Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim—referred to simply as “Tim and Eric” when in comedic-duo form—are committed to extracting humor
from some fairly disturbing situations. Perhaps you’ve seen the sketch where child rent-a-clowns are kept in cages until their limbs become
gangrenous and begin to fall off, or the one where a phlegmy boy nervously wails songs on a talent show while in the throes of a protracted allergic
reaction. Their work elicits characterizations that range from “surreal” to “juvenile” to “stoner comedy,” and it
undeniably has shades of each, but taken as a whole, it presents a unified vision that speaks directly to a certain kind of fear.
To appreciate what Tim and Eric are saying to us, a part of you must be ready to embrace the premise that life is an all-you-can-eat buffet of macaroni
casserole, cocktail wieners, and Jell-O salad that was left out overnight. The vinyl tablecloths are clean enough, but the bottoms of the tables are
crusted over with dried food filth; flies land on everything, and there’s probably a fair amount of human hair in there somewhere.
If you’ve lived intimately with the primary articles in the Tim and Eric canon over the past 10 years, this scene may feel like home. In fact, I
lifted it straight out of the town of Jefferton, the setting of Tim and Eric’s television debut, Tom Goes to the Mayor, which ran from 2004
to 2006 on Adult Swim. Tom Goes to the Mayor is bleak. Jefferton is an embodiment of the hell that unrestrained strip-mall colonization has
wrought on small-town America. The absence of beauty and happiness is complete; it’s the kind of town you’d expect to harbor a slow
petrochemical leak. Tom (Tim), our hero, is a profoundly pathetic man whose best intentions are relentlessly met with failure and humiliation. Each person
he interacts with is a different brick wall of stupidity and malaise (especially the mayor, played by Eric), and each attempt at a community function is
sparsely attended and has the heaviness of a municipal obligation. Sure, there are jokes—the mayor’s porcelain bird pyramid scheme; Mister Entrepreneur, the “reality-based” show Tom films with his wife’s ex-husband, as played by David Cross—but
it’s the despair that sticks!
Following was the more widely known Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (2007–2010), Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule (2010–present), and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (which flopped in limited release in early 2012), plus a bunch of smaller
online series. Motifs run unbroken between projects, making the whole collection feel very much like a unified body of work.
With each iteration, there’s some necessary reconfiguration, but never a complete thematic departure. Horror, disgust, desperation, and decay are
ever-present—never will human bodies not resound with an amplified fleshiness, or will dads be anything but emotionally awkward and ultimately
unknowable. Awesome Show established a style and a solid fan base for Tim and Eric. It was oversaturated, a carnivalesque homage to no-budget
public access television and all its weirdos. Green screens are abused gleefully. Though taxonomically a sketch comedy show, it’s crammed so tightly
into its 11 minutes that the result is more hallucinogenic collage than anything else.
Their latest production, Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, premieres this month on Adult Swim and probably won’t totally upend any
expectations. Each episode runs about 11 minutes and follows a single plotline. Horror comes to the forefront in Bedtime Stories. Frenetic pacing
and editing are wisely reined in, and the slower build in atmosphere is complemented by punch-line restraint. It’s easy to imagine viewing an episode
almost laughlessly, enjoying it, and yet concluding that the piece was ultimately a comedy. Tim and Eric have earned the right to this paradox. In one
episode, “Hole,” they play cul-de-sac neighbors whose relationship quickly descends into the psychological underworld of suburbia. When
Tim’s portrayal of the macho “king of the ’sac” peaks, you can sense flashes of Frank Booth. In another episode,
“Toes,” frequent T&E collaborator Bob Odenkirk (who also produced Tom Goes to the Mayor and Awesome Show) plays a dad, an
amateur yachtsman, and a doctor dedicated to the titular digits. It’s not surprising that comparisons to Blue Velvet could be drawn
again—Tim and Eric often play like comic Lynch.
I’m sorry, is this the music section? Tim and Eric are song-and-dance men, too, you know, in Andy Kaufman’s sense of the phrase. They’re
performers. Tim made an album called Starting from Nowhere, which is either a parody of a soft-rock album or a soft-rock album or both. If you go
to their live show at the Moore on Tuesday, you’ll hear songs. There won’t be despair, I promise. It will be fun. I don’t know how they
do it. That’s comedy. That’s magic. You also might have pizza thrown at you. That’s what happened to me. 