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Here's an accumulation of my thoughts on Extreme Peace, having had time to watch and digest it all. I know it's a fairly lengthy post, but heck - I was banned from here for a month, so it's still less than what I would have otherwise been posting.
In summary, I thought it was a swing and a miss. Unless you're over-invested in Season 2's success, I'm not sure how one can fathom otherwise.
The tone mostly feels joyless, mean-spirited and self-congratulatory. There's an empty soullessness throughout, with lots of dead time and dead space, but little going on beneath the surface. Instead of depth, or subtlety, or even punchlines, there are regular 4th wall breaks, even with moments of unironically soyfacing at the camera to signal that this is a moment we're supposed to find amusing. These wall breaks manage to undermine a number of the sketches on the rare occasions that they're getting good - a case in point being the Puerto Rican robot cop sketch. They suck the air out of it half-way through in needlessly telling the viewer that the robot was breaking, despite it having cost them an excessive amount of money. It would have been funny to keep seeing the scenario just play out with the robot comedically falling apart (see Mitchell & Webb's classic 'Cheesoid / Smelling Robot' sketch), but no - Sam and the crew simply can't allow the viewers to interpret that something was happening outside of their creative control, even if it was something which added to the comedy.
How about they had told the viewers later in an interview: "Remember that funny robot sketch? Part of the magic came about because the crappy robot was falling apart, despite costing thousands" - that would have added to the lore. Instead, they basically pulled back the curtain during the show to tell the viewers to stop laughing. Rather than posthumously revealing to the audience behind the scenes stories of things which were funny in the first place, they've had to resort to instances such as with the NFL skit of having to "explain the joke" because "you just didn't get it".
The show manages the impressive feat of feeling both too try-hard and too low effort at the same time. The production values, animations, musical guests and general sense of back-slapping (e.g. the end of episode 1) are all working hard to try and convince the viewer that this is something high quality worth paying due reverence to; but the sketches themselves and level of performances feel largely phoned-in and unoriginal. A lot of it is just re-hashing World Peace skits. There's even the re-hashing of jokes across its own episodes ("these homeless people are gonna become CEOs"). Despite the long run-time, there are very few examples of Sam, Nick and Charls' respective comedic talents being effectively showcased, whether through pre-written bits, or witty riffing and improv.
It's all the more disappointing when considering that the guys have actually managed to be funny and entertaining together recently - stuff like Rhode Island Car Jitsu, or even them just goofing around on the Administrative Results gun podcast, are more enjoyable and have more genuine laughs than anything on display here. There are also some moments within E.P. which hint at what could have been or could be. The fact that the episodes get less bad over the course of the season, with the latter episodes appearing to have been filmed last, suggest that with some more time to gel and figure things out the crew could pull it together better in a Season 3. The final sketch of the final episode ended up being the only one which I felt worked without qualification or reservation. It was a scenario they hadn't really done before. It was both amusing and tense. It didn't feel forced. There were no 4th wall breaks. The twist worked. It didn't overstay its welcome. It segued well into the music outro. The Prom sketch in the previous episode had also felt like it was shaping up to be excellent, but rather fittingly in the context of the whole series, it was undermined at the end by the crew having to suck themselves off; rendering it more cringe and excessive than funny.
It has been telling that when promoting the show on podcasts, Sam has been most commonly "selling it" by saying "it's really good" - as if it's some self-righteous documentary submitted to Cannes - as opposed to it being "really funny". I've also not seen much genuine enthusiasm from him when describing it, as if he's trying to convince himself as much as the audience.
I don't know if overall perhaps the crew were too focused on sticking the middle finger to adult swim in trying to prove they could make a World Peace-type show on their own without outsider help, and if this got in the way of them just making a show that was good and original in its own right? Maybe Ruse really did add a bit of extra magic which they failed to capture? Perhaps the pressure of their reunion got to them a bit?
But ultimately, I'd sooner watch World Peace or Paradigm Shift for the 10th time than this for a 2nd. I'd sooner watch an episode of Scuffed Realtor for the occasional moments when Nick pulls out a truly amusing improvised bit than this. People still quote World Peace almost a decade on. It's been a few weeks and I'm struggling to recall a quote-worthy line aside from what was basically Peanut Arbuckle part 2. I don't see other people spontaneously re-posting or quoting parts of the show online in the same way they still do with moments from S1 either. In short, it seems destined to be de facto memory holed.
Here's hoping the guys have a bit more fun and get a bit more creative with Season 3 if it gets made.
In summary, I thought it was a swing and a miss. Unless you're over-invested in Season 2's success, I'm not sure how one can fathom otherwise.
The tone mostly feels joyless, mean-spirited and self-congratulatory. There's an empty soullessness throughout, with lots of dead time and dead space, but little going on beneath the surface. Instead of depth, or subtlety, or even punchlines, there are regular 4th wall breaks, even with moments of unironically soyfacing at the camera to signal that this is a moment we're supposed to find amusing. These wall breaks manage to undermine a number of the sketches on the rare occasions that they're getting good - a case in point being the Puerto Rican robot cop sketch. They suck the air out of it half-way through in needlessly telling the viewer that the robot was breaking, despite it having cost them an excessive amount of money. It would have been funny to keep seeing the scenario just play out with the robot comedically falling apart (see Mitchell & Webb's classic 'Cheesoid / Smelling Robot' sketch), but no - Sam and the crew simply can't allow the viewers to interpret that something was happening outside of their creative control, even if it was something which added to the comedy.
How about they had told the viewers later in an interview: "Remember that funny robot sketch? Part of the magic came about because the crappy robot was falling apart, despite costing thousands" - that would have added to the lore. Instead, they basically pulled back the curtain during the show to tell the viewers to stop laughing. Rather than posthumously revealing to the audience behind the scenes stories of things which were funny in the first place, they've had to resort to instances such as with the NFL skit of having to "explain the joke" because "you just didn't get it".
The show manages the impressive feat of feeling both too try-hard and too low effort at the same time. The production values, animations, musical guests and general sense of back-slapping (e.g. the end of episode 1) are all working hard to try and convince the viewer that this is something high quality worth paying due reverence to; but the sketches themselves and level of performances feel largely phoned-in and unoriginal. A lot of it is just re-hashing World Peace skits. There's even the re-hashing of jokes across its own episodes ("these homeless people are gonna become CEOs"). Despite the long run-time, there are very few examples of Sam, Nick and Charls' respective comedic talents being effectively showcased, whether through pre-written bits, or witty riffing and improv.
It's all the more disappointing when considering that the guys have actually managed to be funny and entertaining together recently - stuff like Rhode Island Car Jitsu, or even them just goofing around on the Administrative Results gun podcast, are more enjoyable and have more genuine laughs than anything on display here. There are also some moments within E.P. which hint at what could have been or could be. The fact that the episodes get less bad over the course of the season, with the latter episodes appearing to have been filmed last, suggest that with some more time to gel and figure things out the crew could pull it together better in a Season 3. The final sketch of the final episode ended up being the only one which I felt worked without qualification or reservation. It was a scenario they hadn't really done before. It was both amusing and tense. It didn't feel forced. There were no 4th wall breaks. The twist worked. It didn't overstay its welcome. It segued well into the music outro. The Prom sketch in the previous episode had also felt like it was shaping up to be excellent, but rather fittingly in the context of the whole series, it was undermined at the end by the crew having to suck themselves off; rendering it more cringe and excessive than funny.
It has been telling that when promoting the show on podcasts, Sam has been most commonly "selling it" by saying "it's really good" - as if it's some self-righteous documentary submitted to Cannes - as opposed to it being "really funny". I've also not seen much genuine enthusiasm from him when describing it, as if he's trying to convince himself as much as the audience.
I don't know if overall perhaps the crew were too focused on sticking the middle finger to adult swim in trying to prove they could make a World Peace-type show on their own without outsider help, and if this got in the way of them just making a show that was good and original in its own right? Maybe Ruse really did add a bit of extra magic which they failed to capture? Perhaps the pressure of their reunion got to them a bit?
But ultimately, I'd sooner watch World Peace or Paradigm Shift for the 10th time than this for a 2nd. I'd sooner watch an episode of Scuffed Realtor for the occasional moments when Nick pulls out a truly amusing improvised bit than this. People still quote World Peace almost a decade on. It's been a few weeks and I'm struggling to recall a quote-worthy line aside from what was basically Peanut Arbuckle part 2. I don't see other people spontaneously re-posting or quoting parts of the show online in the same way they still do with moments from S1 either. In short, it seems destined to be de facto memory holed.
Here's hoping the guys have a bit more fun and get a bit more creative with Season 3 if it gets made.
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