comedy juggernaut Judd Apatow, who also produced and directed.

This will probably be your last chance to catch Schumer at a local appearance. If Apatow’s previous films are any indication, she’s set to join the ranks of Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel and others whose careers skyrocketed after their starring turn in an Apatow summer blockbuster. Not to mention the fact that Schumer can tell a dick joke that would make the Diceman blush.

In his 1983 book, Lost in The Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, Walker Percy proposed an unforgettable thought experiment: “Imagine a soap opera in which a character awakens every morning with amnesia, in a strange house with a strange, attractive man (or woman), welcomed by the stranger, looking out a strange window with a strange view, having forgotten the past each morning and starting life afresh, seeing the window, the view, himself, herself, in the mirror afresh and for the first time. Does this prospect intrigue you?”

Adapted from the Australian TV series Review With Myles Barlow, Comedy Central’s Review, which wrapped up its inaugural season last week, is both a grim riff on Percy’s amnesiac scenario and a long-form comic triumph.

Review‘s premise is perfect for our current epoch of criticism. Each week, critic turned TV personality Forrest MacNeil (Andrew Daly) “reviews” two to three “life experiences” suggested by his audience. (His deathless rallying cry is “Life! It’s literally all we’ve got. But is it any good?”) After he receives his assignment, Forrest’s attractive, quietly mean-spirited co-host A.J. (Megan Stevenson) cheers him on — and occasionally cheers him up — as he leaves the TV studio and sets out to discover what the world has to offer. Whether he’s finding a best friend or attending an orgy, Forrest’s earnest fish-out-of-water spasms and open-minded commitment to every gross, dangerous, and morally questionable thing he’s asked to do provide plenty of opportunities for dark, idiosyncratic humor.

Five-star review for Review

As Forrest’s fragile sense of self is kicked, battered, and bloodied by factors both external (drugs, peer pressure) and internal (self-loathing, boredom), the reviews he’s asked to complete begin to haunt him. Repeatedly, Forrest answers slight variations on the same question: “Who are you?” His star-ratings responses end up validating Herman Melville’s assertion from the 1857 novel The Confidence-Man: “For there is no bent of heart or turn of thought which any man holds by virtue of an unalterable nature or will. Even those feelings and opinions deemed most identical with eternal right and truth … may in reality be but the result of some chance tip of Fate’s elbow in throwing her dice.” One nudge, and you’re a racist. One shove, and you’re shot into outer space.

In a macabre twist, Forrest isn’t allowed to discuss his day job with anyone but his co-workers. As his assignments grow more outlandish, the increasing damage to his family and friends provides a sobering subtext. The episode titles themselves could be the names of unfinished Samuel Beckett plays: “Sex Tape, Racist, Hunting”; “Marry, Run, Party”; “Quitting, Last Day, Irish.” Episode 3, “Pancakes, Divorce, Pancakes,” is the series’ widely acknowledged high point, a mixture of childish gross-out humor and piercing adult despair. But it isn’t as finely tuned as the “Aching” segment of “Revenge, Getting Rich, Aching,” which is the funniest thing I’ve seen this year.

Review‘s near-perfect finale works as both a season and series finale. It would be a shame and a major loss if it didn’t return. Then again, if it ceased to exist, its hard-earned perfection and five-star rating would remain untarnished forever.

Review

Comedy Central

First season just wrapped; available on Amazon Prime and the Comedy Central app