The Tom Green Show
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This is The Tom Green Show, |
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The Tom Green Show was a combination of a sketch comedy show and talk show, hosted by none other than Tom Green, a former stand-up comic, and a member of Canadian rap group Organized Rhyme. During the show, he is usually accompanied by two of his long-time friends: Glenn Humplik, his old friend from working in radio, who occupied the couch, and Phil Giroux, whose sole purpose was to sit in the window with a cup of coffee and laugh at random jokes. After a pilot was produced to sell to CBC, it eventually wound up debuting on The Comedy Network in Canada, where it ran for two seasons.
Within those two seasons, Tom Green became a notorious figure in Canada, whose brand of shock humor, surrealist humor and street comedy wound up disturbing many grown-ups while developing a cult following among teenagers and young adults alike. One particular headline-making incident involved Tom showing up on a late night talk show and presenting host Mike Bullard with the show's mascot, Racky the Raccoon (a dead raccoon he found).
Tom's following got significant enough that he was soon picked up by an American network, MTV, which gave Tom much more exposure. At the height of his fame, Tom even released a song free on his website entitled "The Bum Bum Song," which went straight to #1 on Total Request Live. Tom would even lampoon his own public image when he did one show in Canada with Monica Lewinsky, and the show promptly wound up centered around Monica's interest in handbags.
This incarnation of the show ended with a one-hour special devoted to Tom Green's sudden diagnosis with testicular cancer, a much more sobering approach than fans were used to from Tom. The show halted production after that, but it returned in 2003 as The New Tom Green Show. Armed with a late-night talk show format, it lasted several weeks before being cancelled by MTV, since it wasn't the direction the network wanted to go in.
Tom went on to host a talk show in his basement entitled Tom Green's House Tonight, and currently[when?] tours as a stand-up comic.
Not to be confused with The Red Green Show, which is a much longer-running Canadian comedy series.
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Brutally inverted. Throughout the show's run, Tom found numerous ways to make his parents uncomfortable, such as leaving a severed cow's head in their bed (because his father likes The Godfather), painting a pornographic picture on his father's car, and even putting a statue on their lawn depicting domestic violence, then a second one depicting a sex act.
- Bloody Hilarious: One skit involved Tom walking down the street covered in (fake) blood carrying a mangled bike.
- Broken Record: "I'M GONNA THROW A PIGGY OFF THE HILLLLLLLLL..."
- Coming from Tom it crosses into Madness Mantra.
- Butt Monkey: Sweet Jesus, Glenn Humplik had it even worse than Tom's parents. From having his hotel room investigated for drugs at 5am, to making Glenn do trapeze with a hangover, or even just following Glenn around on the street insisting that the camera gets a shot of him peeing.
- Cloudcuckoolander
- Cringe Comedy: With extra cringe.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Tom receives one of the biggest swearing fits in television history from a cranky old man, simply for asking where he's going.
- Dead Baby Comedy
- Fan Disservice
- Ho Yay: Parodied, in the most over-the-top manner possible.
- Humiliation Conga: To a random teenager on a cruise ship, and then the waiter, with help from Tom's instructions over the PA system to the other passengers.
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- Large Ham
- Obfuscating Stupidity: A major part of Tom's skits.
- Refuge in Audacity: An even bigger part of Tom's skits.
- Spiritual Successor: Some call Tom this, in comparison to Andy Kaufman.
- Stylistic Suck: "The Bum Bum Song."
