January 4, 2010

adam carolla's unlikely fan (me)

Fresh from a lovely 12-day vacation, it's back to the real world. Luckily, that involves the return of television for a new 2010 season. Midseason premieres, new shows, award shows, new pilot announcements for the fall...it's all coming down the pike (is it pike or pipe?..I never know).

Will little television during my vacation, I spent some down time listening to backlogged podcasts. My new favorite: The Adam Carolla Podcast. I know, I'm even a little surprised myself. At the height of the Jimmy Kimmel/Adam Carolla Man Show and Loveline, I was slightly too young to watch (or appreciate) late night television, but I always thought of Adam as one of those "funny dudes" with a reputation for crass, sarcastic rant humor who popped up from time to time. I recently subscribed to the podcast - which Adam starting doing last year after leaving a long-time morning radio gig in LA.

The podcast - usually daily interviews with various comics, entertainers, etc. for 60-90 minutes - is actually hilariously entertaining. This is based mostly on the fact that Adam is intelligent. Gasp. The intelligence of a host/interviewer is vastly under-rated. Thankfully, Adam tells a good story, gives a good rant, but more importantly, he seems to equally entertain/be entertained by his guests.

I often don't agree with him politically (though probably more often than I would care to admit) and some of his more, shall we say, racially-themed rants make me cringe, but I honestly love listening to this guy. So much so that I'm starting to think of him as a friend. Is that unhealthy? When you starting talking to your iPod, and your iPod doesn't respond...

Anyway, according to The Hollywood Reporter, NBC has ordered a new single-camera comedy pilot starring Adam from Universal Media Studios, BermanBraun and Jackhole Industries (Adam's company with Jimmy Kimmel). At this point, all we know is that Adam will play a recently divorced contractor trying to rebuild his life.

The pilot process is a long and arduous one (Adam tried last year with a comedy for CBS that didn't pan out), but such an early order is a good sign. NBC will pick up 18 pilots this season - 10 dramas and 8 comedies - but only a handful make it to air. I'm really glad NBC is staying the course with the single-camera comedy - ABC has been getting a lot of attention for their recent foray into this format, but NBC really deserves the credit (yea, I said it) for pioneering stuff like The Office, 30 Rock, and now Parks & Rec and Community.

Looking forward to (hopefully) seeing what the Ace Man brings to television comedy, but hope that doesn't replace the podcast. Go on over and subscribe on iTunes.

1 comments:

Mahalo said...

Welcome to the dark side. JK. I agree that I don't find myself nodding my head at everything he says. But it sure is funny to hear him rant about things that I didn't think bothered me, but now they do, once it gets the Adam spotlight of shame on it. He is great to listen to and hope he gets to have some creative freedom on his upcoming pilot.

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